- Reflect on the readings. How does this knowledge help you shape your language learning process?
In How the Brain Handles Language, author Crystal suggests that our brains are divided into two hemispheres, and is further stratified so that each compartment could specialize in mental functions. Cerebral dominance thus is studied so that we can understand where in our brain outside stimuli are processed; the processing of a function in each hemisphere is known as lateralization. Therefore, with regards to right-handed people, language processing is dominant in the left hemisphere. In neurolinguistic processing, moreover, people conceptualize the meaning of the following communication they produce. This conceptualization, it is averred, influences the semantic and syntactic structure of language. The latter process marries a phonological representation, and thus we create syllables and other features of language. Lastly, the author presents her readers with a concept: proprioceptive feedback. This states that humans are continuously monitoring their speech from the person's senses. On an individual level, I am not sure how this reading can help the common language learner. However, if I were to extrapolate this article's evidence, I bet scientists within this field could come up with a model on how best people absorb language based on these factors, and thus could synthesize them and solidify a language-learning model.
In How We Mean, the same author argues that different languages conceptualize the same objective phenomena that is universal to mankind, and thus influences our outlook on any given nature of the same object. However, this concept is also one of reinforcement: reality could be subjective, and, therefore, humans try to convey this reality using language as a medium. The author's concept could help me to discern differences among Hebrew and English representations of reality, and thus will give me a better understanding on how the two nationals view the world.
In How We Analyze meaning, the same author contends that from a language's structural patterns, we can discern how the human brain analyzes the world in which we live. One feature within a language's structure that we can learn from is called 'collocation.' The latter defines the way in which lexemes occur in sequences. Every lexeme has collocations, but there is a difference in the sentence's predictability. This is where this concept could help my language learning process. The more I listen and participate in Hebrew, the better I will be able to grasp the language's structure.
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