외국어를 잘 하고 싶다고? 그럼 고향 생각을 버려라
외국어 공부에 엄청난 돈과 시간을 투자하지만 진전이 없는 많은 이들에게, 마치 장기 어학 연수처럼 실현하기는 어렵지만 당연하지만 그럴듯하게 들리는 연구 결과가 나왔다.
외국어를 잘 하고 싶으면, 고향 생각을 완전히 버리고 그 나라 사람인 듯이 생각하라.
평소에 영어를 상당히 유창하게 말해왔던 중국인 유학생이 발표 중에 중국인 교수를 보자 갑자기 만다린어가 튀어나왔단다.그 상황에 충격을 받아 심리학자와 연구한 결과, 어릴 때 살아온 문화 환경에서 익힌 사물과 단어의 조합이 그 상황을 연상시키는 상징을 봤을때 무의식적으로 튀어나온다는 말이다.
가령 한국인이 미국인에게 샌드위치 레시피를 주문하면서 이것저것 주문 잘 하다가, 상추를 가리키면서 '상추..."가 먼저 튀어나오게 되는 뭐 그런거? 단순한 어휘력 문제가 아니라 알면서도 우선 순위에서 밀리는 그런 현상이 나타난다는 것이다.
동일한 맥락에서 "난 술 한잔 해야지 영어가 잘 돼!" 뭐 이런 소리들을 잘 하는데...
한국인이 미국인들과 대화할 때는 영어를 꽤 잘하다가, 다른 한국인이 끼는 순간부터 버벅대는 경우도 많다. 그 원인이 결국 이러한 문화적인 암시에서 비롯된 것이다.
어찌보면 당연한 이야기 이기도 하다. 예전부터 영어 잘 하려면 영어로 말하고 듣고 생각하고...영어 집중 교육을 해야 한다는 소리는 항상 나온 소리다. 전국에 널린 영어 캠프들도 다 그런 의도를 실현해 준다고 나온 사업들 아닌가?
하지만 단순히 영어 환경만으로 어려운 점이 있으니...그건 바로 개개인의 마음.
무의식적으로 떠오르는 생각을 어떻게 제어할 지는 모르지만, 아무튼 고향을 생각하면 외국어를 배우는데 방해가 된단다. 그래서 외국가서 외국인 이성에게 확 빠져서 살면 그 나라 말을 잘 배우게 되는지도 모르겠다. 눈앞의 연인만을 보느라 고향이고 친구고 가족이고 다 생각못하게 되니 말이다.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/06/trying-to-learn-a-foreign-langua.html?ref=hp
Trying to Learn a Foreign Language? Avoid Reminders of Home
Something odd happened when Shu Zhang was giving a presentation to her classmates at the Columbia Business School in New York City. Zhang, a Chinese native, spoke fluent English, yet in the middle of her talk, she glanced over at her Chinese professor and suddenly blurted out a word in Mandarin. "I meant to say a transition word like 'however,' but used the Chinese version instead," she says. "It really shocked me."
Shortly afterward, Zhang teamed up with Columbia social psychologist Michael Morris and colleagues to figure out what had happened. In a new study, they show that reminders of one's homeland can hinder the ability to speak a new language. The findings could help explain why cultural immersion is the most effective way to learn a foreign tongue and why immigrants who settle within an ethnic enclave acculturate more slowly than those who surround themselves with friends from their new country.
Previous studies have shown that cultural icons such as landmarks and celebrities act like "magnets of meaning," instantly activating a web of cultural associations in the mind and influencing our judgments and behavior, Morris says. In an earlier study, for example, he asked Chinese Americans to explain what was happening in a photograph of several fish, in which one fish swam slightly ahead of the others. Subjects first shown Chinese symbols, such as the Great Wall or a dragon, interpreted the fish as being chased. But individuals primed with American images of Marilyn Monroe or Superman, in contrast, tended to interpret the outlying fish as leading the others. This internally driven motivation is more typical of individualistic American values, some social psychologists say, whereas the more externally driven explanation of being pursued is more typical of Chinese culture.
To determine whether these cultural icons can also interfere with speaking a second language, Zhang, Morris, and their colleagues recruited male and female Chinese students who had lived in the United States for a less than a year and had them sit opposite a computer monitor that displayed the face of either a Chinese or Caucasian male called "Michael Yee." As microphones recorded their speech, the volunteers conversed with Yee, who spoke to them in English with an American accent about campus life.
Next, the team compared the fluency of the volunteers' speech when they were talking to a Chinese versus a Caucasian face. Although participants reported a more positive experience chatting with the Chinese version of "Michael Yee," they were significantly less fluent, producing 11% fewer words per minute on average, the authors report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It's ironic" that the more comfortable volunteers were with their conversational partner, the less fluent they became, Zhang says. "That's something we did not expect."
To rule out the possibility that the volunteers were speaking more fluently to the Caucasian face on purpose, thus explaining the performance gap, Zhang and colleagues asked the participants to invent a story, such as a boy swimming in the ocean, while simultaneously being exposed to Chinese and American icons rather than faces. Seeing Chinese icons such as the Great Wall also interfered with the volunteers' English fluency, causing a 16% drop in words produced per minute. The icons also made the volunteers 85% more likely to use a literal translation of the Chinese word for an object rather than the English term, Zhang says. Rather than saying "pistachio," for example, volunteers used the Chinese version, "happy nuts."
Understanding how these subtle cultural cues affect language fluency could help employers design better job interviews, Morris says. For example, taking a Japanese job candidate out for sushi, although a well-meaning gesture, might not be the best way to help them shine.
"It's quite striking that these effects were so robust," says Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a developmental psychologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. They show that "we're exquisitely attuned to cultural context," she says, and that "even subtle cues like the ethnicity of the person we're talking to" can affect language processing. The take-home message? "If one wants to acculturate rapidly, don't move to an ethnic enclave neighborhood where you'll be surrounded by people like yourself," Morris says. Sometimes, a familiar face is the last thing you need to see.
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