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At NYU Buenos Aires and NYU Madrid, Students Learn Spanish in Context

Posted on by Katie L

Foreign languages can provide a gateway to new cultures, new relationships, and new opportunities. And, of course, an organic environment where students engage with native users is one of the best ways for students to hone language skills. At NYU Buenos Aires and NYU Madrid, the University’s two Spanish-using locations, students can learn Spanish in and out of the classroom through language exchange programs, field trips, and everyday conversation.

“A language is never easy to learn, and it’s even harder to learn it by yourself,” explains Haiam Husain Lara, cultural program coordinator at NYU Madrid. “Ultimately, language is used for communication. So studying a language in context is crucial because you’re learning the language in the same circumstances you’ll use it: for conversation. There is just no other better way to acquire knowledge in something so distant yet so close to us.”

Argentina Hoy/Argentina Today at NYU Buenos Aires

A smiling student dances in a dance class

NYU Buenos Aires students join a local dance class with Buenos Aires residents

In the NYU Buenos Aires class Argentina Hoy/Argentina Today, taught by Language Coordinator and Professor Silvia Luppino, students explore current issues in Argentine society as they practice their Spanish language skills. The class visits sites like the Parque de la Memoria, a riverside park, and the Museo Etnográfico Juan B. Ambrosetti, the University of Buenos Aires’ ethnographic museum, as well as attends a cultural workshop about the Guaraní, one of the Indigenous peoples in Argentina and South America. Additionally, students participate in regular language exchanges with Argentine students through the Asociación de Centros de Idiomas, a local association of language centers. “Students can engage in a lively and relaxed atmosphere and share how they live and study, where they travel, and what they expect,” explains Luppino.

Each semester, Luppino changes the syllabus to reflect the latest trends and topics. Recently, the class attended a screening of the film Argentina, 1985, an Argentine movie about the civil trial of the last dictatorship’s military juntas. “It made a big impact on the students,” says Luppino. “They saw the audience’s emotional reaction, and they could appreciate that this didn’t feel like a ‘past’ event for Argentinians. Rather, it is a central part of the social experience.” That emotional connection to “the real language,” in Luppino’s words, is why immersive learning is so vital. “I always tell students that the journey is not only to cross the equator. Here, their cultural values and certainties will be put to the test, and that includes the Spanish language they learned from textbooks.”

NYU Madrid’s Language Exchange Program

A group of cyclists

NYU Madrid students participate in a language exchange bike ride at Rio Park.

“At NYU Madrid, we aim to ensure each student feels comfortable exploring the city and the Spanish language through activities that require participation and collaboration with native speakers. And we make sure they have fun while doing it,” says Husain Lara. Each semester, NYU students pair up with local university students to participate in weekly language exchanges. Since every student already takes intensive Spanish, the program emphasizes getting out of the classroom. Recent excursions included bowling, museums, and even miniature golf. During each outing, students learn terminology related to the activity in action. For example, during a recent salsa and bachata class, NYU students received cards with dance moves in Spanish while Spanish users received them in English. Then they had to communicate in their non-native languages to coordinate their dances.

“Studying a language in context breathes life into that language,” says Alejandro Pérez Pardo, assistant director for student life and housing at NYU Madrid. “Spanish can be very difficult, and in class, it sometimes doesn’t make sense because you’re not experiencing how it’s actually used. But when you go out, you start to understand why and how to use it—and why it’s important. By actually talking to Spanish people, students bond with one another and develop a real love of the language.” Husain Lara adds, “The idea we want to spread is that a language is never a barrier. Rather, it’s a bridge that helps us cross to another land we haven’t explored yet.”

Written by Dana Guterman

Bilingualism Comes Naturally to Our Brains

Posted on by Katie L

The brain uses a shared mechanism for combining words from a single language as well as ones from two different languages, a team of neuroscientists has discovered. The findings indicate that switching languages comes naturally to those who are bilingual because the brain has a mechanism that does not detect that the language has switched, allowing for a seamless transition in the comprehension of more than one language at once.

“Our brains are capable of engaging in multiple languages,” explains Sarah Phillips, an NYU linguistics doctoral candidate and the lead author of the paper, “Composition within and between Languages in the Bilingual Mind,” which appears in the journal eNeuro. “Languages may differ in what sounds they use and how they organize words to form sentences. However, all languages involve the process of combining words to express complex thoughts.”

“Bilinguals show a fascinating version of this process—their brains readily combine words from different languages, much like when combining words from the same language,” adds Liina Pylkkänen, the codirector of the Neuroscience of Language Lab at NYU Abu Dhabi, a professor in NYU’s linguistics and psychology departments, and the paper’s senior author.

A teacher instructs a student writing letters on a whiteboard

An estimated 60 million people in the United States use at least two languages, according to the US Census. Across the globe, the majority of people know more than one language. Indeed, many countries have more than one official national language.

Unsurprisingly, in today’s highly globalized world, bilingualism provides a variety of meaningful social and practical advantages. People using multiple languages can converse with a wider array of people, and they can also more readily connect across cultures and adjust to new situations. At NYU, students studying away benefit from exploring new places and having new experiences as members of the University’s global network. But they also have the opportunity to immerse themselves in a different language, deepening their experience and sharpening their minds.

Yet, despite the domestic and international widespread nature and evident benefits of bi- and multilingualism, the neurological mechanisms used to understand and produce more than one language are not well understood. This terrain is an intriguing one; bilinguals often mix their two languages together as they converse with one another, raising questions about how the brain functions in such exchanges.

Phillips and Pylkkänen sought to better understand these processes. They explored whether bilinguals interpret these mixed-language expressions using the same mechanisms as when comprehending single-language expressions or, alternatively, if understanding mixed-language expressions engages the brain in a unique way.

To test this, the scientists measured the neural activity of Korean and English bilinguals. The study’s subjects viewed a series of word combinations and pictures on a computer screen. Then, they indicated whether or not the picture matched the preceding words. The words either formed a two-word sentence or were simply a pair of verbs that did not combine into a meaningful phrase (such as, “icicles melt” versus “jump melt”). In some instances, the two words came from a single language (Korean or English) while others used both languages, with the latter mimicking mixed-language conversations.

In order to measure the study subjects’ brain activity during these experiments, the researchers deployed magnetoencephalography. The technique maps neural activity by recording magnetic fields generated by the electrical currents produced by our brains.

The recordings showed that Korean and English bilinguals, in interpreting mixed-language expressions, used the same neural mechanism as they did while interpreting single-language expressions. Specifically, the brain’s left anterior temporal lobe, a brain region well studied for its role in combining the meanings of multiple words, was insensitive to whether the words it received were from the same language or from different languages. This region, then, proceeded to assign complex meaning to two related words regardless of whether they shared a language.

These findings suggest that language switching is natural for bilinguals because the brain has a combinatory mechanism that does not “sense” the language has switched. “Earlier studies have examined how our brains can interpret an infinite number of expressions within a single language,” Phillips observes. “This research shows bilingual brains can, with striking ease, interpret complex expressions containing words from different languages.”

You can watch Phillips discussing her research on bilingual speakers in this NYU-produced video (credit: NYU, courtesy of Kate Lord).

Content repurposed with permission from NYU News