Why Do Some People Learn A Foreign Language So Easily Whereas Others Find It So Difficult?
J. Rodegheri

 

WHY DO SOME PEOPLE LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE SO EASILY WHEREAS OTHERS FIND IT SO DIFFICULT?

Learning a foreign language may be quite easy for anyone. What’s not so easy is answering the question above.
Before we set off on a search for the answer, it’s vital we understand a little about the functioning of the human brain. First let’s take a quick look at what’s considered by many as the most important thing for any kind of knowledge: the memory.

MEMORY
You have surely, either on tv documentaries or in the papers, heard about people suffering from amnesia.
So, let’s suppose someone who’s suffering from a severe case of amnesia caused by some kind of brain damage (not psychological). Someone who, due to some kind of physical trauma, can’t even remember his own name, and has had even his closest relatives’ faces “deleted” from his memory.
Try and imagine what would happen to this person if he had, standing right in front of him, his very sister and someone asked him “Who is this girl?”... Surely you, who has any kind of knowledge about amnesia, will guess as being a plausible answer from this person: “I don’t know. I can’t remember”.
Indeed, that’s a quite possible anwer, but this takes us to a crucial point for the understanding of the human brain: How would it be possible for this person to make the sentence “I can’t remember”, not being this same person able of remembering his own sister? Rephrasing that: How could someone forget a person he had known all his life, even before he were able of speaking his own language, and still be able of remembering his language, with all its words and “rules” (being thus able of formulating the sentence “I can’t remember”)?
Due to psychological reasons?... Well, remember that, in this example, as in many cases, we’re talking about brain damage, not a psychological trauma. A damage in the physical area of the brain, where memory is located, is what keeps this person from remembering his own sister.
So, is he able of remembering the words for this sentence just because this is such an easy sentence?... In cases like this, people are able of constructing not only the easiest sentences but also the most complex ones. In a case like this, he could just as well have answered “I’m sorry, ma’am, I really can’t remember anything!”
“But how...” - someone more exasperated would say - “how is it he can remember how to use “anything” correctly and cannot remember his own mother??? What an ungrateful son...!”
But don’t be so exasperated, this is not a situation of a greater love for his language than for his parents, as one might think.

COMMUNICATION MEMORY
So it happens the knowledge of a language is not “recorded” in the same memory other data are (like one’s address, the boss’s name, the chinese restaurant phone number, how many days September has etc). Language is “recorded” in a part of the brain which is responsible solely for our ability of communication. So, it’s perfectly possible someone may lose his “conventional memory” (names, numbers, dates, parties, faces etc) but still retain his “language memory”.
This special memory has some characteristics which are essential for its specialized functioning: Compared to the convencional memory, it has an incomparably greater capacity for storing data and an incomparably faster “access” ability. (The data placed in the “conventional memory” will only go from the “temporary storage area” to the more permanent one if they’re used “to the limit”, or in some special circunstances, whereas the data which are placed in the “language memory” may, quite easily, become more permanent with very little usage).

MEMORY AND LEARNING
Knowing it all, one can’t help asking: “Well, if this area of the brain, which is responsible for the language, is so efficient, so how come so many people just can’t learn a foreign language, no matter how hard they try??”
So it happens that, while some people “store” most of the words from the foreign language they’re learning in the “language memory”, others “store” most of these same words in the “conventional memory”, which doesn’t have either the capacity nor the speed for the functioning of speech.
No doubt this is the main reason why, many times, there are two people in a same class, who are equally interested in learning, using the same method and with similar educational background, who get to results so far apart from each other.
This doesn’t mean one is more inteligent than the other; it’s just that, for some reason, each one is using a different area of his brain for storing all the data relative to the new language.
In order to understand it better, imagine that someone, Mr. YY, for example, is in a foreign language class, working mainly with a memory which is so inadequate for the “storage” of a language (such as the “conventional memory”) - he will evidently learn much, much slower than his classmate, who is, in a natural way, using the “language memory”.
“But why does it happen? How could he “turn on” this area of his brain during a foreign language class?”, someone may ask me...
The answer to questions like this is: The whole idea is not how he can “turn on” this area, but how to “keep from turning it off” during a foreign language class.
Nobody can directly command his brain to save a new piece of information in this or that specific area. The choice - which is made in the subconscious - depends entirely on HOW the new information is received (perceived) by the person. People who make use of the “language memory” during a foreign language class, do it in a natural way, without being conscious of that. The data go to the language area in the brain simply because these people, in a natural way, “view” the new language as being a language.
It sounds too obvious, doesn’t it?
But, on the other hand, don’t forget that it’s also evident that if we deal with a new word the same way we’d deal with a new phone number we get, or a new computer password, we’ll be only making sure this word is stored in the “conventional memory”, not in the “language memory”.
In short, “hammering it into your brain” and all those “memorizing techniques” will only make the new data related to the new language be stored in the conventional memory, not in the language memory. “Why, at least it’s something already”, someone might say... But it’s not true. You can’t convince your brain that all the data you’re learning is not part of a language (that’s what happens when you use those “memorizing techniques”) and then just expect it will later take all these data from the “conventional memory” and transfer them to the “language memory”. Believe me, it’s not easy at all, and even if you could manage that, it will always be much easier placing the data in the communication area of your brain from the beginning!

DIFFERENT AREAS OF THE BRAIN
Emphasizing what was said above: When you want to learn something new, it’s not a matter of “ordering” your brain to use this or that area, but simply letting it “allow” the right area of your brain to take care, in a natural way, of the task you want to accomplish.
The famous book “Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain”, by Betty Edwards, uses this same concept to “make” any person be able to draw with dexterity. Although, in this book, the author considers only the differences between the right side and the left side of the brain (which’s enough for her purposes there), it is well known to Science that the human brain has a great number of specialized areas.
The picture above shows some of these areas.


LOGIC X COGNITION
As it was mentioned above, the “choice” of which part of the brain will be in charge of each specific task is made in the subconscious, and it depends entirely on how the person regards the task.
Since nowadays logical thinking and memory are the most esteemed and, probably, the most important “gifts” for most of the occupations, people tend to, unfortunately, “see” any new task as being a mere exercise for logic and memory. The consequence is that the easiest tasks, which are inherent, even intuitive, to any human being, becomes a true nightmare for the adults of the great cities - like learning how to swim, dance, ride a bycicle and so on. The more the person tries to use the good old logic and the “faithful” memory when trying to learn those skills, the longer he/she will take to make any progress and the more unsteady the results will be.
Speaking a language may be included in the list above, since there’s nothing more natural and even intuitive for the human kind.
Yep, any human being is able of speaking a language! Just for that purpose we all have a huge area of our brains in charge -exclusively- of that activity. And this area IS NOT the same memory where you keep that Chinese restaurant’s phone number!

WORKING WITH THE WRONG AREA
But, unfortunately, that’s where a great hindrance comes out in the path of Mr. YY’s learning (remember him from our example above?): Exactly because he’s so much used to using memory and logic for learning anything which’s important (for his job), it seems extremely easy for him to just “memorize” the words he wishes to learn (i.e. simply throw them into the “conventional memory”). After taking several “improve-your-memory” courses, it seems so easy for him to place any kind of data in his memory, so he “fills” his conventional memory with words and grammar rules. And he believes it will be just as easy accessing it all whenever he needs; and worse still, he believes it will be equally easy keeping it all in there.
But unfortunately for our “hero”, that’s not how “conventional memory” works; and the more he “learns”, the more he forgets. And even the words he does remember, most of them are only remembered after some mental effort, and not necessarily at the moment he mostly needs them. Why is it so? It’s due to the “access time” – don’t forget that the “conventional memory” is far slower than the “language memory”. This is what keeps any person who tries to learn the words of a new language by sheer repetition from ever being able of taking part in a common-place conversation, either talking or even just listening.
And soon, Mr. YY may start considering himself to be an idiot, for being utterly unable of getting any fluency in a foreign language, no matter how hard he tries. And may even start using the famous excuse that he just doesn’t have a gift for learning languages (Nothing could be farther from the truth! For, as you know, he has a huge area in his brain reserved solely for that function; and it is working perfectly, as his ability of speaking English will prove).


USING THE RIGHT AREA
Of course, even in a language course which is not adequate for dealing with problems such as Mr. YY’s, there are always some people who do learn a new language using mainly the communication area of their brains. These people do it in a natural way. In fact, they don’t usually notice this is happening, and they even believe, many times, that their classmates are just too dumb to follow their pace.
But, as we have seen above, these people have their communication area “activated” during a foreign language class, solely because of the way they “see” what’s being presented.
Differently from their classmates who spend the whole class time thinking of ways of memorizing everything which is shown ( and so they end up activating the “wrong” area in their brains for a foreign language class), those people have a totally different attitude towards the dialogues they listen to or see in their books: they are, in essence, more interested in the situations per se than in the words used to describe these situations. Among many other characteristics: they are much more relaxed during class than their friends; they don’t keep trying to “grab” one at a time each word they listen to in order to check any associations in their mental “data bank”; they truly want to understand the esence of the teacher’s messages, observations and “jokes”, instead of trying to count how many words they don’t know are uttered by him; they don’t keep making a translation of everything they listen or see just to check whether they have “really” understood it etc etc. All of this is what makes their unconscious “notice” that what’s being learnt is a language which, therefore, must be placed in the communication area of the brain.


THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASS
The new methods are elaborated having in view they should help people “develop” this attitude which is more suiable for the “activation” of the language area of the brain during a foreign language class. But the books alone are not enough for accomplishing that goal. The role of the teacher is also essential, as well as supplementary material.
But talking about all this components of a foreign language class would be a task for a whole book, not just an article such as this.
For the time being, I hope that all this information may be of use to you, who wishes to enrol in foreign language classes, or who is already taking classes, but without the results you expected.
Quoting a wise man: “By understanding the problem you are half way from solving it”.

 

 

Copyright © 2000 J. Rodegheri
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"