Cognitive Psychology Blog Post 3
Lesson 11: Language
Flemish and Walloon – Vlaams/Français
Language is vital – it is the only way we can communicate with others, and there are many thousands of languages in the world that we can use for communication (Penn State Lesson 11: Language: Introduction; Lesson 11: Language: Introduction to language; Goldstein 298-299). Without the ability to use language, our ability to develop as a species would likely have been in serious doubt (Penn State Lesson 11: Language: Introduction to language; Goldstein 298-299).
My own relationship with language is personal, intricate, and life-long. I was born in Belgium and spent my childhood there with my parents, who had experienced living in Belgium twice prior to my birth. Belgium has three official languages. Whilst we all have English as our mother-tongue, we can also speak French (Walloon) and Dutch (Flemish) and my Father can speak some German. However, you have to practice otherwise you can get rusty!
I remember my Mother attending a ‘Commune’ language school eight hours per week for years and years – learning how to speak and write Dutch, French, and German (both my parents lived and worked in Belgium for seventeen years). When we lived in our house in a Dutch-speaking commune at weekends, we had to speak Dutch when needing to do identity card business etc. in the “Gemeentehuis” or town hall, because employees refused to speak English in this official office. During the week, when at our home in a French “Commune”, we had to speak French in that town hall. My Mum found the Dutch language challenging – as I know from my own experience, Dutch has a reputation for being illogical (although it is very close to German). French and German were easier for my parents because both she and my Father had studied these two languages from the age of eleven in school in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, my Mother told me that the Scots with their Scottish accent could pronounce the Dutch “guttural” words much more easily than the English. My Mother’s experience with new languages has a scientific basis in cognitive psychology – learning to speak a new language becomes more complicated with age (Penn State Lesson 11: Language: Speech Perception).
Children who are eight years of age or younger tend to pick up new languages more easily than older children, teenagers, and adults (Penn State Lesson 11: Language: Speech Perception). I was consciously exposed to Dutch and French since kindergarten. I studied these languages – with an emphasis on French – at an international school in Belgium throughout my elementary and middle school years, alongside students who had varying cultural backgrounds and who had been exposed to dual languages from birth (many of us were “third-culture kids”). However, English was the dominant language at my school, and I can recall some students learning English as a second language and picking it up easily (Penn State Lesson 11: Language: Speech Perception). In high school, I learned Spanish and resumed my French studies with a personal tutor – a native French speaker from Belgium. I am still fluent in French, and I have been told by my French tutor that I speak the language with a Belgian accent that I have apparently retained from my childhood!
I can relate my own experiences with language to this course. When I was learning Spanish in high school, I had difficulty telling where one word stopped and another started. According to the Penn State notes, speech is continuous, and breaks in words are auditory illusions, yet native speakers of a language can perceive words stopping and starting, while those new to a certain language struggle to distinguish the start and finish of words (Penn State Lesson 11: Language: Speech Perception).
Scientific experiments over the past twenty years have indicated that the structure of both white and gray matter in the brain can continue their plasticity during adulthood. Testing methods have been carried out by trials of a group of adults studying a challenging foreign language, for example, Chinese, and scanning (“… longitudinal diffusion tensor imaging …”) their brains and comparing them to a group of participants who did not learn a foreign language (Rudelson, Schlegel, Tse 2012). Those conducting the trials found that there were significant alterations in white brain matter.
Looking at gray matter changes, a similar experiment to assess gray matter volume has been carried out during a trial period when participants studied a foreign language. Changes in gray matter volume, identified by magnetic resonance images and cognitive testing, showed those who studied the foreign language had increased gray matter afterwards. However, this result was only predictable when tested on post short-term memory tasks.
The above experiments could overturn the long-held theory that “… plastic reorganization …” of the brain is not limited to children alone (Rudelson, Schlegel, Tse 2012).
Works Cited –
Bellander, Martin, et al. “Behavioral correlates of changes in hippocampal gray matter structure during acquisition of foreign vocabulary.” NIH National Library of Medicine: National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Institutes of Health, 1 May 2016, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26477659/. Accessed 19 Nov. 2021.
Goldstein, B. (2015). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (4th ed., pp. 298-299). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
Lesson 11: Language: Creativity of language. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved November 19, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027147
Lesson 11: Language: Introduction. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved November 19, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027145
Lesson 11: Language: Introduction to language. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved November 19, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027146
Lesson 11: Language: Speech perception. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved November 19, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027150
Rudelson, Justin J., et al. “White matter structure changes as adults learn a second language.” NIH National Library of Medicine: National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Institutes of Health, 24 Aug. 2012, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22571459/. Accessed 19 Nov. 2021.
I enjoyed your blog post; as never living outside of the United States, I can not imagine growing up in a place so diverse in languages. I too attempted Spanish in High School and College; my High School Spanish was taught by an Italian native, so that colored her pronunciation, and then in College every year I had a different Spanish teacher from a different part of the world. I was unable to hear “breaks” in the verbal communication part of the class and the practice tapes. I barely remember Spanish after taking it for 6 years. I find it amazing that you’ve retained your French. Thank you for a very informative explanation of language and how we have a harder time the older we get.
Hi! I really enjoyed reading your blog post and hearing about your experience growing up in a multi-lingual environment. I found your discussion about the fact that children learn new languages easier than adults very interesting, and thought the examples you provided of this perfectly emphasized this finding. Your story reminded me of my experience learning foreign languages growing up. When I was very young, my parents enrolled me in French lessons. I was exposed to a lot of French, both through formal lessons but also just through listening to French music with my parents. As a young child, I quickly picked up the language and could speak French conversationally. Unfortunately, after I started elementary school my French exposure faded out. Many years later, in middle school, I was enrolled in French classes again. I excelled in these French classes, likely because of all the exposure I had to French as a child. A few years later, in high school, I decided to take an Arabic course. Arabic was very challenging to me and did not come naturally. I struggled to learn Arabic, and had to work quite hard. As you mentioned, it is significantly harder to learn a foreign language as you get older, and my experience of picking up French quickly as a child, but struggling to learn Arabic as a teenager, further demonstrates this. In an article about why children learn foreign languages easier than adults, Tori Galatro states that, “It’s much easier to learn a language if you’re comfortable making mistakes and sounding foolish, a hurdle that makes most adults extremely anxious” (Galatro, 2018). I often wonder if this is why I excelled at learning French as a child (because I wasn’t afraid to make mistakes) but struggled with Arabic in high school. As a self-conscious high schooler, I was certainly afraid to make mistakes in front of my classmates. I wonder what future foreign language educators can do to help students overcome this hurdle of being afraid to make language mistakes, since students can’t learn without making mistakes!
Galatro, T. (2018, February 24). Why do children learn languages faster than adults? Tessa International School. Retrieved December 5, 2021, from https://tessais.org/children-learn-languages-faster-adults/.