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Growing a new head | ||
Tags: Brain | Scientific Research | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| dolly Senior Member United States Joined 5790 days ago 191 posts - 376 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 1 of 9 21 March 2010 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
I purchased this book because I just started learning Italian. I wanted to learn languages to have something new in the experience of reading. Now that I'm reading novels in French (with the help of a dictionary) I wanted to explore a new language. I'm so eager to read Giacomo Leopardi and Giovanni Verga and Primo Levi, and so much more. I was monolingual until the age of 41. Even with all the toil in learning a language, it's fun to experience something new in middle age. And it's kinda weird, whenever I'm switching from one language to another, as if each language has it's own brain.
Brain Research: Implications for Second Language Learning Edited by dollymangatears on 21 March 2010 at 7:51pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 2 of 9 21 March 2010 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
I completely agree with this:
One of the consequences of this is that the notion of "learning styles" is oversold. Yes, he states that "Brains are not all the same. ... educators must make provisions for individual differences in learning styles" but crucially, most talk about learning styles is reductionist -- talking about "visual learners" or "auditory learners" is focusing on "a part", not "a whole". Learning styles have to be more subtle than that. (Incidentally, I think he's overselling learning styles himself. After all, while he says brains aren't the same, he also tells us that they're mostly very very similar....) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6050 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 3 of 9 22 March 2010 at 6:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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I find this is especially true in intellectual debates, or philosophical discussions, which are wholly different experiences than "how long have you been studying Spanish?" type discussions. One quickly finds out how deep your new language goes in your mind.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 9 22 March 2010 at 9:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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I find the idea about growing a new head very funny, but of course it is just a matter of organizing the content of the single one we have got from the start.
Young children are born with a lot of superfluous connections which are weeded out and leave us basically with a limited amount of braincells, which can be reorganized to some degree, but not as freely as in the head of a baby. I have seen somewhere on the internet that some multilingual people use the same areas for all their languages, while others tend to have special areas dedicated to at least their native language versus the rest. It would be nice to have a believable scientific source to confirm or reject this, but let's assume that it is indeed the case. Then it wouldn't be too surprising that different languages had each their own independent profile. However in grown-ups all the 'second' languages would probably be lumped together, and then the neurological explanation would fail - you wouldn't be able to 'grow a new head'. If the assumption is wrong then different languages are basically run by the same brain centres, but on different skill levels. The rationale behind this discussion is that there is a difference between having a hardwired 'brain' for each language and just having a different mindset tied to each one, depending on how it was learnt and for which purposes it is used. Personally I tend to think that all my languages are connected, even though some have deeper roots than others. I think that it is obvious that I have used the languages I already know as models for new ones, and that they become independent entities because I gradually remove the foreign scaffolding and brickwork and replace it with something from the target language. So instead of feeling that I have separate heads I am more inclined to say that I have one head with several faces, like the fourfaced sculptures at Angkor Thom in Cambodia. The discussion about learning styles has of course something to do with the organisation of the languages, but it is not simply the same thing. First, learning methods can differ according to circumstances. In an immersion situation even I might learn a new language less by formal methods and more by unconscious absorption, but my basic mental setup would still be that languages should be learnt be collecting a lot of words and rules and then let genuine texts/audio sources teach me how to use them. The social side of language learning is simply not as important for me as it seems to be for others. This distinction is not tied to specific languages. The thing that differs between them is the extent to which I can study the way I prefer. Edited by Iversen on 22 March 2010 at 9:58am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 9 22 March 2010 at 10:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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Maybe this? It only refers to auditory processing, though.
Funky, 'ecutive functions' 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 9 22 March 2010 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Quote from the latter article:
"This section of the brain — the left inferior frontal sulcus — treats different pronunciations of the same speech sound (such as a ‘d’ sound) the same way." So now phonemes have got a neurophysiological basis 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 9 22 March 2010 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I did a quick websearch on "selective aphasia" (loss of some languages but not others after brain injury or illness) -- I've heard it previously said that this "proves" that native and later-learned languages live in different parts of the brain.
Anyway, I found an interesting blog entry that points to an academic journal case study that seems to confirm the previous evidence, but also sheds some light on potential shared areas between languages. The shared semantic processing interests me greatly, as it provides some support for my views on the usefulness of native language in teaching (use of NL to activate the existing semantic structures rather than attempting to build new TL semantic structures). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 9 22 March 2010 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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But then again...
This guy was injured, and lost some of his Gujarati, but not Malagasay or French. But as his Gujarati recovered he lost some of his Malagasay but not French. He never had any problems with French, which is the odd one out (school language -- the other two were home/community languages). So there's some support, but not unequivocal support, for mainstream thinking here. These things are never clear cut.... Edited by Cainntear on 22 March 2010 at 2:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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