An unexpected life hack for learning foreign languages has been revealed
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It is very important to gesture: it will help you pronounce foreign words correctly
Trying to learn a new language? Then use gestures during conversations to speak like a real native speaker, scientists advise. They claim that clear gestures help emphasize the correct parts of words.
Learning a new language can be challenging, especially if you want your voice to sound authentic, writes the Daily Mail. But gesturing when you talk can help you learn to sound like a local, suggests a new study.
Researchers have found that expressive hand gestures can help emphasize the right parts of words. And it can help you sound more like a native speaker.
Some languages, such as English, Italian and Russian, have lexical stress. This is when certain syllables in words are pronounced with noticeably more weight than others, explains the Daily Mail.
Researchers from New York University in Shanghai, China, recruited 124 native Chinese speakers aged 18 to 28 years. They watched videos of people performing up-and-down movements with their hands, synchronized with recordings of English words. All words consisted of three syllables, but their lexical stress varied and fell either on the first, last, or middle syllable.
Participants were divided into four groups, with one group watching videos that contained no gestures at all. The other three groups all watched videos that showed gestures over each syllable of each word, but only one of these groups saw a pronounced gesture over the correct stress on a syllable. Before and after watching the videos, participants were asked to press a button when they thought lexical stress was being applied to different words.
A preprint of the study was published online by bioRxiv.
The analysis showed that using prominent gestures over the correct part of a word helped participants identify lexical stress 10-15% more accurately compared to those who did not see the gestures.
The team said: “Participants learned lexical stress in foreign languages by observing up-and-down hand movements synchronized with audio recordings of spoken words. Our results highlight the functional role of gestures in enhancing language acquisition, suggesting practical implications for language teaching.”
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