英语单词大师：Second Language

 AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: why forgetfulness might actually help in learning a second language.

RS: Ben Levy¹ is a graduate student in the Psychology² Department at the University of Oregon, studying an area called inhibitory control and long-term memory.

BEN LEVY: "When people are actually exposed to a situation where they have to be immersed³ in a foreign language, after that immersion⁴ process, when they return back and try to speak their first language, they actually report difficulty speaking their native language. And while linguists⁵ had known about this for a while, this first-language attrition, there wasn't really any good explanation about why it occurred."AA: "Take us through the process, how does this work with the brain?"BEN LEVY: "What we did was we brought in undergraduates from the University of Oregon who are native English speakers, who are in the process of acquiring a second language, which is Spanish in this study. And what we did is we just showed them pictures of objects. So these would be very simple objects that they should know in both languages, things like a broom or a snake or a spoon.

"And whenever the object was presented in green, we asked the subject to simply come up with the English word for that object as quickly as they could. However, whenever the object was presented in red, we asked them to come up with the Spanish label as fast as they could.

"Now, what we were really interested in here is what happens to the corresponding English word for the object after you've repeatedly named it in Spanish. So if you see a picture of a snake on the screen twelve times, and every time it's presented in red and you have to say culebra as fast as you can -- which is the Spanish word for snake -- what happens to that English word snake?"RS: To find out, Ben Levy says, the students had to take a final test in the form of a rhyming exercise.

BEN LEVY: "We gave them a word that would rhyme with one of the words they saw earlier, and we asked them to come up with the word they saw earlier that rhymed with it. So we might present them with 'brake' and say 'what did you see earlier that rhymed with that?' And if the subject can correctly remember the word, they're going to say snake out loud.

"And what we find is that -- the more often you name something in English, of course, the easier it is to come up with these English words on this final test, right? That's obvious. But the more surprising part is, the more often you actually named the thing in Spanish, the harder it is for you to generate⁶ the corresponding English word, suggesting that that word has actually been inhibited⁷. That verbal⁸ label is harder to come up with after having practiced the corresponding word in the second language."RS: "Now, did that surprise you?"BEN LEVY: "Well, that's what we were expecting, coming from our background. But I think that most people would be surprised by a finding like that. You know, at first, it may sound like it is a scary and bad thing [that] you might be losing your native language by acquiring a second one. But, in fact, I would argue that this is actually an adaptive good thing.

"You can think about it this way: As a second language speaker, particularly when you're in one of these difficult immersion situations, what's going on in your mind is sort of like a race. So you have this native language word and you have this second language word which is much weaker. And as your mind is trying to think of the name for this object out there in the world, or some concept you're trying to express, you have a race between those two verbal labels. And what's going to happen in that race?"AA: "The stronger is going to win?"BEN LEVY: "The stronger is going to win, right? Now if you're in an immersion situation where you really need to express yourself, you don't want that stronger one to win anymore. You want the weaker one to win. So what we're saying is that what the speaker does in that situation is actually inhibits⁹ that native language word, so it won't always win the race. So that that second language word can actually have a hope of being retrieved¹⁰."RS: "Well, there's new hope, is what you're saying here, is there's new hope for those learning a second language."BEN LEVY: "Uh-uh. Of course, the concern is that then we might actually have this permanent loss of our first language. But I think as long as somebody goes back and practices the first language after learning the second language, most of these any kind of losses in the first language will be recovered.

"So there's actually research on this that six months later, after college students who go travel abroad, come back and begin speaking their language again, any losses that they had from that time spent abroad are fully¹¹ recovered within six months. So as long as you go back and speak that first language again once you go back, there's no problem at all. You can easily recover from these?"RS: "Well, that's good."AA: "Now, do you speak any other languages?"BEN LEVY: "Uh, not well. Personally I took Spanish for many years, then actually a few years ago I married a woman who speaks German among her family. And so I decided¹² that I wanted to learn a little bit more German myself, so I could sort of be in on what they were talking about. And so I started taking German classes here at the university.

"And what I actually found was, when I was learning German, I didn't have so much problem with English, because I was of course going back to speaking that outside of the classes. But I did find that I actually started to lose some of my Spanish. And it's much more difficult for me to go back and think about things in Spanish now after having learned German."RS: Researcher Ben Levy at the University of Oregon. His study, with Professor Michael Anderson, appears in the January issue of Psychological Science.

AA: And that's Wordmaster for this week. You can learn more about learning English at our Web site, voanews.com/wordmaster. And our e-mail address is [email protected]. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

1 levy   

n.征收税或其他款项，征收额

参考例句：

• They levy a tax on him.他们向他征税。
• A direct food levy was imposed by the local government.地方政府征收了食品税。

2 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

3 immersed   

浸入的，沉入的，沉思的

参考例句：

• She immersed herself in her work. 她埋头工作。
• When a body is immersed in a fluid, it apparently loses weight. 身体浸入水中就会明显减轻重量。

4 immersion   

n.沉浸；专心

参考例句：

• The dirt on the bottom of the bath didn't encourage total immersion.浴缸底有污垢，不宜全身浸泡于其中。
• The wood had become swollen from prolonged immersion.因长时间浸泡，木头发胀了。

5 linguists   

n.通晓数国语言的人( linguist的名词复数 )；语言学家

参考例句：

• The linguists went to study tribal languages in the field. 语言学家们去实地研究部落语言了。 来自辞典例句
• The linguists' main interest has been to analyze and describe languages. 语言学家的主要兴趣一直在于分析并描述语言。 来自辞典例句

6 generate   

vt.生成，产生（光、热、电等）导致

参考例句：

• We need someone to generate new ideas.我们需要有人出新主意。
• This book will continue to generate excitement for a long time.这本书将在很长一段时间里继续使人们为之激动。

7 inhibited   

a.拘谨的，拘束的

参考例句：

• Boys are often more inhibited than girls about discussing their problems. 男孩子往往不如女孩子敢于谈论自己的问题。
• Having been laughed at for his lameness,the boy became shy and inhibited. 那男孩因跛脚被人讥笑，变得羞怯而压抑。

8 verbal   

adj.口头的，用言辞的，用文字的，动词的

参考例句：

• Verbal statements are no guarantee.口说无凭。
• I delivered a verbal protest against their brutal acts.我对他们的暴行提出口头抗议。

9 inhibits   

阻止，抑制( inhibit的第三人称单数 )； 使拘束，使尴尬

参考例句：

• A small manufacturing sector inhibits growth in the economy. 制造业规模太小有碍经济增长。
• His bad English inhibits him from speaking freely. 他英语学得不好，这使他不能表达自如。

10 retrieved   

v.取回( retrieve的过去式和过去分词 )；恢复；寻回；检索（储存的信息）

参考例句：

• Yesterday I retrieved the bag I left in the train. 昨天我取回了遗留在火车上的包。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He reached over and retrieved his jacket from the back seat. 他伸手从后座上取回了自己的夹克。 来自辞典例句

11 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

12 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。