Usually, alcohol is known to be detrimental towards your health and the safest route would be to consume minimal amounts or not any amount at all. Interestingly, scientific research has demonstrated the pathbreaking discovery of alcohol playing a major role in improving your foreign language skills. So how is alcohol proving to be a benignant player in improving our brains? According to a Condé Nast article by Caitlin Morton, "So why exactly does booze help us with this particular skill? It might seem contradictory, since alcohol impairs cognitive functions like the ability to pay attention and remember facts. But it also lowers our social anxiety and boosts our self-confidence, which helps us when speaking to another person."
As an avid researcher, I was extremely fascinating by this tour de force revelation because it has totally altered my perceptions associated with alcohol consumption. Although, I have known that despite all the negativities associated with alcohol, there is some light at the end of the tunnel for people who consume alcohol. There are always two sides of a coin with both pros and cons. It is remarkable how alcohol can initiate the frontal lobe to work in conjunction with Broca's area and the Wernicke area to bring about a major improvement in foreign language skills. In other words, the recently published scientific research paper in the Journal of Psychopharmacology briefly mentioned by Morton in her article efficiently highlights the abstract evidence pinpointing towards the intricate correlation between the levels of alcohol consumed with the strong command of any foreign language.
A perfect way to test this scientific claim would be to compare a person speaking a foreign language in the sober state with a person who is intoxicated. As a matter of fact, such comparative analysis was strategically performed by researchers from the University of Liverpool, Maastricht University, and King's College London who experimented upon 50 German speakers. The intriguing part is that these 50 German speakers were told to speak Dutch and some were given a bit of alcohol to drink. While performing this exquisite research, it was further proven that the speakers who were a bit drunk spoke more eloquently and fluently as opposed to the sober individuals. Thus, shedding an enormous amount of light into the scientific theory showcasing the close-knitted relationship between intoxication and cognitive grasp of a foreign language. It is extremely incredible how modern science is constantly expanding its horizons and elaborately educating us about the ways of the world!
Alcohol consumption is a tremendous part of American culture and has been with us for decades but not many of us were aware of the fact that it can be closely tied to our cognitive abilities of learning and speaking a foreign language. No wonder why a bottle of champagne is a part of global celebration which binds all of us via the elegant usage of language. Moreover, Morton further writes, "According to a new study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, it's not all in our heads—alcohol really does improve our foreign language skills." Cheers to this sensational feat by brilliant scientific researchers!
