Reflect on the readings. What parts of the brain are most important for the production and comprehension of speech? How do you conceptualize or process meaning? Do these readings bring to mind any questions or motivations that could help promote your foreign-language abilities, retention, and recollection?
Before reading these assigned articles, I never actually thought about how I became able to use and articulate myself in either Chinese or other languages. Take Chinese as an example, words and phrases in Chinese just came natural to me and that is how I have been able to pick them up and use them. Later on, I kind of figured out that sometimes I pick up new phrases or words by observing and learning from others. For example, before coming to the States, I never learned the usage of ‘make’ as an expression of being successful in doing something in textbook. While in college, I often heard people saying, ‘We made it’ and gradually I learned the meaning and usage of this word under particular situations.
In Dr. Crystal. D’s articles, she talked about different parts of human’s brain structure and how each part manage people’s behaviors and emotions. According to her, as I am a right hander, the left hemisphere is dominant for my language activities. Besides just language activities, the left hemisphere is also in charge of general analytical tasks, categorizing, information sequencing and other activities that require rationalization. On the other hand, my right hemisphere of brain is mostly dominant for perception, emotional expression and recognition. Specifically speaking, the Wernicke’s area in our brain plays a significant part in comprehension of speech, while the Broca’s area controls the encoding process of speech. Also, according to the article, some kind of conceptualization of the message received is needed before starting the actual speech production process. Different matters and areas in our brain systems help receive and analyze the meaning of messages we received before we make any forms reactions. Personally, I think it is important to understand the mechanism of how our brain works when we are learning and trying use a foreign language. With that little background knowledge in mind, we could become conscious in ways of optimizing our language learning ability and therefore improve the overall efficiency when studying our target language.
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