Children learn their first language at the time that they are exploring the world around them and learning about their own bodies and self. So does it make it easier to learn a new language when you employ your body along with your brain to the task? At the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive  and Brain Sciences in Germany a new research project shows that when you learn a new language you do it better if you use your whole body to learn it.

Italian linguist Manuela Macedonia and fellow researcher Thomas Knosche have conducted an interesting scientific research into the new learning technique. They devised a new artificial language called Vimmi and taught it to 20 test subjects. Besides conventional text and audio methods they included teaching movements of the body accompanying each word.

Words that had specific physical meanings such as bread or cutting were easily assimilated with the actions, but what was surprising to the researchers was that words with more abstract connotations such as actually or so what, which have no obvious gestures but carried body gestures in Vimmi were also remembered with ease due to the body gestures. An interesting language study for a science project.