The first reading, How the Brain Handles Language was dense and difficult to understand at some points. However, it was the more interesting reading for me as I have very little background or understanding of the biological function of language learning. The section Neurolinguistic processing was especially fascinating and encouraged me to think more deeply about the individualized nature of language learning. For example, the chapter emphasizes the step-by-step, repetative nature of language learning but fails to take into account the fact that people are suited to different learning styles when talking about the biological process that happens when an individual reads aloud. While the same process is still occurring and the same areas of the brain are 'working,' (i.e. Wernicke's area and Broca's area) I have friends who say that reading aloud does nothing to help their understanding of a text. I wonder what accounts for that? For that reason I don't think language is a purely biological phenomenon though.
In the other readings I had a difficult time understanding the differences between the sense and reference of words, so I'm looking forward to talking about both in class. However, the section Sense realtion, I think will be very helpful in my ASL journey. Similar to the example used earlier in the second reading, learning the root word WALK, 'unlocks' the variants WALKING, WALKED, and WALKS. This is slightly true in ASL too, as many signs are variants of the sign of a particular letter in the alpahabet. For example, once I learned the sign for 'a' I 'unlocked' the signs for aunt, apple, tomorrow, and yesterday too.
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