Hi, my name is Simon. I’m Chinese, but I live in England. I speak English very well, but I sometimes make mistakes! Yesterday we went on a school visit to a farm. I was very   happy. I said I wanted to see a ship. Everyone looked surprised(惊讶的) and I didn’t know why. My teacher said, “Simon, we are going to go to a farm, not to a lake or the sea. There are no ships at the farm.” Then I knew my mistake.I wanted to say “sheep”, the animal that says, “baa…,not “ship”, a big boat on the water! It was very funny. My friends laughed. Then we all said the words: “sheep, ship”!

If English means endless new words, difficult rules and sometimes strange sound, you are wrong. Haven’t you noticed that you have become smarter since you started to learn a language?

According to a new study by a British university, learning a second language can lead to an improvement in your brain power. Researchers found that learning other languages changes grey matter. This is the area of the brain which processes (处理) information. It is similar to the way that doing lots of exercise helps build muscles (肌肉).

The study also found the younger people learn a second language, the greater the effect is. A team led by Dr. Andrea Mechelli, from University College London, took a group of Britons who only spoke English. They were compared with a group of “early bilinguals” the people who had learned a second language before the age of five, as well as a number of later learners.

Scans showed that grey matter density (密度) in the brain was greater in bilinguals than in people without a second language. But the longer a person waited before mastering a new language, the smaller difference.

“Our findings suggest that the structure of the brain is changed by the experience of learning a second language,” said the scientists.

It means that the change itself adds up the ability to learn.

Professor Jones of the University of Wales has researched the link between bilingualism and math skills. “Having two languages gives you two windows on the world and makes the brain more flexible (灵活的),” he said. “You are actually going beyond language and can understand different ideas better.”

The findings were matched in a study of native Italian speakers who had learned English as a second language between the ages of two and thirty-four. Reading, writing, and comprehension were all tested. The results showed that the younger they started to learn, the better. “Studying a language means you get an entrance (入口) to another world,” explained the scientists.

In 1972, Richard Sears, a young American began learning Chinese because of his interest in traditional Chinese culture.

Drawn to the ancient language, he went to China to study Chinese in the 1990s.

In 1994, Richard Sears decided to put the ancient Chinese characters online. Then, in 2002, he did it. That is the beginning of the Chinese Etymology(汉字字源)website. "My website did not get much attention for the next few years. Until one day in 2011, it suddenly got a lot of attention.

I got a few thousand emails, and a few million visitors and people started calling me 'Uncle Hanzi', " Sears said with a smile. Hanzi means Chinese characters. He has put more than 96, 000 ancient Chinese characters onto the website. "When I study each character, I wonder what the ancient Chinese thought, " said Sears.

After visiting many Chinese cities, Sears learned more about China and ancient Chinese culture, He said when he came to China in the last century, few Chinese could speak good English "However, you can hear English in many places in China now. Chinese language and culture were mysterious and not known by people in most countries then, but now, more and more people in the world are learning Chinese, even Chinese history, traditional Chinese medicine and so on, "Sears added.

At present, the 70-year-old American has made his home in China. "When I die, I hope my website will live on, and I'm planning to write a book about my research. This will be my gift to China, " he said.