English and Your Brain
When we learn a new language, we are really reprogramming our brain. Our brain needs to process the new vocabulary and new grammar patterns. If we can understand how this process works, it will help the learning process.We will start by analyzing the English language and then analyze how the brain processes language.
English
Let's start by visualizing all the English language on a single map so that we can see what we need (and don't need) to learn. This is called "top-down learning."
We divide language into 4 key functions: Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking. All these functions work together to help us learn and use language.
We can then separate each function into three types of grammar: Utterances, Sentences, and Cohesion.
So our more detailed English Map looks like:
So what are these different types of grammar?
Let's start with Sentences. A sentence is "a unit of logic." In other words, it is one logical idea.
Things smaller than a sentence are called Utterances. These are things like vocabulary and phrases.
Everything larger than a sentence is called Cohesion (ie a speech, an essay, a story). These are situations like writing an email or having a conversation.
For example:
Utterance: "Hi"
Sentence: "My name is Dave."
Cohesion: "Hi. My name is Dave. Today, I would like to talk about learning English. First, I will discuss the English language. Next, I will talk about..."
We use many utterances to make a sentence. Then we use many sentences to make cohesive English.
Each of utterances, sentences, and cohesion can be broken down into many separate categories. For example, utterances can be separated into Nouns, Noun-phrases, Prepositions, Preposition-phrases, etc.
English Grammar and English Goals
If you have used the FarWest Method, you have selected some Life Goals and English Goals you want to work on. Let's equate these to our English Map that we have built.
We can think of our English Goal as a single piece of Cohesive grammar.
And we know that cohesive grammar is made of sentences and sentences are made of utterances so…
More about Utterances
(Remember: "Utterance" is just a fancy way to say "Vocabulary + Phrases")
The problem with learning English is that there are A LOT of English words. No one is sure how many English words there are. Most experts guess over 600,000 but some people say as many as 1 million. That's a lot of vocabulary to learn. But how frequently do we use these words?
Brown University did a famous study called the Brown Corpus about how frequently we say each type of English word. For example, if we take a book or newspaper article, 0.0954% of the words will be the word "through." What is the most frequent English word? The word "the" makes up 6% of all the English words we use.
If we graph the results, we see something very surprising.
We get what is called a "long tail" graph. And the tail of this graph is VERY long.
Let's look at the data a different way - as a pie chart.
So the 100 most frequent words make up ~50% of all the words we use. Let's call these 100 words the "Super-Useful Words."
Click here for a list of Super-Useful Words and their categories [link].
Most of them are articles, prepositions, pronouns, and Aux Verbs.
From this, we can draw two conclusions. First, we need to spend a lot of time on the Super-Useful Words because, well, they are super useful.
Second, we cannot learn all the words in the Long Tail. There are too many words. It is possible to spend your whole life learning English vocabulary but learn nothing useful.
Therefore, we need a good method to select useful vocabulary and we need filtering technology to focus on only the words that are useful to us - the Need-to-Know words.
About your Brain
Here are a few facts about the brain as it relates to memorizing languages:
• Most of what we think of as our "brain" is the neo-cortex. Most of our complex thought (including language) occurs in the neo-cortex.
• The neo-cortex is made up of neurons. Neurons are very much like trees – with branches and roots that connect to other neurons. Each neuron is unique but the entire system – the "forest" of neurons – has a structure that can be studied and understood.
• Modern MRI technology has allowed scientists to map our neo-cortex to the neuron-level.
• MRI scans show that neurons are clustered into regions. Each region performs a specific language task.
When we graph these regions, we get a diagram that looks like this:
From these maps of the neo-cortex, Jeff Hawkins at Berkley has come up with a theory of how our neo-cortex processes everything (including language):
1. We discover new patterns
2. We recognize existing patterns
3. We use our existing patterns to make predictions (and decisions)
At the bottom of the "tree," we are recognizing the simplest patterns: lines, colors, and sounds. As we move up the tree, the patterns become more complex: letters, words, utterances, sentences, paragraphs, etc.
So when we consider how our brain maps language, we get a map that looks like this:
Look familiar? It should. This is the same map we were looking at earlier when considering how language connects to our life goals.
Conclusion
When learning English, it is very helpful to keep the English Map in mind. Always think about where you are on that map and where you need to go.
When we structure our Life Goals and English Goals, we can see a tree-like structure. This tree is an excellent plan, showing you exactly what you need to learn to achieve your English Goals and Life Goal.
This structure is very similar to the structure of our neo-cortex. This is probably not a coincidence. First, the human race designed languages so that they are easy for our brains to understand. Second, when we make plans and visualize things, we use a tree-like structure because it is easy to understand.