Why Learning A Langauge Favors Neuroplasticity
Our brain loves to learn new words but sometimes the people in front of us can stop our brains from developing into what they are really capable of
The very thought of developing neuroplasticity develops it.
Does that sound ironic?
Or is it too tricky to understand?
Either way, it doesn’t matter because it’s working your brain.
And working your brain is what your brain loves.
Neuroplasticity denotes how the things you experience will re-organize and develop new neural pathways in your brain. When we learn new things or practice memorization of information we are wiring our brains to perform in a different way than before.
By learning a new language you are improving your cognitive ability. You need to understand the new vocabulary, figure out how to put them into new sentences, understand the context, listen to the words being spoken, and use the language in its proper way.
All of this is challenging especially when you’re listening intently to fluent speakers of a language and trying to understand what they are saying.
When this is happening you may start questioning yourself as to why you decided to try to learn the language in the first place. This happened to me. And it was very tough at the time because I was learning this language as I needed it for my career.
Worse still, I was under pressure to learn it within a certain period so my emotional brain was pressurizing me to improve as well.
I was only 20 years old but I was determined to succeed. Although I had spent my primary and post-primary school years in school attending Irish language classes daily, none of it had stuck. To be honest, I used to sit there in class completely confused by the language and hating it. But when I left school I began to see the language in a completely different light and I loved it.
And understanding a language and having a passion for it are completely different things.
My passion became ignited around the time I was leaving school as a new television show entitled Ros na Rún was beginning and I found myself watching it now and then. Although I wasn’t sure what was being said by the characters of that show the Irish that some of them were speaking seemed to resonate at a deep level for me.
Soon after they brought in subtitles on the screen and I was now able to listen to the lovely language and try to figure out what was being said.
As time passed I got interested in the characters’ lives and was becoming more and more intrigued by the storyline. After a little bit of investigation, I realized that the title of the show Ros na Rún translated into Headland of the Secrets.
Then I realized that my curiosity to find out the meaning of the name would lead me to learn the language if I wanted to.
From there I made a personal commitment with myself to learn ten new words in the language daily.
As the internet was still in its early days in Ireland and dial-up connection was proving an unwelcome delay I had to purchase several dictionaries and a specialist online CD-Rom that had a library of language with new vocabulary, verbs, nouns, adjectives, and idioms. And the great thing about the CD was that it allowed me to select and listen to all three dialects of Irish so that I could begin to understand the differences in the sounds of the different phrases that each area used when speaking.
I gave myself a year to learn enough of the language so that I could return to post-primary school and attempt the higher-level exam.
I worked at the language for hours every day and although it was challenging I’d a lot more learned than I could speak. But my thirst for learning was ever-growing rather than my finding it too off-putting. So I decided to go all out and invested in the school books again and sought out a teacher to help me. After attending a handful of one-to-one lessons with a couple of different teachers I realized that the investment wasn’t worth it and instead I needed to use the time to continue to study and learn alone and then to push myself into meeting new people who spoke the language instead.
That’s when I discovered there was an Irish-speaking bar in my city.
I had heard that it was there to allow people to mix and attempt to speak the cúpla focal which was a traditional phrase meaning a couple of words. So I went there. It was a brave move because although I’d a lot learned from reading in the previous couple of months I hadn’t spoken the language to anyone so my confidence in pronunciation and speed of thought was going to be challenging.
I propped myself up at the bar and bought a pint of blackcurrant juice and made myself comfortable and intent on speaking to the barman.
Other than the barman, I was the only one in the bar at the time. It was obvious that he wasn’t busy so I asked him his name in my new language. It was a simple enough question and one that I knew I’d pronounced correctly as I`d recalled how my school teacher said it every day to the children in our class. The barman responded and began to chat with me.
As I listened I realized that he was miles ahead of me in his ability to speak the language.
I struggled to figure out the general gist of what he was saying. Still, I had committed to being in the bar and conversing in this new language so I stayed there for a half-hour or so. It was very intense. Although I generally mustered up a ‘Tá’ or a ‘Níl’ answer which translated into a yes or no, I was getting lots from listening to him tell me about his life and interacting in as basic a way as possible.
Before long although no one else came into the bar that’s when the conversation went downhill.
The barman got very impatient with my verbal mistakes and he grabbed a dictionary from under the countertop and threw it at me. I thought it was pretty ignorant given that the bar was there to help people converse in the language. Although I was a bad speaker of the language, I was still the only one there and without me, he’d be talking to himself!
I’m not going to lie, that experience tested my passion for the language. And even though I`d felt foolish for not speaking the language throughout my years growing up I kept working hard and vowed to myself that I`d improve.
And I did.
Within two years I not only passed the higher-level exam that I returned to school to do, but I qualified as a post-primary teacher, achieved the best oral results in the class, and earned myself a contract in teaching post-primary students through Irish, and ended up preparing them for the very same exam.
Although it took time for my brain to figure it all out, when it did I was ahead of most other people who spoke the language and proved that the very thought of developing neuroplasticity develops new neurons that are energized and sharper than older ones.
And the really funny thing was that I bumped into that barman again a few years later as I began to teach alongside him in the same school as well!
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