Welcome to the Learning Languages in Society with Gabi podcast, where it's all about the fascinating world of languages and culture. Let's rock.
Hi everybody, my name is Gabi, and welcome to my show again.
So today I'd like to talk to you about the relationship between sports and second language acquisition.
This isn't going to be a very long episode, but it's rather going to be a quick reminder of why sports are ever so important for cognitive development and therefore, so important or very important for language acquisition as well.
Take for example, the articles or some articles published in 2018 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which confirmed the hypothesis according to which the aging of brain cells can be slowed down by regular physical activity. The fact that older people who play sports every day suffer a lot less from cognitive disorders can be considered as evidence in favor of this hypothesis.
Now, the situation is similar for patients who happen to be children. The research results have been published in the Journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, confirming that children who do sports are able to learn much faster, and as a consequence, their performance at school is better from year to year.
So what is this? What does this all mean? Basically what it means that the normal aging of the brain under, for its normal deterioration can be slowed down, which doesn't necessarily translate into, stopped or reversed, but again, it can be slowed down. And thus, a healthy person who does sports regularly, or who regularly does sports, can enjoy a healthier and richer life.
Now, further experiments have demonstrated that students who actively participate in physical education lessons, so who pretty much who do sports, are the ones who stand out in the classroom as well. So their academic performance improves, and they happen to have a higher level of cognitive abilities when compared to the performance of their companions or counterparts.
So I don't know if you've had this situation happening to you when you were at school, but, some of the students who happen to be good athletes or, good at doing sports, would be pretty good students as well, right?
Because you don't seem to see those sort of things portrayed in television and so on.
It's basically the nerdy, you know, student, who, does really good at school, but who really, really sucks at doing sports. But apparently this isn't always true.
Actually, students who are good at sports can also be pretty good with their academic performance. So you can not just be a really good student, but you can be an athlete at the same time. How is that? That sounds pretty good to me. Yeah. So what is behind this positive influence? Why are sports so important for cognition? Well, firstly, sports improve blood circulation during physical activity. Blood flows faster to the muscles and supplies them with oxygen and glucose. So the brain also receives the same vital components, right?
It has all this blood flowing in. Now, we have to keep in mind something very important. If the training is too hard, and it's too intense, the blood supply to the brain will decrease dramatically, since the main task of the body during intense physical activity is the removal of excessive heat. So that is why we sweat when we do sports. Why does that happen? Well, basically the body tries to remove life threatening overheating conditions, right? So it tries to prevent you from overheating and dying, basically.
So that's why we start sweating like crazy when we do physical sports now. So physical activity in general is capable of promoting or enhancing cognitive functions, and consequently, learning is one of these functions. And so obviously language acquisition is a subprocess in within general learning, okay?
Now, we have to keep in mind, as I said, that, exercise and sports in general should be done or should be performed at medium intensity. So we have to do sports in a moderate way for them to actually work, okay? In fact, that is the only case in which we can really absorb and obtain all these benefits from working out basically. Now, there is another important observation regarding the relationship between sports and cognitive abilities and it is the following.
Now, the more mature the brain is, the more it needs sports, since sports are also the catalyst for neurogenesis. Basically, sports facilitate the creation of new brain cells, okay? So as we grow older, we need sports more and more because that's what's gonna help us regenerate our brain cells and therefore not get basically sick, you know, or maybe slow down any kind of mental health issue that we may have encoded in our genes, right?
So this is also really important. So basically, sports pretty much mean health in general, okay? So let's just keep in mind that we have to do sports in a moderate way, but in general terms, that's why they are so important. There is also another difference between younger students and older students.
So some of these articles show that age is also a factor that affects performance in second language acquisition. While younger students may have the advantage of being able to memorize the input more quickly, and the possibility of achieving a level of proficiency in their second language, very similar to that of a native speaker, older students have it a little tougher, okay? Older students can make use of a repertoire of linguistically useful notions for interpreting the forms of the new language. And so basically what they do is a transfer of knowledge which can result in a positive transfer, or sometimes, it can cause interference, right?
So the fact that an older student learns languages in a different way may affect his performance, right? So if an older student speaks a different language or maybe two or three other languages, what they do is that they transfer that set of knowledge when they learn when they pick up a new language, as opposed to younger students, who kind of learn that new language pretty much as a baby would like a, pretty much like a native speaker. Okay? So that would be a difference between the two as well.
In any case, neuroplasticity diminishes as we get older, okay? So it's always a really good idea when you are an older, an older person, or you're becoming of age, to do sports in order to stop the aging of the brain from happening and to enhance neuroplasticity in your own brain.
Now, as it turns out, and as I've come to realize in all these articles that I've read, basically there is a kind of a package that goes with mental performance in general. And it shouldn't only be, it shouldn't just be physical activity, but it should also be social activity, mental activities, and physical activity in general. So basically picking up a new skill, having good relationships with the people around you like friends and family, and doing sports. That would be truly the package.
Now, at the brain level, physical activity or, medium intensity physical activity, prepares people to perceive information better. It also improves motivation and attention. And during the learning process, brain cells and neurons begin to form connections with the help of neurotransmitters. So the most important neurotransmitters in psychiatry are the following ones:
So first of all, we have dopamine, and then what we have serotonin and norepinephrine. Now, serotonin is responsible for the body's control over itself, since it is a substance that allows you to control emotions, impulsiveness, et cetera. Dopamine, on the other hand, helps to learn as well as to achieve motivation and pleasure. And then, norepinephrine, is a precursor of adrenaline, and it is responsible for motivation, attention, and wakefulness. Okay?
So when a person suffers from psychiatry problems or when a person has a mental problem or suffers from a mental condition, or from mental health, including anxiety, depression, anger, apathy and so on, which could influence very negatively on their cognitive performance and learning abilities, he or she is often prescribed different drugs, right? So pharmaceuticals, however, usually drugs are just capable of increasing the level of one of those neurotransmitters we just talked about and that's not good because it's just a temporary solution to a problem. And not only that, it only helps you with one of the neurotransmitters, while physical activity helps you with the three of them, right? So it is so much better to do sports than to basically try to take any drugs.
This, by the way, is just a general advice. It doesn't necessarily mean that's going to be your case. You obviously first have to talk to your physician and see what is best for you in your case. Okay, guys, that is it for today. I'm going to be doing another episode on this, on this subject, since I think it's really important and you should really keep it in mind whenever learning anything in general. So, doing sports plays a pretty, pretty important role in learning in general. So anyway, guys, stay tuned for more.
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