The readings offered very interesting facts about how language is learned, processed and understood. It helped me to understand some of the underlying phenomenon associated with language learning. However, it did not offer any insights that will help me with my language learning in itself. Knowing which part of the brain processes the corresponding information and learning does not help me to improve this learning since I cannot directly control the different parts of my brain. Though, it is interesting and important to know that meaning is embedded in the context of a sentence when learning a language. Without a whole sentence, a word can have so many different meanings that it is impossible to determine the intended meaning.
I do not think that language is a purely biological phenomenon. It is much easier to learn a language while being in a social context with cultural connections. This enhances learning for many people and gives more touch points to learn the language, particularly colloquial terms and expressions.
The left hemisphere is most important for the production and comprehension of speech in 95% of right-handed people, while left handed-people are not as homogenous in the usage of brain hemispheres for language processing. The temporal lobe contains areas that are important in auditory reception and comprehension of speech. The frontal lobe is responsible for encoding speech.
My only open question is: From your experience, what is the best way to understand collocations in a foreign language?
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