I found these readings really interesting and they brought up a lot of new ideas that I hadn’t even considered. For example, the analysis of the slip of the tongue and how it actually tells us a lot about how the brain works. In some ways they aren’t random at all and actually are logical in that it is more likely for someone to say bar in the place of car rather than har. It was also interesting to see which parts of the brain controls different actions, but that there are many factors that affect things like speech production that many areas of the brain are involved. The Broca’s area accounts for production of speech while Wernicke's area is where it is interpreted. These are all subconscious activities so it is interesting but not applicable to my language learning plan.
In the other reading I saw that something I noticed in my language learning was confirmed. That is the dichotomy between vocabulary and other factors such as intonation and especially grammar. Intonation also has a cultural aspect to it, seen in different subcultures and age groups. For example, this weekend my friend told my other friend “You’re so stupid!” and then she continued to say, “By stupid I mean incredulous.” The difference between reading and listening is that. Intonation brings a whole other aspect into meaning.
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