One of the most interesting passages from the reading was how it is easy to forget the complexity that is involved in saying something as simple and easy as "How are you? Fine. Thanks." Spitting those words out might take only a few seconds, but how several neurological steps are necessary for this to happen is very fascinating. Another interesting point that was very new to me was that tongue slips are not random because the word containing the slip and the word that influences it are found within the same grammatical construction. Before reading this article, I always thought it was just a random mistake that has no meaning or reason behind it. So this article helped me understand that learning a language engages many different parts of a brain in various ways, and there is almost nothing in language that just occurs coincidentally or for no reason.
What stood out to me the most from the chapter about meaning is that it is important to look at different languages because focusing on just one language is likely to prevent the learner from being open-minded about how there could be several different ways of talking about the world and from understanding the difference between sense and reference. I could relate to the passage that talked about how in English, we don't have separate words to mean "mother's brother" or "father's brother" while Australian language does. Korean also has different terms to refer to different people in the family. So this passage taught me that while my target language is Korean, I should be open-minded about how other languages work so that I have a broader spectrum of understanding the world. Also, this article reminded me of the importance of vocabulary and structure work together to convey meanings. I will be remembering this point as I try to learn more advanced levels of vocabulary in Korean which is my weakness because my breadth of vocabulary in Korean is very limited and rather elementary. So while it is important to learn vocabulary, I will try to do so by using them in context or reading them in context so that I have a better understanding of polysemic words.
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