I found the readings to be very informative and well-written. However, after finishing them, I did have several questions and ideas as to how these articles could apply to my own self-directed language learning experience.
One of the main questions I had concerned the role of the brain in producing speech. The article seemed to focus mainly on the production of verbal speech. Would the same scientific principles apply to nonverbal speech, i.e. ASL? Of course, there are a litany of reasons as to why communication would primarily evolve through the form of verbal language, but I wish the articles would have discussed more forms of “speech” beyond simply verbal for reasons of inclusion. Of course, this all hinges entirely on my uninvestigated claim that nonverbal communication should count as “speech” as well.
It seems to me that the parts of the brain most important for the production and comprehension of speech are the auditory cortex, Wernicke’s area, and Broca’s area. I would love to see studies that track the workings of these parts of the brain over time as one learns a second language and actually generates utterances in this second language. What would happen as the speaker became more fluent in generating utterances based on an incomplete knowledge of this second language? Would the processes differ, neurologically?
I am also interested in the process of conceptualizing and processing meaning. In my Foundations for Early Literacy Class, I learned that a crucial stage for emergent readers is the “pretend reading” stage, in which young children will pretend to read books in order to mimic the broader contours of adults reading to them. Similarly, when babies make cooing sounds, they are mimicking the broader contours of adults generating language directed towards them; as their brains develop, they acquire the skills needed to say words, distinguish phonemes, and generate sentence orders. My question is directed at my own language listening skills. When I was taking Spanish, around my third year, my teacher would frequently put on episodes of Spanish educational television specifically geared towards Spanish learners. Although I was equally as competent, if not better, at reading comprehension, I found it much more difficult than the rest of my peers to comprehend what was being spoken on television. According to my understanding, auditory comprehension seems to come much quicker and more naturally than reading comprehension, at least in terms of children’s language development. Since I wish for my Korean learning experience to benefit my conversational skills, what should I change in terms of my lesson plans in order to stimulate auditory comprehension? Are there certain learning methods that have been proven to improve interpretation more than others?
My final question relates to the phenomena of hyponyms, superordinate terms, synonyms, and the way the brain processes and prepares to use them. One of my biggest problems across the board of all my language learning experiences was my inability to recognize the different meanings of one word. What kind of method would be most useful for naturally imprinting the different meanings of a word (akin to English ‘take’) into one’s language skills? This does not seem to be an area in which flashcards or verbatim memorization should work. Should my sense for the nuances of single words express itself verbally? Through writing exercises?
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