Matrix and language learning

The Practical Linguist / Get your mind in the mood for languages by/from Marshall R. Childs Special to The Daily Yomiuri

Many people believe that human beings have a “critical period” during which they can learn languages with ease, and after which they cannot. The critical period is a matter of scholarly controversy and offers fuel for academic publications. It is a crucial issue for language policy because beliefs about a critical period enter decisions about when and how to introduce a second language in schools.
Last month I stood before my Applied Linguistics class and gave students the accumulated wisdom: If “critical period” means a sharp decline in learning ability, it does not exist.

I cited the proper authorities in the fields of connectionism (the neurology of brain circuitry) and psychological maturation. “There,” I said with an air of finality, “that’s the best modern thinking. There is no sudden end, no critical period. Instead, there is the maturational constraint that language-learning ability declines as language is learned, slowly and steadily.”

Normal consciousness
The explanation has to do with what I will call “normal consciousness.” Most studies of maturational constraints, and all the statistical ones, study people who are in their normal consciousness and not, for example, in altered states of consciousness. Most people who exhibit unusual language-learning ability do so within unusual states of consciousness.

Normal consciousness is what most of us wake up to in the morning. It is usually pretty well set by age 6, and it includes both personal and social ways of interpreting the world in line with local culture and language.

Prof. Michael Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, writing in 1991 about neuronal circuits and the human conscious experience, said: “One does not learn to be conscious! When the brain starts to function, up it comes, just like steam out of a turbine. There is no getting rid of it. The feeling of consciousness is not unlike other seemingly unfathomable feelings like the feeling to survive. It is there.”
We cling to the notion that our normal consciousness is reality. When we think of learning a second language, we imagine that it will occur within the normal consciousness where the first language resides. We teach a second language to older children and adults that way–as something that may be added explicitly to their already-functioning normal consciousness and language ability.

Teaching language in the normal way to people in their normal consciousness has familiar consequences: Most students learn little, although some do learn well enough to pass exams. Statistical results for maturational constraints are inconclusive and hard to interpret. Academicians find plenty of room for scholastic arguments. And teachers of applied linguistics can summarize the overall results as I did to my students.

But if normal consciousness is only a snore away from other, more bizarre mental states, it is reasonable to ask whether some people, under some circumstances, enter mental states that are highly receptive to new languages. In my studies of exceptional language learners, I have found that very often those who are successful have learned ways of modifying or evading normal consciousness without, of course, going crazy.

Having a feel for the language does not mean complete native-speaker accuracy. It does, however, tend to make the learner effective: understanding what is being said and what is going on, and being able to convey subtle ideas and feelings, even with some quirks of expression.

Learners who remain within normal consciousness are condemned to live within maturational constraints. Those who can get outside normal consciousness and into the realm of the target language can succeed.

If you want to succeed change the way you see reality.

Morpheus : How did I beat you…..?

Neo : You…you’re too fast…

Morpheus : Do you _believe_ that my being stronger or faster has anything

to do with my muscles in _this_ place?

Neo just looks at him. Morpheus stares back.

Morpheus : You think that’s _air_ you’re breathing now?


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