It's All in the Mind

Being Bilingual is Good for Your Brain

Read the text and see if your guesses were right or wrong.

A recent study says that speaking two languages can help old people to stay mentally active. Dr. Ellen Bialystok and her team of scientists at York University in Canada planned some special tests. Then they asked 104 people between the ages of 30 and 88 to do them. From the tests, the scientists found out that people who can speak two languages are very good at thinking fast.

The scientists did different experiments and came to the conclusion that being bilingual can help old people to think quickly. Investigation has shown that playing musical instruments, dancing or reading can also help to keep you mentally active. Simple activities like doing crosswords or playing board games like chess or monopoly can also have a positive effect.

Dr. Bialystok thinks that speaking different languages is very good for you and your brain. Half of the people who did the tests came from Canada and only spoke English. The other half came from India and could speak English and a language called Tamil. The scientists tested vocabulary skills and maths ability. They checked how fast the people did the activities. The ones who could speak two languages did the exercises quickly and well. The people who spoke only one language weren’t so good.

The British Alzheimer’s Society was very interested in the discoveries. “It is possible that if we learn a second language when we are young, it can help us even when we are old,” said Professor Clive Ballard. Ballard is the Alzheimer’s Society’s Director of Investigation. “Education in general can certainly help the brain to stay active.

3) Discuss the text as if you were:

· The representative ofthe British Alzheimer’s Society;

· Professor Clive Ballard;

· Recipients aged 30 and 88;

· Dr. Ellen Bialystok

· The Canadians, who speak only English;

· The Indians, who speak English and Tamil.

1 ) Read the article and choose the most suitable heading from the list below for each numbered part of the article. The first one has been done for you.

A. A horrifying history.

B. Bloodthirsty.

C. Is bigger better?

D. Make your brain work.

E. How much do we know?

F. The battle of the sexes

G. The super computer.

(0 E) Although intelligence has been studied, and the brain has been studied, there is little understanding of how the brain works to produce intelligence. This has something to do with the fact that the brain contains around 100 billion cells (about the number of stars in the Milky Way).

(1) One of the continuing myths about the relationship between intelligence and the brain is that the brains of very clever people are somehow physically different from those of ordinary people. At the beginning of the century an American scientist called E.A. Spitzka produced a list of the weights of the brains of important, well-known men. The heaviest brain on the list was that of Turgenev, the Russian novelist, at 2000g. However, the brain of another great genius, Walt Whitman, weighed only 1282g.

(2) There are no significant differences between the intelligence levels of males and females. However, girls under seven score a little higher than boys in IQ tests and the highest IQ recorded is that of Marylin vos Savant at 230. However, men and women do differ in the way they think. Generally, women are more skilled verbally and men do better on visual-spatial tasks.

Interestingly, the fibres which join the two halves of the brain have been found to be larger in women than in men. This supports the theory that women can change from 'practical' to 'emotional' thinking more quickly than men.

(3) People with mental problems have often been treated extremely badly. Two hundred years ago, the mentally ill were swung around in revolving chairs, or holes were drilled in their skulls to release evil spirits. From the 1930s, the mentally ill were subjected to electric shock therapy and lobotomy – the removal of part of their brain. In the 1960s and 70s, thousands of people were given drugs to cope with anxiety and then became addicted to them.

(4) The brain needs ten times as much blood as other organs of the body, as it can't store glucose for later use. This is different to muscles and other organs and although the adult brain makes up only two per cent of the body weight, its oxygen consumption is twenty per cent of the body's total.

(5) There are similarities between brains and computers. Computers can do complicated calculations at incredible speeds. But they work in a fixed way, because they can't make memory associations. If we need a screwdriver and there isn't one, we will think laterally and use a knife or coin instead. Computers can't do this. In fact, it is claimed that when it comes to seeing, moving and reacting to stimuli, no computer can compete with even the brain power of a fly.

(6) Most of our mental processes are deeply formed habits. Challenging your brain to do things differently helps it develop. Try changing routines as often as you can: take a bus instead of going by car, sit in a different chair. An extreme but useful exercise is to read something upside down – you can actually feel your brain at work.

Exercise more. Good health and fitness levels give you overall improved energy which leads to better concentration.

Cooking is a good all-round mental exercise. It needs mathematical, organisational and scientific skills as well as challenging memory and creative ability. Use recipes at first and then learn to guess amounts, combinations, reactions of ingredients and timing.

Do puzzles and play games. Teach yourself to work out codes and expand your vocabulary at the same time.

2) Transcribe and pronounce correctly the following words:

visual-spatial, lobotomy, glucose, oxygen, consume, consumption, stimulus, stimuli, recipe.

3) Find the English equivalents for the following in the text:

Визуально-пространственный, просверлить дырку в черепе, изгонять злых духов, электрошоковая терапия, лоботомия, душевнобольной; в 10 раз больше крови, чем…; потребление кислорода, мыслить нестандартно.

4 ) Discuss the following in pairs:

why we often forget people’s names;

what kind of things bring back memories from long ago;

how we manage to remember important facts in a test;

why we don’t usually forget things we have learned to do, like riding a bike.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29