Brain remembers language better if you sing it

2020-06-17温从秀

疯狂英语·新悦读 2020年3期

难词探意

1. nostalgia /nɒ'stældʒə/ n. 怀旧

2. blast /blɑːst/ n. （突然发出的）响声

3. randomly /'rændəmli/ adv. 任意地；随机地；胡乱地

Have you ever found yourself in this situation: You hear a song you used to sing when you were a child—a bit ofnostalgiaor “blastfrom the past” as we say. But it is not a distant childhood memory. The words come back to you as clearly as when you sang them all those years ago.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh studied the relationship between music and remembering a foreign language. They found that remembering words in a song was the best way to remember even one of the most difficult languages.

Here is what they did. Researchers took 60 adults andrandomlydivided them into three groups of 20. Then they gave the groups three different types of“listen-and-repeat” learning conditions. Researchers had one group simply speak the words. They had the second group speak the words to a rhythm, or beat. And they asked the third group to sing the words.

All three groups studied words from the Hungarian language for 15 minutes. Then they took part in a series of language tests to see what they remembered.

Why Hungarian? You may wonder. Researchers said they chose Hungarian because not many people know the language. It does not share any roots with Germanic or Romance languages, such as Italian or Spanish. After the tests were over, the singers came out on top. The people who learned these new Hungarian words by singing them showed a higher overall performance. They did the best in four out of five of the tests. They also performed twice better than those who simply learned the words by speaking them.

Dr. Katie Overy said singing could lead to new ways to learn a foreign language. The brain likes to remember things better especially when the music is comfortable and pleasant.

Dr. Ludke said the findings could help those who struggle to learn foreign languages. On the University of Edinburgh's website, Dr. Ludke wrote,“This study provides the first experimental evidence that a‘listen-and-repeat’ singing method can help foreign language learning, and opens the door for future research in this area.”