Xu Yuanchong dedicated his career to building
2 . When learning a foreign language, most people fall back on traditional methods: reading, writing, listening and repeating. But if you also gesture with your arms while studying, you can remember the vocabulary better. Linking a word to brain areas responsible for movement strengthens the memory of its meaning. This is the conclusion a research team in Leipzig reached after using magnetic pulses to deliberately disrupt these areas in language learners. “Our results provide neuroscientific evidence for why learning techniques that involve the body’s motor system should be used more often,” neuroscientist Brian Mathias, said in a news release.
As Mathias and his colleagues describe in the Journal of Neuroscience, they had 22 German-speaking adults learn a total of go invented artificial words (such as “lamube” for “camera”, and “atesi” for “thought”) over four days. While the test subjects first heard the new vocabulary, they were simultaneously shown a video of a person making a gesture that matched the meaning of the word. When the word was repeated, the subjects performed the gesture themselves.
Five months later, they were asked to translate the vocabulary they had learned into German in a multiple-choice test. At the same time, they had an apparatus (装置)attached to their heads that sent weak magnetic pulses to their primary motor cortex——the brain area that controls voluntary arm movements. When these interfering signals were active, the subjects found it harder to recall the words that were accompanied by gestures. When the apparatus sent no interfering signals (but still appeared to the subjects to be active), they found it easier to remember the words. The researchers concluded that the motor cortex contributed to the translation of the vocabulary learned with gestures. This applied to concrete words, such as “camera”, as well as abstract ones, such as “thought.”
“There’s now quite a lot of literature showing that gestures play a role in learning. I think where this study takes it a step further is trying to understand why,” says Susan Goldin-Meadow, a psychologist who studies the effects of gestures on learning but was not involved in the new study. Research like this, as well as brain imaging, suggests the activation of the brain’s motor areas could be a factor. “It’s not necessarily the only reason why,” Goldin-Meadow adds, “but it’s probably a contributor.”
The effect did not occur when the test subjects were only presented with matching pictures instead of gestures when learning vocabulary. In an experiment published in 2020, the Leipzig research team found that the adult brain uses motor areas to remember foreign-language words. But it is not only the motor component itself that promotes learning. The meaning of the gesture also figures in ——gestures particularly promote the memory of words if they represent the meaning of the word pictorially.
“I think we underuse gesture in our classrooms,” Goldin-Meadow says. “People use it spontaneously (自发地), if they’re good teachers and good listeners. We don’t necessarily bring it into the class if we don’t think about it, but it could be used more often and more effectively.”
1. What did the subjects do during their four-day learning of artificial words?| A．They tried their best to invent go artificial words. |
| B．They figured out the meaning of different gestures. |
| C．They showed researchers videos of making gestures. |
| D．They repeated gestures to learn the meaning of words. |
| A．control the brain area where voluntary arm movements occurred |
| B．help researchers confirm the role of gestures in learning a language |
| C．interfere with the active signals contributing to the recalling of words |
| D．make it easier for them to pass the multiple-choice test of new words |
| A．Gestures activate the brain’s motor areas. |
| B．Understanding gestures takes further steps. |
| C．More literature about gestures were studied. |
| D．Gestures make brain imaging more detailed. |
| A．language learners should be more deliberate about the gestures they choose to use |
| B．new words can be more easily remembered in combination with meaningful gestures |
| C．traditional language learning methods are not enough for learners |
| D．good teachers and good listeners don’t necessarily underuse gestures |
1. 介绍同学们的听说训练情况；
2. 希望提供更有效的学习方法;
3. 询问对方的意向。
注意:1. 词数不少于80；
2. 邮件的开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
Dear Jim,
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours,
Li Hua
4 . 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.
1. What made the Hawaiian language nearly die out?| A．Migration. | B．The ban on it. |
| C．Mass media. | D．Population decline. |
| A．Going on a strike. | B．Supporting the law. |
| C．Setting up a community college. | D．Educating more local children in it. |
| A．Making a fortune by learning it. | B．Focusing on academic outcomes. |
| C．Passing on the Hawaiian culture. | D．Reducing the influence of English. |
| A．The value of Hawaiian. | B．The revival of Hawaiian. |
| C．The popularity of Hawaiian. | D．The near-death of Hawaiian. |
