Abstract:

Recently, a lot of issues have been discussed on the joint of several scientific branches. The correlation of neuroscience and education has shown considerable potential in understanding some ways of language learning and developing new methods of language teaching.

If we want to survive, we must understand the actions of others. Moreover, without an understanding of action, social organization is impossible. In the case of humans, there is another ability that depends on observing the actions of others - training. Unlike most species, we can learn by imitation, and this ability is at the heart of human culture. One of the theories of the neurophysiological mechanism of learning lies in the concept of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons were originally found in the area of the monkey's premotor cortex, which were activated both when the monkey performs a certain action, and when it observes another person (monkey or person) performing a similar action. Neurophysiological experiments on humans also show that when people observe an action performed by another person, their motor cortex becomes active, in the absence of any apparent motor activity.

The focus of this paper is to make an experiment to reveal the correlation between mirror neurons and language learning, i.e. how the teacher’s face movements and expressions influence on material acquisition. The English language course involved 30 attending bachelor’s students in the BMSTU (Bauman Moscow State Technical University) Information Technology Department.

The study focused on the following aspects:
(1) uncovering the correlation between mirror neurons and language learning,
(2) selecting the best methods how to improve language learning based on the knowledge appliance of mirror neurons,
(3) assessing the result of the experiment.

The paper analyses the application of given data and shows the further development of the potential of doing research in this cluster.

Keywords:

Mirror neurons, English for specific purposes, imitation learning, language learning.