D. Crystal mentioned a really interesting notion about the collocation in the reading "How we mean and how we analyze meaning". Collocation refers to the predictable way that the vocabularies work together. For example, the word "sparkling" is always followed by "water" or "wine", or "blood" is always followed by "hair". For me, collocation has pros and cons. It may create a barricade for people who are trying to learn a foreign language since it varies among different languages. People may feel awkward at first since they need to learn the new collocations in a foreign language, which are different from their mother tongue. For example, in English, people say "play basketball". However, in Chinese, we say 打篮球, which means " hit basketball". However, on the other hand, once ones get used to the collocation, it would be convenient for them to speak like a native speaker since ones just need to remember the most authentic collocation.
In D. Crystal's another reading "how the brain handles the language", the most important parts for speech production and comprehension are Wernicke’s area, Broca’s area, and auditory cortex. However, there are other regions which are also important for communications. It is arbitrary to attribute the functions of communication and information process to a single area. Some complicated activities always involve collaborative work of different brain areas.
From my perspective, language learning is not a purely biological process. Besides constructing sentences and pronouncing the words, it is also important to embody the sentences with meaning. It requires people to know the culture behind the new language and even the lifestyle of local people who speak the new foreign language. If ones could not make other people understand what they are saying, the language is just a bootless tool. After the language is the carrier of different thoughts and ideas and it is of equal importance for the sender to express and for the receiver to understand.
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