Being Bilingual Boosts Brainpower
1. TRUE / FALSE: Read the headline. Guess if a-h below are true (T) or false (F).
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A university said bilingual people have more powerful brains.
Researchers say studying languages increases our ability to focus.
Listening to other languages activates a newly-found part of the brain.
The researchers say bilingualism increases attention and memory.
The study says bilingual people are better at crossword puzzles.
Researchers say good things come automatically with bilingualism.
The researchers said bilinguals are good at juggling different objects.
A professor said bilinguals totally ignore irrelevant sounds.
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A study by Northwestern University provides biological evidence that people who are
bilingual have a more powerful brain. Dr. Viorica Marian and Dr. Nina Kraus
investigated how bilingualism affects the brain. They found that studying another
language "fine-tunes" people's attention span and enhances their memory. In particular
they discovered that when language learners attempt to understand speech in another
language, it activates and energizes the brainstem – an ancient part of the brain.
Professor Kraus stated: "Bilingualism serves as enrichment for the brain and has real
consequences when it comes to…attention and working memory."
Professor Marian explained why studying and learning another language was so
beneficial for the brain. She said: "People do crossword puzzles and other activities to
keep their minds sharp, but the advantages we've discovered in dual language
speakers come automatically simply from knowing and using two languages." She
added: "It seems that the benefits of bilingualism are particularly powerful and broad,
and include attention, inhibition and encoding of sound." She said bilinguals were better
listeners because they are "natural jugglers" of sound. She said: "The bilingual juggles
linguistic input and, it appears, automatically pays greater attention to relevant versus
irrelevant sounds."
2. SYNONYM MATCH: Match the following synonyms from the article.
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evidence
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❶The following sentences all contain the nonsense word __________________.
Is _____________ used as a verb, an adjective, a noun, or an adverb?
1. My grandmother’s very old and _______________________ now, so she can’t get out much.
2. She gave me my grandfather’s gold watch. I’ll _____________________________ it forever.
3. They can’t afford to buy meat and fish. They live very _________________-ly on rice and beans.
4. The ______________________________ of the world is over 7.2 billion.
❷Can you guess what _______________________ means in the four sentences? Which real
English word goes into each sentence?
cherish
frugally
frail
population
❸Complete the word act in the sentences using the suffixes from the box.
-ress
-ion
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1. My grandfather is 84, but he’s still very act_______.
2. My sister’s an act______. She’s often on TV.
3. Act______ is not always a well-paid job.
4. This is not a time to do nothing. It is a time for act_______.
5. We do a lot of act______________ in class to learn English.
-ivities