UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES-CAVE HILL CAMPUS TEACH ENGLISH

CARIBBEAN PROGRAM APPLIED LINGUISTICS WRITTEN CLASS

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT
Name: Henry Guatemal Cadena
Date: Friday, February 26th, 2016
Activity: Answer the following question by writing two paragraphs that best summarizes your
understanding based on your notes:
How do our brain process language?
In this session we were taught how are brain acquires language. It was interesting to know the
different parts in our brain that is in charge o receiving the inputs as well as producing language.
I learnt how are bran works in different sides, that is called lateralization. For instance, Brocas
area and Wernickes area, which are located in the left side of the brain. The study of the Brocas
area, or Brocas aphasia allowed the scientist to show how a person can produce the language if
there is an affection in this side; however, the utterances do not have any sense. In addition;
Wernickes study or Wernickes aphasia showed that even though language utterances are
produced with little meaningful productions, however, written language is not produced.
Therefore, the results showed that language is left lateralized.
Moreover, we were taught the different functions of the brain, in both sides. lateralization, is the
process that takes place, the experiment conducted revealed that language which is imputed on
the left side is more effective than the one listened by the right side, since the temporal lobe is
located in the left hemisphere, near Brocas area. Finally, the study of the brain is always
controversial, so its sources of investigation are too; the critical period, for instance, proved that
language can be acquired in a certain period, after that it becomes very difficult, that is the case
of Genie, a girl who spent more that ten years in captivity after being raped. When scientist tried
to develop the language on her, it was very late, she could not effective utterances; some scientist
thinks that before the time he spent in captivity she has mental retard.
In conclusion, during this session we navigate superficially but sometimes little deep into the
difficult and troublesome water of brain studies and theories, as a matter of fact I can say that
acquiring a language is a complex process which we as teachers should be able to know in order
to manage a good performance and understanding of our students.

Session 3
Behaviorist model
Nativist inanities theory
Universal grammar
Generative grammar
Language input
Caregiver speech
Overgeneralization
overestimation