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
4 . In some ways, it is surprising that languages change. After all, they are passed down through the generations reliably enough for parents and children to communicate with each other.
Languages change for a variety of reasons. Large-scale shifts often occur in response to social, economic, and political pressures, as there are many examples of language change fueled by invasions, colonization, and migration.
A.Changes in sound are somewhat harder to document but just as interesting. |
B.Yet linguists find that all living languages change over time — at different rates though. |
C.As long as people are using a language, that language will undergo some change. |
D.All natural languages change, and language change affects all areas of language use. |
E.The three main areas of language that change over time are vocabulary, sentence structure, and pronunciation. |
F.Even without these kinds of influences, a language can change dramatically if enough users adopt a new way of speaking. |
G.The vocabulary and phrases people use depend on where they live, their age, education level, social status and other factors. |
While China celebrates the year of the rabbit, many Vietnamese are buying new cat-themed decorations. How the cat substituted for the rabbit
1.听说学习的重要性;
2.学习中遇到的问题;
3.你的建议。
注意:1.词数不少于100;
2.适当增加细节,使文章连贯;
3.开头、结尾已给出,不计入总词数。
Dear friends,
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That's all. Thank you for listening.
Human history begins with stories. Some stories are so important that they
Learner’s dictionaries, all in English, are specially designed to help students.
1. 诗词的题目和作者;
2. 诗词的主要内容;
3. 你推荐该诗词的理由。
注意:1. 词数不少于 50;
2. 开头和结尾已给出,不计入总词数。
Dear Jim,
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Yours,
Li Hua
10 . 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.
1. Hartshorne and his colleagues found that____ .A.one reaches a higher level of fluency at age 10 |
B.one learns a second language fastest at about age 12 |
C.one gets a good grasp of English grammar before age 5 |
D.one’s ability to master grammar declines at around age17 |
A.social media |
B.experiments in the lab |
C.literature review |
D.face-to-face interviews |
A.language skill develops along a single timeline |
B.online volunteers do not cover a wide enough range |
C.different grammar items may be acquired at different paces |
D.the quiz in the new study does not include enough questions |
A.They can achieve a perfect grammar score. |
B.Grammar learning is the biggest burden for them. |
C.They are able to make a swift shift between languages. |
D.Speaking two languages affects their language acquisition. |