Briefly - issue #2

Language Learning Makes You Better  ---  A decade ago, psychology Professor Boaz Keysar of the University of Chicago discovered what has become known as the “foreign language effect”, the object of considerable study and verification since. Keysar's original intuition – as a native Hebrew speaker living and working in English – was to test bilingualism for an impact on moral reasoning, based on his own experience of a richer resonance of ideas in his native tongue. Recounting his discovery recently to The Guardian (17 September, 2023), Keysar tells how at first he didn't believe the data, so strong was the difference in clarity of moral reasoning between English-only speakers and those who also spoke Spanish, based on a standard psychology experiment testing same. Since then Keysar and others have explored this effect further, finding that it works universally to produce clearer reasoning and sounder judgement in many areas of life, without regard to characteristics of one language or another. Memories are recalled more clearly and false ones identified as such; traumatic events are retold in therapy with less stress in a foreign language; risk and uncertainty are more clearly assessed; others' points of view are heard and egotism damped; and reasoning is less swayed by presentation, or sunk costs, all when bilinguals think in their second language. Enough reasons to stop canceling language programs in universities?

IFE Field Study and Internship Comes to Marseille  ---  France is often explained as the place where northern Europe and southern Europe come together on fertile if not always common ground, benefiting from hybrid stimulation. IFE teaches that opportunities for inter-cultural engagement are found in and around all of us. Transatlantic exchange of course, but also between Paris and the rest of France (IFE Paris), between the so-called center and peripheries that are really centers (IFE Strasbourg), between regional and national cultures (IFE Asturias). Soon, applying its Field Study and Internship method, IFE will be providing access to  France-on-the-Mediterranean and the Mediterranean in France, setting up shop in one of the world's great, millenia-old urban mosaics, Marseille. And a world port a couple thousand years before the word 'globalization'. The Marseilles Field Study and Internship Program will  open in 2025. Inquiries are welcome, at  info@ife-edu.eu.