Foreign language ability will not degenerate over time

On August 25, the official website of York University in the United Kingdom published a news that recently, researchers at the school re -investigated and tested the French ability of 500 participants who obtained a French -oriented secondary education certificate in the 1970s, and found that these people were in the After studying French for several years, their French level is similar to those who have just obtained a French ordinary secondary education certificate.

Monika Schmid, a professor at the Department of Linguistics at the University of York, said that a person's foreign language ability will not change over time. If you encounter special circumstances abroad, people can recall the correct foreign language words in a short time and communicate effective communication.

Schimid also mentioned that people generally believed that if they did not often use foreign languages, they would gradually forget it, but this is not the case. Compared with knowledge such as mathematics, history or science, language knowledge can have a long period of time in human minds and always maintain a certain stability. This may be related to the way language stored in the brain. This is a similar memory that is riding a bicycle, so it is more stable. In addition, foreign language vocabulary is stored in a close connection network in the brain. This means that if people think of a word, they will also think of many words related to it.

Schimid said that there is no special area in our brain to deal with different language systems, so learning foreign language knowledge will also cover the part of the native language in the brain to a certain extent. Therefore, when people use mother tongue in daily life, such as the word "apple", it will stimulate the pronunciation of the word "apple" in foreign languages ​​in the brain.

Researchers also emphasized that after many years of foreign language, people will think that they are difficult to perform proficient foreign language speaking expression. But because the language foundation is still in the brain memory, it does not take a lot of time, and people can re -use foreign languages. Therefore, Schmid believes that those who have studied foreign languages ​​do not need to re -study at all. They only need short -term exercises, and their foreign language levels can be recovered.

Source: China Social Science Network-Journal of Social Sciences of China

Author: Zhao Qi/Compilation

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