2 . Children often learn new languages more easily than adults do, but it’s unclear why. Some theorize that grasping a language requires absorbing subtle patterns unconsciously and that adults’superior conscious reasoning is to blame. New research suggests that, indeed, grown-ups might just be too smart for their own good.

For a recent study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, a group of Belgian adults at the same time read and heard strings of four made-up words(such as “kieng nief siet hiem”). Specific consonants (辅音) always appeared at the beginning or end of a word if the word contained a certain vowel (元音). Participants next read the sequences aloud quickly. Their ability to avoid mistakes doing so indicated how well they absorbed the consonant-vowel patterns.

But before exposure to the new words, the participants had carried out a separate test: pressing keys to react to letters and numbers. Some got a much faster, more mentally draining version of this test. Those who did the difficult version claimed greater mental exhaustion afterward—but performed better on the following language task. The researchers assume that tired learners used less conscious analysis on the word rules: they were free to learn like a child.

For a related paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, the research team had English-speaking adults listen to streams of syllables (音节) secretly grouped into three-syllable “words.” Later, they played pairs of three-syllable units; one word in the pair came from the stream, and one was a new combination. The participants guessed which word was familiar, then rated their confidence.

In one participant group, some had first done the original mentally draining test. In another, some had received magnetic pulses to interrupt activity in a brain area that previous research has linked to executive control. In both groups, these measures improved participants’ performance on the syllable task when they were unsure about their answers, indicating unconscious analysis of speech.

Neuroscientist Michael Ullman, who was not involved in either paper, likes that both the studies added to mental burden differently and measured different skills. That’s really good in science because you’ve got evidences pointing to the same direction,” he says, adding that he would like to see higher language skills such as grammar studied this way.

4 . Learning a language literally changes your brain

If you’ve ever learned a new language, you know how difficult it can be. Native languages seem almost built-in.     1     But learning a new language, especially after early childhood, can be a huge task, burdened by long vocabulary lists to memorize, and complex cases and troublesome tenses to master. Of course, it’s worth the effort. In today’s interconnected world, learning a new language can change your life. It will certainly change your brain.

Learning anything changes your brain, at least a little bit.     2    John Grundy, a neuroscientist specializing in bilingualism and the brain, says when you learn a new language, your brain gets rearranged, new connections are made and new pathways are formed.

Those extra pathways can come in handy. Grundy offers a useful analogy (类比): Imagine that you always take the same route to work. Then one day, the road is washed out. Now what? If you’d varied your route over the years, you’d have options already in mind. You could hop on another road and maybe make it to your desk before your boss noticed you were late. “It’s really just a remodeling of the brain that allows it to become more efficient,” Grundy says.

    3     After three months of intense language study, recruits at the Swedish Armed Forces Interpreter Academy had increases in cortical (皮层的) thickness in areas associated with language processing.

Knowing a second language can also help prevent or at least delay cognitive decline. “There is a consistent finding that bilinguals are able to stave off symptoms of dementia for about four to six years compared to monolinguals,” says Grundy.     4    

If you’re thinking it’s too late, you’re probably wrong. We often think only children can learn languages with ease. It’s true that young children do more quickly learn whatever language they’re exposed to, but when it comes to adding on a new one, adults aren’t at as much of a disadvantage as you might think.     5     If you practice a lot and immerse yourself in the language, you can see the benefits at any age, especially when you get older.

5 . Do Actions Speak Louder than Words?

Our society is fast paced. We are all rushing from one place to the next, blowing our horn at slow drivers who may be singing songs in the car with their children or pointing out some interesting sights. We don't have time for that silliness today. But we try to say to ourselves that we will make time for fun tomorrow. It is time to take a few deep breaths and think about our actions and our words.     1    

Have you ever really thought about the saying “Actions speak louder than words”? Think about it now. If you say one thing and act in an opposite way, will the words be ignored and just the actions remembered? I don’t think so.     2     It is also equally important to use words to show appreciation, love, approval and happiness and then follow those words with a hug, pat on the back or smile.

    3     What about that saying? True? Yes! Words carry a lot of weight and will be remembered for years especially when they are written down. Mean words can hurt for that moment and for a lifetime. I am sure that each of us remembers a time when a friend made an unkind comment.     4     Let’s not be a member of that “club”. When was the last time that you hid a love note in a lunch box or in your mate’s coat pocket? If you want to see a bright smile, that will do it! The power of this written note will be remembered for many days, even years.

“I can live for two months on a good compliment (夸奖)”, said Mark Twain. Children grow stronger when they feel appreciated and understood.     5     A perfect way to turn a bad day around is to praise your child. “I noticed that your hair looked very nice today.” “Did you hang your coat up all by yourself?” It is amazing how those few words can change a child's outlook... almost immediately.

Why do you feel encouraged when your teacher gives you a smile? How do you know your mother is angry when she frowns(皱眉)? In both cases, the person is telling us something not with words, but with facial expressions.

Facial expressions are one or more movements on a person’s face, such as frowning, raising one’s eyebrows(眉毛)，and nose and lip(嘴唇) movements. They express people’s feelings.

Scientists at Oxford University have shown that humans have 80 muscles(肌肉) on their faces. These muscles can create more than 7, 000 facial expressions. However , there are six main kinds of facial expressions that are common in all cultures: happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger and disgust(厌恶).

Facial expressions are very important to communication. One study at UCLA, in the US, showed that in most conversations, over 93 percent of the communicating is done without speaking.

If people can read facial expressions, they may be better at knowing what other people are feeling, so they can understand them better. Someone who does not enjoy a certain type of food usually will make a face when he/she sees or tastes it. A frown means worry or anger. Raised eyebrows and open eyes show surprise.

However, there are some taboos(禁忌) for reading people’s facial expressions. For example, it is not a good idea to stare at someone for a long time while reading his or her facial expressions. They may think you are rude.

8 . Ma uka, ma uka ka ua,

Ma kai, ma kai ka ua

So sing the children at Hawaiis Punana Leo Hilo kindergarten on the Big Island of Hawaii. The chant is much like any other “Rain, rain, go away” nursery rhyme, but it has an unusual power: it is one of the tools that has brought about the revival(复兴)of a near-dead language.

The decline of Hawaiian was not, as is the case with most disappearing languages, a natural death caused by migration and mass media. In 1896, after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy (君主政体) by American business interests, schools were banned from using the language, and children were beaten for speaking it. By the late 20th century, aside from a couple of hundred people on one tiny island, English had replaced Hawaiian and only the old spoke the language to each other.

Larry Kimura, a professor there, and his students wanted to bring it back to life. In 1985, when educating children in Hawaiian was still banned, Kauanoe Kamana and her husband Pila Wilson, both students of Kimura's created the first Punana Leo (which means language nest) at Hilo. They gathered together a small group of children and elderly native speakers. The movement grew: there are now 12 kindergartens and 23 schools. The number of children being educated in Hawaiian has risen from 1,877 in 2008 to 3,028 in 2018. Along with Japanese, Hawaiian is the non-English language most commonly spoken among children.

The success has been hard-won. Campaigners had to get the law changed. “People in the community, even in our families, were saying: ‘You'll ruin your children's future. They won't be able to go to college.’ ” Such fears turned out to be unfounded. All the pupils at Nawahi, the main Hawaiian-medium school, complete high school, compared with the state average of 83%; 87% go to college, compared with a state average of 55%.

But academic outcomes are not the primary focus, says Mr. Wilson. “We value our connection with our ancestors more than we value being millionaires,” he says. Mr. Kimura explains that the schools have allowed Hawaiians to pass on their culture.

9 . A crucial period for learning the rules and structure of a language lasts up to around age 17 or 18, say psychologist Joshua Hartshorne of MIT and his colleagues.

Previous research had suggested that grammar-learning ability developed in early childhood before hitting a dead end around age 5. However, Hartshorne’s team reports online in Cognition that people who started learning English as a second language in an English-speaking country by age 10 to 12 ultimately mastered the new tongue as well as folks who had learned English and another language at the same time from birth. Both groups, however, fell somewhat short of the grammatical fluency displayed by English-only speakers. After ages 10 to 12, new-to-English learners reached lower levels of fluency than those who started learning English at younger ages because time ran out when their grammar-absorbing ability fell starting around age 17.

Aiming for a sample of tens of thousands of volunteers, Hartshorne began by contacting friends on Facebook to take an online English grammar quiz, which used a person’s responses to guess his or her native language and dialect (方言) of English. Then volunteers filled out a questionnaire asking where they had lived, languages they had spoken from birth, the age at which they began learning English and the number of years they had lived in an English-speaking country.

In the end, the researchers analyzed responses of 669,498 native and nonnative English speakers. Statistical calculations focused on estimating at what ages people with varying amounts of experience peaking English reached peak grammar ability.

Researchers who study language learning regard the new study as fascinating, but exploratory. According to psycholinguist David Barner of the University of California, San Diego, Hartshorne’s team can’t yet say that language skill develops along a single timeline. Different elements of grammar, such as using correct word order or subjects and verbs that agree with one another, might be learned at different rates, Barner says. It’s also unclear whether the responses of volunteers to an online, 132-item grammar test reflect how well of poorly they actually speak English, he says.

What’s more, language learning involves more than a crucial period for acquiring grammar, cautions linguist David Birdsong of the University of Texas at Austin. For instance, growing up speaking two languages at once puts still poorly understood burdens on the ability to grasp grammar, he says.

In the new study, people who were bilinguals from birth fell short of peak English grammar scores achieved by English-only speakers. That’s consistent with evidence that bilinguals cannot easily turn off one language while speaking another, Birdsong says. Interactions between tongues spoken by one person may slightly depress how much can be learned about both languages, even if bilingual communication still reaches high levels, he suggests.

10 . Learning a second language is tricky at any age and it only gets tougher the longer you wait to open that dusty French book. Now, in a new study, scientists have pinpointed the exact age at which your chances of reaching fluency in a second language seem to plummet: 10.

The study, published in the journal Cognition, found that it’s “nearly impossible” for language learners to reach native-level fluency if they start learning a second tongue after 10. But that doesn’t seem to be because language skills go downhill. “It turns out you’re still learning fast. It’s just that you run out of time, because your ability to learn starts dropping at around 17 or 18 years old,” says study co-author Joshua Hartshorne, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College.

Kids may be better than adults at learning new languages for many reasons. Children’s brains are more plastic than those of adults, meaning they’re better able to adapt and respond to new information. “All learning involves the brain changing,” Hartshorne says, “and children’s brains seem to be a lot more skilled at changing.”

Kids may also be more willing to try new things (and to potentially look foolish in the process) than adults are. Their comparatively new grasp on their native tongue may also be advantageous. Unlike adults, who tend to default (默认) to the rules and patterns of their first language, kids may be able to approach a new one with a blank slate (石板).

These findings may seem discouraging, but it was heartening for scientists to learn that the critical period for fluent language acquisition might be longer than they previously thought. Some scientists believed that the brief window closes shortly after birth, while others stretched it only to early adolescence. Compared to those estimates, 17 or 18 — when language learning ability starts to drop off — seems relatively old.

“People fared better when they learned by immersion (沉浸), rather than simply in a classroom. And moving to a place where your desired language is spoken is the best way to learn as an adult. If that’s not an option, you can mimic an immersive environment by finding ways to have conversations with native speakers in their own communities,” Hartshorne says. By doing so, it’s possible to become conversationally proficient — even without the advantage of a child’s brain.