The neuroscience behind why you can’t speak the language you learned in school

A lot of school based language learning is taught like many other school subjects. Think how chemistry or history is taught. These subjects are intellectual exercises usually involving reasoning and memorization. In Chemistry, you memorize the elements and perform exercises where you apply a set of rules. In one sense, languages are quite similar. There are elements to memorize. Rules to know. Concepts to understand.

However, language learning is distinct. We acquire language differently than we acquire most other academic subjects. That is because of our brain’s structure. We have specialized parts of the brain dedicated to language comprehension and production.

These specialized language centers are not located near brain regions associated with reasoning ability or memory. When you learn chemistry the knowledge is stored in a different part of the brain than when learning French. Language is not purely an intellectual exercise like chemistry or history. It is also far more multidimensional. Learning a skill involves visual, auditory and motor skills.

Humans possessed language skills long before they could write. We had several thousand years of human language before anyone wrote down the rules of grammar. We had several thousand years of communication between different cultures before anything resembling formal language instructions existed.

You can’t speak the language in school because you likely learned like you learned Chemistry. The information went into the wrong part of the brain. Unfortunately, most common classroom language instruction doesn’t utilize the most effective methods for getting information and developing skills in the parts of the brain specialized for language.

In the very beginning, language production was a motor skill. Indeed, the earliest forms of communication were gestures. They didn’t involve much vocalization at all. Eventually, language became a motor skill involving making sounds with your mouth. Language comprehension was fundamentally something auditory. You made sense of what you heard. Human language existed in some form for tens of thousands of years before the first formal writing system.

Language in the Brain

So where are these language centers in the brain? It should come as little surprise that the parts of the brain most involved in language are located near the ear and mouth.

Overview of brain structure

The central sulcus is a major division of the brain that runs across the top of the brain roughly from ear to ear. The area right along the sulcus on the front side (toward the face) is called the Motor cortex and is associated with motor function. The rest of the area in front of the motor cortex is associated with executive function - the area we use to make decisions about how we act in the world.

The area along the sulcus on the opposite side is called the Somatosensory cortex and is associated with the sense of touch in different areas of the body. The rest of the area behind and just below this cortex is associated with how we sense the outside world. These are areas that process what we see and hear and how we make sense of what we see, hear and feel.

Language centers

There are two main language centers in the brain.

Broca’s area - Speech Production

Broca’s area is associated with speech production. This area is right next to the motor cortex near the bottom of the frontal lobe.

Wernicke’s area - Speech Production

Wernicke’s area is associated with speech comprehension. This area is located around the auditory area of the brain that processes what we hear. The primary and secondary auditory areas are located just behind the ear, below the sensory cortex. Roughly, you can think of Wernicke’s area as a part of the brain just behind your ear.

Sections of both the motor and sensory cortexes are associated with different areas of the body. As you might expect, the part of the motor cortex that controls tongue movement is located at the bottom of the cortex - nearest Broca’s area. The tongue is most associated with speech production so it is only natural they are located near each other.

Just across the sulcus at the bottom of the sensory cortex we find the area associated with the sense of touch in our lips and tongue.

Brain Function Distribution Through Networks

We shouldn’t think all speech production or comprehension occurs exclusively in these areas. It’s better to think of them as hubs. They coordinate the gathering of information from other parts of the brain and synthesize it to produce speech or comprehension. Our knowledge about the world is located in several different parts of the brain.

Visual Processing

Visual information is stored near the back of the brain where visual processing occurs. You can imagine these areas retrieving a picture of a chair from this area.

Auditory Processing

Auditory information is stored in the lower part of the brain near the auditory cortex. You can imagine these areas gather information about how the word chair sounds and any sounds associated with a chair.

Memory

Long Term Memory - Hippocampus

The Hippocampus stores long memories related to facts, events and spatial information used for navigating the world. You can imagine these areas gather information about facts or events associated with chairs and the location of chairs near us.

Emotional Memory - Amygdala

The Amygdala is an area deep within the brain near the hippocampus that keep emotional memories. Perhaps you were rocked to sleep in a chair and have positive memories. Perhaps you were hit with a chair and have negative memories. These speech areas would retrieve emotional associations from these deep brain structures.

Wernicke’s area would gather information from these different areas of the brain to understand what was being said about a chair.

Broca’s area would gather information to say something about a chair.

Working Memory - Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex

Another area directly related to language is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This is the center of working memory. In language, this area stores or coordinates the gathering of information from other parts of the brain into semantic meanings of words that we use for speech tasks, like speaking or comprehension. Roughly this area stores the meaning in words when we are trying to use them. This area is likely to ‘store’ the translations of words in different languages. We do know that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is heavily involved in language switching for multilingual people. In a simplified sense, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex provides the meaning of words to Broca’s area just below it when we produce speech.

What has been presented here has been a very broad and simplified view of brain function. Language actually involves the entire brain. Specific functions of speech are not highly localized. It’s better to think of language functions as relating to a network of pathways that connect different parts of the brain related to speech function. Entire networks are related to brain function instead of specific areas of the brain.



For instance, there is a direct pathway deep in the brain between Broca’s area and Werniecke’s area. While we say speech production is centered in Broca’s area and comprehension in Wernicke’s, the network of pathways that connects them is actually involved in each of their respective functions.

Many of the areas identified as being ‘responsible’ for certain language functions are more like hubs where these networks converge. These convergence points then ‘synthesize’ the network inputs to produce an action or event - like speech production or comprehension.

Classroom Learning and Fluency

But back to how we learn language and how learning in the classroom can fail to produce fluency.

What part of the brain is involved when learn things in school like Chemistry or History? Though many areas of the brain are involved, learning that requires high cognitive function occurs in an area just inside our forehead called the prefrontal cortex. Reasoning, complex decision making, personality, conscious attention, abstract thought, social behavior all involve this area.

The area most associated with reasoning, abstraction and rule learning is the center top front of your year, the area where you hair line probably begins.

For our purposes, the most interesting thing about this area is that it is associated with rule learning. When you are learning a Chemistry formula, you use the rule learning part on the top front part of your brain. When you are presenting an argument about an event in history, you are using the reasoning part in the same area.

When you perform mathematical calculations you are using a part of the brain almost entirely unconnected to the language circuitry of the brain. Mathematics involves areas of the brain more associated with visual processing. In fact, people who’ve experienced brain damage that has affected their ability to speak and understand the meaning of words can perform calculations as well as before.

We must remember that the complex networks of the brain connect many parts of the brain. This doesn’t the reasoning and rule learning parts of the brain are entirely unconnected from networks involving language centers.

The key is to understand that when you learn language in a formal setting that mainly involves memorization, grammar rules and drills, you are storing that information in that top front part of your brain alongside Chemistry formulas and arguments about history.

You store information in working memory about the meaning of words in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, in a formal classroom you form connections between these word meanings in working memory and the reasoning and rule learning part of the brain. These sorts of connections are formed by conscious attention (another function associated with the top front of the brain).

Making Connections to Language Centers

However, you are not making connections between the area where word meanings are stored and the language centers responsible for speech production and comprehension. So learning in a rules based paradigm will allow you to ‘construct’ sentences from the words you know, but will not produce spontaneous speech that ‘flows.’ You’ll build sentences in your head. You’ll try to remember the proper verb conjugation for a certain grammatical structure. You’ll be thinking instead of speaking.

Researchers have found that learners experience a shift in the brain networks they use as their proficiency increases. When you get better a language you are improving your 'use' of the existing network. You actually starting to use different brain networks. It's as if you start performing an exercise with a certain set of muslces and, as you improve, start using a different set of muslces.

Unfortunately, a lot of traditional classroom language learning does lead to this shift in brain networks.

In short, forming connections to the top front of the brain will allow you to pass tests, but will not lead to fluency. You need to acquire language in a way gets information into the networks related to Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas - the ‘hubs’ of speech and comprehension.

Language information reachers the language centers through a subconscious process principally involving exposure to the language. The information doesn't get there by consciouslly learning rules.

This doesn't mean areas related to reasoning and rules are entirely cut off from these language centers. Of course, we reason with language. We represent rules with language. It's just we don't learn languages in a way that leads fluency by using these 'reasoning' areas of the brain.

So if you truly want to be able speak and an understand a new language, you'll have to do something different than just memorizing conjugations and grammar rules.

Conclusion

So when you are learning a second (or third, or fourth language), you need to develop the language related network connections that alredy exist for your native language. You want to develop direct connections between your language centers and areas associated with visual, auditory and emotional memory. You wan to embed the grammar rules in Broca's and Wernicke's areas to you can use them spontaneously.

Without these connections you won’t be able to speak with the type of spontaneity required for fluency.

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