Maintaining and Supporting Seniors' Wellbeing through Foreign Language Learning: Psycholinguistics of Second Language Acquisition in Older Age

Enhancing Foreign Language Learning Approaches to Promote Healthy Aging: A Systematic Review

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the best approaches to teaching a foreign language to older people to help them achieve the desired results and explore their benefits. This review strictly follows the PRISMA methodology for systematic reviews and meta-analyses to identify the core experimental studies that deal with the topic of foreign language learning approaches among the older generations. Altogether eight studies detected were included in the systematic review. The available sources were found in Web of Science and Scopus. The findings indicate that foreign language learning can promote seniors' welfare and successful aging despite their learning outcomes, which means that the key benefit for third-age foreign language learners while learning a foreign language is not the achieved proficiency level, but the feeling of subjective satisfaction. This can be a good incentive to achieve better learning outcomes, provided that learners have been offered a pleasant and safe learning environment, using suitable learning approaches during which they can build on their acquired knowledge and experience, as well as discuss the topics they are interested in. Thus, foreign language teachers play an important part in seniors' educational process because their teaching methods and materials when adapted to the elderly's educational needs can have a positive impact on the maintenance and possibly, enhancement of the older people's cognitive functions and on the improvement of their mental activity, which consequently maintains their healthy aging.

Psychological Impact of Languages on the Human Mind: Research on the Contribution of Psycholinguistics Approach to Teaching and Learning English

Language is one of the essential elements of communication. Learning some common language can help people overcome language barriers between people from different countries. English is one of the common languages and it helps individuals adapt to the modern world. Learning the English language is beneficial through teaching methods developed based on Psycholinguistics principles. Four languages are taught by the approach of psycholinguistics that are (to listen, to read, to write and to speak).Psycholinguistics is the integration of psychology (the study of the mind) and linguistics (the study of language). Hence, Psycholinguistics is the study of mind and language. It investigates the procedure taking place in the brain while the perception and creation of language. It studies the psychological impact of languages on the human mind. Recent research focuses on Psycholinguistics theories and talks over the significant impact of psycholinguistics techniques in English Language studying and training. Psycholinguistic studies are based on various ways of responding in a fundamental way and are based on evidence. This study contributes to our understanding of the importance of psychological approaches in teaching and learning English.

Psychosocial Rehabilitation Through Intervention by Second Language Acquisition in Older Adults

The paper deals with a possibility of foreign language learning (FLL) intervention in older adults as a psychosocial rehabilitation method to improve the quality of life (QoL) in this age segment, i.e. the people who are over 55 years. FLL has been researched as a successful tool to maintain or even enhance cognitive functions in older age along with other intentional activities, such as engagement in any physical activity. FLL cannot dramatically improve memory and cognitive deterioration of older adults, however, it can improve QoL by increasing subjective happiness that is connected to improved wellbeing. The research was conducted in two groups of seniors who are engaged in FLL, specifically in the Czech Republic and Poland. The major premise of the research was based on the positive psychology concept, i.e., the subjective happiness leads to improved levels of QoL. Both groups consisted of about a hundred respondents whose opinions were researched by an online questionnaire. The major focus of this questionnaire was to evaluate the level of subjective happiness and then compare the results obtained from the respondents from these two geographically different regions. The findings clearly showed that those who had engaged in FLL had reached high levels of subjective happiness, therefore, their subjective wellbeing could be improved. These results might be important for psychosocial rehabilitation practices because they can create a framework for further non-pharmacological intervention to maintain healthy aging. FLL can thus be a very efficient tool for any psychosocial rehabilitation in older healthy adults who do not suffer from any cognitive pathological development but who are just experiencing negative side effects of natural aging process. The research into this topic is very scarce, and therefore, this paper could be an inspiration for further and larger-scale research.

A Comparative Psycholinguistic Study on the Subjective Feelings of Well-Being Outcomes of Foreign Language Learning in Older Adults From the Czech Republic and Poland

Positive psychology has recently seen unprecedented rise and has reached vast achievements in the area of quality of life (QoL) improvement. The purpose of this study is to show that there are different aspects of well-being that make healthy older people motivated to learn a foreign language at a later age. The research was conducted in the Czech Republic and Poland in two groups of learners aged 55 years and more. The experimental group consisted of 105 Czech respondents who were targeted with an online questionnaire with the aim to determine the level of FLL outcomes connected to QoL in healthy older adults in their L2 acquisition. The second experimental group (n = 100) was established of Polish seniors who attended similar language courses. The findings of the research clearly show that FLL has an irreplaceable role as one of several non-pharmacological strategies utilized to improve the aging process and reduce drawbacks of aging. The results indicate that seniors' overall satisfaction and subjective feelings of well-being are enormously high when attending foreign language classes at older age. FLL, therefore, creates an environment that can enhance QoL of older adults that can be supplemented by other means such as well-balanced diet, other social activities, sport and physical activity, music, or computer games. All these intervention methods can significantly improve QoL of older adults and the parties engaged and/or responsible for taking care of older generation should take it into serious consideration.