Brain Mechanisms in Early Language

¶ … Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition

Patricia K. Kuhl's 2010 article entitled "Brain Mechanisms in Early Language Acquisition" provides an interest glimpse at the cognitive processes and neurological functioning of the brain which promote the learning of a language in early childhood. She explains how recent leaps in technology have allowed researches an inside glimpse into the workings of the brain in order to try to better understand how children naturally learn their native languages. Kuhl (2010) presents the idea that the brain is most effective at breaking languages down to the phonetic level, which can be seen in neurological research even in the youngest of children. Thus, Kuhl posits that phonetic elements are some of the strongest vehicles for teaching language acquisition, because this is the very same strategy that the brain naturally chooses earlier on. Kuhl asserts that this phonetic strategy is facilitated and nurtured through social interactions as well. The author also suggests that this importance placed on phonetic structures continues to be the main strategy the brain uses as the child continues to grow and evolves ever more complicated knowledge of language. She provides the example of school aged children learning to read using very similar neurological processes as when they were younger toddlers learning how to speak the native language of their parents. Having worked with children in learning both English grammar and a second language, I see how this would work. Phonetic strategies are crucial for children learning both linguistic and reading abilities.

Thus, this article has several implications to how language should be taught within a classroom. My teaching practice could best learn by imitating the natural strategies of the brain to acquire new language skills. Essentially, understanding how the brain naturally learns a language can help me create lessons that draw on the same mental processes and strategies as the earlier acquisition of the native language. Thus, lessons can utilize elements learned from understand how the brain naturally learns a language to augment the student's ability to progress more efficiently in learning a second language later on in life. Lessons would produce the environment which calls on the same type of brain functions that were so crucial in language acquisition in early childhood. Thus, teaching can become an extension of pre-existing strategies the students have already used earlier on in their lives without even knowing it. This means lesson plans built on a structure that highlights the importance of language at the phonic level, as this is what the author asserts as the primary vehicle for language acquisition in young children.