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4 views

READING

Uploaded by

Verner Ferenc
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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• Read this article about some new brain research and

then read the gapped sentences (9-15) following it.


• Your task is to complete the sentences with one word
only based on what the article says.
• Write the words on the dotted lines as in the example
(0).

WHY SLEEP SHOULD BE EVERY STUDENT’S PRIORITY


It’s hard to overstate the benefits of a night’s rest for human memory, and neuroscientists are
just beginning to understand why.

Jakke Tamminen has plenty of students who do that very studenty thing of staying up all night
right before an exam, in the hope of stuffing in as much knowledge as they can. But “that’s the
worst thing you can do,” the psychology lecturer at the UK’s Royal Holloway University warns
them. He should know. Tamminen is an expert on how sleep affects memory.
In Tamminen’s ongoing research project, participants learn new vocabulary, then stay awake
all night. Tamminen compares their memory of those words after a few nights, and then after a
week. Even after several nights of recovery sleep, there is a substantial difference in how well
they recall those words compared to the control group of participants who didn’t face sleep
deprivation.
“Sleep is really a central part of learning,” he says.
Tamminen’s sleep lab is a sparsely decorated room with a bed and a small
electroencephalography (EEG) machine and monitor above the bed to detect activity in each
research participant’s brain, via electrodes placed on the head. These measure not only activity
in different regions of the brain but also eye movement.
In the control room researchers can see in real time which parts of each volunteer’s brain are
being activated, for how long, and to what extent. It’s easy to tell when a volunteer is in the
rapid eye movement (REM) phase. But more critical to Tamminen’s current research – and to
sleep’s role in language development more generally – is a non-REM phase of deep sleep
known as slow-wave sleep (SWS). This phase is important for forming and retaining memories,
whether of vocabulary, grammar or other knowledge. The interaction of different parts of the
brain is key here. During SWS the hippocampus, which is good at quick learning, is in constant
communication with the neocortex to consolidate knowledge for long term recall. The
neocortex is the part of the brain that is involved in higher-order brain functions. The
hippocampus might initially encode a new word learned earlier that day, but to truly consolidate
that knowledge, to link new information with existing information, to spot patterns and find
connections with other ideas – the neocortical system needs to get involved.
(www.bbc.com)

0) The article is about why sleep is of key importance for _______ .


9) Scientists don’t yet know everything about how sleep affects ________ .
10) In _______ opinion studying through the night before an exam is a bad strategy.
11) The ______ described in the article compares two groups’ ability to remember newly learnt
vocabulary.
12) Those who had a good night’s sleep after learning the words remembered ______ than those
who didn’t.
13) Sleep scientists monitor eye movement as well as the activity of the _______ .
14) The hippocampus is responsible for _______ , short-term learning.
15) It is during the ________ phase that newly learnt knowledge gets consolidated.

0) ....................................................students........................................... 0)
9) ............................................................................................................. 9)
10) ........................................................................................................... 10)
11) ........................................................................................................... 11)
12) ........................................................................................................... 12)
13)............................................................................................................ 13)
14) ........................................................................................................... 14)
15) ........................................................................................................... 15)

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