Oral anglais: the brain and languages, how does it work?

The brain and languages, how does it work ?

Hello everybody ! Today, I will enlighten you on how your brain works when you learn a language.

I know this is not really topical subject, but is it not what we are doing right now ?

So, Before I dive in this problem, i have to impart you or remind you for some, how the brain works overall.

The brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate. Its function

is to exert centralized control over the other organs of the body. This organ is divided into lobes

and then into areas etc etc. It’s so boring because we know all of this.

But what we know less is which area is involve in which function?

It is what we will begin to describe: the learning of a languages by the brain.

To explain you how the brain function, i will speak first about the global functionment of the brain. Then i will speak about the learning :  involved structures,  how, and difficulties.

I/ The functioning

First, when we hears speaks, there are two areas of the brain that will be stimulated.

In the first place, it’s the wernicke area that intervenes for the understanding.

At this point, there is no distinction between different languages. These areas serve only to

understand what is heard.

The second part which corresponds to the oral expression is provided by the area of Broca. Unlike

the wernicke area, there is here a compartmentalization with a specific space for each language heard.

As we have seen now, there is different areas with different role. So, it’s possible to stimulate only

one of these two areas. To give you an exemple, we can only stimulate Wernicke, and therefore

understand without knowing how to speak.

To stimulate broca, the only way is to practice.

However, there is an exception for bilingual children. Actually, Broca acts as Wernicke, That is,

without distinction. It is why there is no matters to move between this two languages.

To learn a new language, it doesn’t work like learning a class lesson. In fact, the brain have to

understand that we start a language learning process by receiving signals which will stimulate

Broca and Wernicke.

VIDEO

To give you a better idea about these structures, i will show you a short clip which illustrate consequence of an anaphasia .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBqShvm4QRA handwriting

And now, i will try to explain you how to learn a new language.

II/ Learning

1. The memory in the learning

Memory is very important in this process, different information like grammar, vocabulary etc are memorized and so it is called « mnesic tracks. »

The learning is made in three stages.

The first one is encoding, this step consist in establishment of mnesic tracks.

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