On Tuesday, 22nd July, from 9:00 to 12:30, there will be a very special event at Senac Consolação in São Paulo, which is part of the Disal Reading Seminar – Good readers make good learners Campaign. This Helbling / Disal event is free-of-charge and full details and registration can be found on the Disal website – www.disal.com.br.
There will be three separate talks, given by three different speakers. I will be opening the event with a talk entitled – Boost your brain with readers! I would like to offer you here a very brief introduction to what I’m going to present – a ‘teaser’ to hopefully stimulate your interest and encourage you to participate in this event.
My talk will focus on the use of graded readers, and offer a wide selection of practical, motivating and easy-to-use, brain-boosting activities designed to engage learners, help them learn more effectively and enhance their motivation and cognitive abilities.
This talk is partly based on some current research findings from neuroscience and language acquisition. For example, there is now substantial neurobiological evidence that studying another language activates and energizes the brain stem, fine-tunes the attention span and enhances memory. It also improves cognitive functions and abilities generally, has a positive effect on the brain at any age and can even delay dementia.
Innovative, interdisciplinary research is also being undertaken to explore the relationship between reading and cognitive processes. New research in literary neuroscience using MRI scans and eye tracking indicates that reading for pleasure enhances the cognitive processes in general. As one researcher said, reading for pleasure “provides a truly valuable exercise of people’s brains.”
Researchers have also discovered that different reading activities stimulate different parts of brain. When subjects read for pleasure, the scanner showed a rush of blood to a certain part of the brain, but when they were later asked to read to analyze, the blood flow increased dramatically to a different part of the same brains. In other words, extensive reading for pleasure and intensive reading to analyze seem to be two different processes.
Jack Scholes has a first degree in Modern Languages from Liverpool University, a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education and EFL from London University, and he is also a Licensed Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. He has over 40 years experience in ELT in many countries around the world and is now a freelance teacher trainer, and author of 13 books including The Coconut Seller in the Helbling Readers Series.
