Gestures refer to the communication where visible bodily actions are used to communicate important messages. They include movement of hands, face, or other parts of the body. Gestures benefit our lives a lot. Take language learning.
In some languages, certain syllables (音节) within words are pronounced with markedly more weight than others, called lexical stress. Languages such as English commonly feature lexical stress. For example, the word “accent” involves more emphasis on the first syllable, “ac”, than the second, “cent”. Native speakers of Chinese, however, don’t use lexical stress and therefore find it difficult to learn languages that feature it.
Making any hand gesture could help learners recognize lexical stress, which has been proved by Xing Tian’s team. They selected 124 native Chinese speakers, who watched videos of people performing hand movements that were synced(同步的) to recordings of the same English words. In addition, they also found when more pronounced gestures matched the stressed syllable, the participants were particularly good at identifying it.
The research involved several experiments, which makes it difficult to combine the results. Nevertheless, Tian estimates that the use of gestures helped identify lexical stress between 10 and 15 percent more accurately compared with no gestures at all, and how much help depends on the nature of gestures.
A follow-up study conducted by another team exposed the same Chinese speakers to Russian words and got similar results. “Our findings highlight the functional role of gestures in enhancing speech learning, suggesting practical strategies for language teaching and learning,” the researchers write in their paper.
The benefits of gestures extend far beyond teaching and learning. Since gestures are deeply integrated into our daily lives, they deserve more of our attention.
1. What do gestures mean?2. What did Xing Tian’s team find in their study?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
Gestures help learn lexical stress, but the degree to which they help depends on the complexity of the lexical stress.
4. Besides what is mentioned in the passage, how do gestures benefit you in your life? (In about 40words)
When I lived in Boston, I taught English as a second language to adult students from around the world. On the last day, they threw a nice party. I was amazed they had learned enough English
Being able to understand local jokes is often seen as a great icebreaker for a foreign language learner
China is
The gesture for “OK” has different meanings in different cultures. In Japan, someone
6 . The British are known for their sense of humor. However, it is often difficult for foreigners to understand their jokes.
Understatement means saying less than you think or feel. For example, if someone gets very wet in a shower of rain, he might say, “It’s a little damp outside.” Or, if someone is very impolite and shouts at another person, someone else might say, “She isn’t exactly friendly.”
Mr. Bean is a character created by British actor Rowan Atkinson in 1990. Mr. Bean doesn’t talk often and instead he uses his body movement and facial expressions to make people laugh. Perhaps what makes Mr. Bean so funny is that he does things that adults in the real world cannot do. Mr. Bean is popular in many countries around the world because you do not have to speak English to understand the humor.
| A．The main point to remember is that the British often use understatement |
| B．Because of this, many people have become familiar with the British sense of humor |
| C．The reasons for the success and popularity of British comedy are interesting to explore |
| D．They like to make jokes about their accents, the way they dress and the way they behave |
| E．Understatement is often used in an unpleasant situation or to make another person look silly |
| F．Another area that might be difficult for foreigners to get when it comes to British comedy is “word play” |
| G．Another key to understand the British humor is that the British like to make fun of themselves as well as others |
7 . The next time you attend a social function or go to a place where people meet and interact, take note of the number of people who have adopted the same gestures and posture-the way you sit or stand-of the person with whom they are talking.
This copying also occurs among good friends or people of the same social position and it is common to see married couples walk, stand, sit and move in very similar ways.
If an employer wishes to develop immediate friendliness and create d relaxing atmosphere with an employee, he needs to copy the employee’s posture to achieve the end.
| A．Observing people talk is a good way to understand this idea. |
| B．This “carbon copying” is a means by which one person tells the other that he is in agreement with his ideas and attitudes. |
| C．Similarly, an up-and-coming employee may be seen copying his boss’ gestures in an attempt to show agreement. |
| D．This unconscious mimicry (无意识模仿) is quite interesting to observe. |
| E．This has the effect of putting the other person in a receptive and relaxed frame of mind and he can “see” that you understand his point of view. |
| F．Such a way of copying expresses the idea of following one’s example. |
| G．People who are strangers, however, try hard to avoid holding mutual (相互的) positions. |
Language learning not only improves your ability to express yourself but also
9 . Whenever anyone asks me what tech I’d like to see invented, I always say the universal translator, which lets you understand and speak any language.
Meta AI recently announced the start of the universal speech translator (UST) project, which aims to create AI systems that enable real-time speech-to-speech translation across all languages, even those that are spoken but not commonly written. Meta says that today’s AI translation models are focused on widely-used written languages, and that more than 40% of primarily spoken languages are not covered by such translation technologies.
According to Meta, the model is the first AI-powered speech translation system for the unwritten language Hokkien (闽南语), a Chinese language spoken in southeastern China. The system allows Hokkien speakers to hold conversations with English speakers, a significant step toward bringing people together wherever they are located.
To build UST, Meta AI focused on overcoming three important translation system challenges. It addressed data scarcity by getting more training data in more languages and finding new ways to use the data it had found. It solved the modeling problems that arise as models grow to serve many more languages. And it sought new ways to improve on its results.
Meta AI claims that the techniques it pioneered with Hokkien can be extended to many other unwritten languages—and eventually work in real time. For this purpose, Meta has released the Speech Matrix, a large collection of speech-to-speech translations, which enables other research teams to create translation models for other languages.
Artificial (人工的) speech translation could play a significant role in our world. For interactions, it will enable people from around the world to communicate with each other more smoothly, making the social net more interconnected. For content, using artificial speech translation allows you to easily localize content.
Yashar Behzadi, CEO and founder of Synthesis AI, believes that technology needs to enable more natural experiences if the digital world is to succeed. He says that one of the current challenges for UST models is the computationally expensive training that’s needed because of the wide range and very slight differences in meaning or sound of languages. Also, to train strong AI models requires vast amounts of typical data. A significant bottleneck to building these AI models in the near future will be to ensure training data collect the privacy in agreement with rules and law.
1. What is the feature of the UST project?| A．It changes spoken languages to written forms. |
| B．It attracts wider attention to written languages in translation. |
| C．It adds 40% of spoken languages into translation technology. |
| D．It enables real-time speech-to-speech translation across all languages. |
| A．Lack. | B．Mistake. | C．Recovery. | D．Management. |
| A．It is expensive to collect typical data. |
| B．It increases the use of a certain language. |
| C．Its techniques are finally developed for Hokkien. |
| D．It helps inspire interactions and content localization. |
| A．AI Translation: Make Translation Faster |
| B．AI Translation: Meet You in All Languages |
| C．Unwritten Language: Bring People Together |
| D．Unwritten Language: Translation Challenge |
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