From VOA LearningEnglish this is As It Is. I’m AnnaMatteo in Washington.
Today on, As It Is, we will hearaboutsomethingourlistenersdoeverydaytheyhear, read or watch VOA LearningEnglish -- learning a secondlanguage.
We will hearwhetherbeingsurrounded by a foreignlanguage, or immersed in it, is the bestway to learn a language. Or are traditionallectureswithgrammarrules and vocabularylists the bestway to learn to speaklike a nativespeaker. SteveEmber has more on that topic.
What is the bestway to learn a newlanguage? A smallstudy of foreignlanguagelearning in adultscomparedtwomethods. One is known as the explicit or classroommethod. This is the kind of traditionalclassroomteachingwherestudents are taught a lot of informationaboutgrammarrules.
The othermethod is known as the implicit or immersionmethod. The ideahere is to learnmuch the waychildrendowhentheylearn a nativelanguage. That is, by beingwithnativespeakers and absorbing the language that surroundsthem, generallywithout a lot of explanation. TeachersmaycombinethesetwomethodsintowhatProfessorMichaelUllmancallsimmersion-style classroomteaching. But is that necessarily a betterway to learn a language? Mr. Ullman was the seniorinvestigator for the newstudy. He is a professor of neuroscience at GeorgetownUniversityMedicalCenter in Washington. He says he was surprised to find that combining the twomethodsmight not help the brain in processing the newlanguage.
MICHAELULLMAN: "Youknow, ifmylifewere on the line, and I had to learn a language, whatwould I do? I'm not sure. Onepossibilitywould be that, to startwithexplicit and then go to immersion, right? Startwithclassroom and then go to immersion. But there is this possibility that classroomcouldhurtlaterimmersion. That's what, youknow, onepossibility of interpretingourdata."
The twenty-oneadults in the experimentlearned Brocanto2, a thirteen-wordlanguagecreated for the study. The words and grammarrulesrelate to a computergamesimilar to chess that the learnersplayed. For example, "Blomneimoluneeplipraz" means "The squareblom-piece switcheswith the neep-piece."
The researcherstested the peoplethree to sixmonthsafterthey had learned the language, to seehowwelltheycouldremember it. The studyfound that thosewho had learned it with the immersionmethod had brainwavessimilar to those of nativespeakers of a languagewhenspeaking that language.
ProfessorUllmansaysthosewhotrainedwith the classroommethodalsobecamemorenative-like in theirbrainprocessing. But only the immersiongroupshowedfullnative-likeprocessing of the grammar. Still, he saysteachersshould be carefulhowtheyuse the results of hisstudy.
MICHAELULLMAN: "Youknow I would not makeanycurriculumchangesbased on this. Nevertheless, it is suggestive, and I think it warrantsfurtherresearch to seewhether in factwhatkind of trainingmight in fact be best not just for reaching the nativebrainbases but also for, youknow, maximumproficiency in differentaspects of language, likegrammar, youknow, syntax and lexicon. So I thinkfurtherresearch is warranted. And it may be, for example, that a combination of classroom and immersionmight be best. But we don't know that."
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