If you take apart the brain, it is hard to distinguish one part from the other. Looking at the cerebrum, cerebellum, or brain stem separately, almost everything in each structure looks completely uniform and the same. Yet every part of each of these structures is responsible for the very way we function in our daily lives. This, of course, includes something as complex and important as language.
The concept of cerebral localization is a very important one and the most fascinating to me. Despite everything looking the same in the cerebrum to the naked human eye, if just a certain specific part of the it is damaged, the entirety of a certain system of functioning in your brain runs the risk of falling apart. In the case of language ability, this includes Broca’s area (responsible for the ability to speak) and Wernicke’s area (responsible for ability to comprehend speech), and other locations as stated in the reading. The articles also go into hemisphere dominance for language. I am right-handed so, according to the article, my left hemisphere is most likely dominant for language. It is interesting reading that left-handed individuals also have a high occurrence of left hemisphere dominance for language when that challenges the general way the body is connected to the brain, or that they even have mixed dominance. Reading the articles and being reminded of these areas inspires me to read about which of Brodmann’s 52 areas of the brain contribute to the various aspects of our language comprehension and production. Perhaps it will help me in my language journey!
The articles also spoke in length about what meaning is and how we gather it. They emphasized the importance of reading or listening to sentences in a language rather than just opening up a vocabulary book or dictionary and reading words without any context. Sentences give context to words and allow their meanings to be understood. An example of this, as the articles bring up, is collocations, certain terms or phrases each language uses to describe something that does not mean the literal word. These are very important to truly becoming a native of a language, rather than using awkward robotic words that have incorrect context in a language. I found the example of smoking using the same verb for drinking in Japanese really helpful! I experienced this myself when I was taking Japanese.
What the readings showed me, mostly the second and third ones, is how important immersion is in gathering meaning. Me simply writing out vocabulary over and over again will not get me to memorize the word well enough or using the language smoothly. I may very easily not use the word correctly because I won’t understand the collocations of a language if I do not simply just hear what native speakers use. This really inspires me to try and listen to music in Turkish in my free time, as well as try and watch some Turkish shows if I ever get the chance to. The foreign translated TV service our University has seems really cool and useful and definitely a means for me to do this as well!
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