It is comparing language learning for children who are monolingual and started learning a language at school with those who have English as an additional language. The third area she will touch on involves the work the project is doing with a number of schools in London and East Anglia to change attitudes to languages. In addition, demonstrating the origins of Irish place names can show that Irish is part of PUL heritage as well.” Professor Ayres-Bennett says: “The Irish language doesn’t have to be associated with sectarianism the aim is to normalise it and show how it is part of everyone’s culture. It has been teaching former paramilitaries and future PUL leaders basic Irish. The MEITS project has been working with two charities in Northern Ireland to enhance understanding between the Catholic and Protestant communities. Language is at the heart of some of the current political problems in Northern Ireland, with Irish tending to be viewed with suspicion by the Protestant-Unionist-Loyalist (PUL) community. “It’s a benefit that is little known, but learning a language is better than any drug currently available for delaying dementia.”Ī second area she will speak about is how languages can bring people together and create greater social cohesion. They help us to stay mentally active a bit longer,” says Professor Ayres-Bennett. “The kind of mental gymnastics that learning a language involves is good for us and for our ageing society. ![]() One experiment conducted as part of the project involved a group who learnt Gaelic intensively for a week and were monitored to see if there was any impact on their cognitive abilities. What is more exciting, says Professor Ayres-Bennett, is that even those who learn a language later in life can enjoy certain cognitive benefits. The first involves health and builds on research which shows that if you are bilingual dementia onset is on average delayed by up to five years compared to people who are monolingual, and that stroke victims who are bilingual recover cognitively twice as well as monolingual ones. Professor Ayres-Bennett will speak about three areas of the research in a talk at the Hay Festival for the Cambridge Series, now in its 10th year. The project, which finishes in 2020, involves around 30 non-academic partners including schools and voluntary groups and has six interlocking research strands which investigate how the insights gained from stepping outside a single language, culture and mode of thought are vital to individuals and societies. We need exciting new reasons to learn languages and to demonstrate the value of speaking more than one language.” “There is a sense that modern languages are in crisis,” says Professor Ayres-Bennett, “and that traditional motivations to get people studying languages are not working. The motivation for the project comes from an awareness that language learning in the UK is in a very difficult state. The MEITS project (Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies) is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Open World Research Initiative and seeks to transform the health of the discipline of Modern Languages in the UK, attitudes towards multilingualism and language policy at home and abroad. Here are three reasons multilingual employees can gain the upper hand in their professional lives.Is monolingualism harming us, both as individuals and as a society? Wendy Ayres-Bennett, Professor of French Philology and Linguistics, is leading a major interdisciplinary research project which looks at the value of languages for everything from health and well-being to social cohesion, diplomacy and conflict resolution. When documents, such as contracts, product manuals, or websites need to be translated into foreign languages, we suggest you hire a multilingual translator.īecause monolingual employees are conversing only with the English-fluent, or via machines, lose the essential human touch and can’t learn or work as effectively as those communicating easily with native speakers and translating documents. ![]() Many of today’s multicultural, multinational corporations have speakers of dozens of global languages on staff. ![]() In the era of globalization when various businesses are moving into global markets, the skill to speak more than one language has become an important asset in the workplace. (Even knowing a few polite phrases in many languages can change the tenor in a room.) Language matters for appreciating cultures, connecting and developing relationships around the world. Certified Translation Services Spanish-English.Press And Editorial Translation Services.
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