The Ability to Learn Language is Built In to the Human Brain

In his book,The Language Instinct,Steven Pinker makes the case that,as children,we are programmed to learn a language.Imagine for a moment that you might actually still have the natural ability to learn any language,even if you are an adult.

What might happen if you test the possibility?Have you ever noticed how you sometimes hear words,even when no word was intended?Maybe a noise from a machine sounds like a word.Or it could just be the sound of the wind.Certainly,when someone is speaking in a foreign language, we can often hear sounds that seem to be the same as words in our own language.You could, perhaps,imagine being a small child…hearing all the sounds and words around you…and from that mess of sound,piece-by-piece,discerning the words?Pinker argues that,at least as children, we are wired to hear in that way.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where somebody said something to you, and you didn’t understand, and so you asked the person to repeat it?Then,when they did you realised that you had understand the meanings that people communicate without needing to break phrases into words,at least not consciously.This applies equally in situations where a person is in a place where a foreign language is being spoken.Assuming you have had that experience,did you maybe notice that, somehow,you could at least pick words out from what people were saying?Obviously,there was a lot you couldn’t hook on to, but there were still things that stood out and that you heard clearly as distinct words, and you possibly even remembered them.

What about listening to distorted messages?A phone massage can be very distorted, and we can still understand what is being said.The brain takes the information, filters out the distortion, and makes sense of the whole thing.

Imagine that you are a baby, your brain naturally hears sounds and turns them into words, breaking them up in just the right place.No grounding.Doesn’t know any language.And is able to hear single words picked from a sentence and play them back immediately.A task that computers are only just beginning to come to grips with.

Long Feihu,The Third Ear author, argues that any person can hear any new language and identify the presence of words,knowing where one begins and other ends.Which seems normal and natural.And it is.Except for the fact that when you look at the trace of human speech on an oscilloscope, you can’t see exactly where one word ends and the other begins.And that is why, according to a market research firm, the Kelsey Group,worldwide spending on voice-recognition will reach US$41 billion by the end of 2005.If you’ve ever used a voice-recognition system, you’ll know that they are still a long way away from perfect.Up until today computers can still only get 95 per cent accuracy,and to do that they need very clear input,with very little noise.So more and more money gets invested.

You and I were born with the ability to do this same task,somehow,with no training.If we didn’t have this ability we would not be able to understand somebody speaking in middle of a thunderstorm, or over the noise of traffic,or in a conversation with three other people speaking at the same time.Whether or not we are ‘hard-wired’ to learn language, everyday experience points to the amazing ability that people have to decode language and give it meaning.Any language.Any time.We can’t stop ourselves from hearing words in much of the sound that is around us.Especially when the sound is made by human mouths.

What might happen if you just accept the possibility, for a few moths, that today you have the ability to learn a language just as you did when you were a baby,naturally and easily.Now…what do you think the implication might be?

We have some amazing ability to process and to learn language, and we can’t even stop it.However we accept the myth that language is difficult to learn, so we threw away the chance to master a second language successfully, and we trust the myth deeply with no doubt.We can’t be audacity to believe that we are hard-wired to learn language even more advanced than computer.Now,we need some specific emotional ,practical,and physical strategies and tricks to switch on this function in our brain, and to remove the rust of it.

Thus,we can make use of this ability that when we were babies using to learn a first language once again.And then it won’t be a dream to learn another language easily and effectively in just a few months.