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<Danny Jan@mac.com>

TOEFL and College Studies Coordinator, Intercultural Communications College, Honolulu, Hawai'i

Description and Some Implications of Neurobiologically-based Language Acquisition

Ten years ago, I began to formulate a different understanding of language acquistion, based on clinical and medical imaging observations of non-normative learning. 

As a physician, I was particularly interested in the way trauma survivors acquired a 'new' language to 'speak the unspeakable,' and more recently how they "unlearned" and resolved unwanted, traumatically-induced behaviors.

My observations were supported and even augmented in the literature. First, there is a wealth of new medical publications about the electrochemistry, physiology, thermography and cerebral blood flow associated with specific learning acts.  Second, there was McGinness' data on "learning disabled" children and adults, and Werner and Smith's longitudinal studies on the children of Kauai.  Third, there were Davis, Bass and Lew's seminal treatises on psychological recovery from trauma.   Fourth, and perhaps most important, was Weschler's Brasil: Nunca Mas on "forgotten" and "disappeared" survivors and perpetrators of violence.  The value of these research works to the field of linguistics may at first seem obtuse, but, in fact, they provide a wealth of raw, physical data associated with the neurobiology of exceptionally effective learning.  

On the other hand, any new learning methodology requires an existing educational framework to be applied in the classroom.  For this framework, I borrowed heavily from Sylwester, Pinker, Puelvermueller and Schumann, linguists and educators directly seeking anatomical, neurophysiological and physiochemical explanations of learning and teaching, and, most importantly, Deacon's seminal treatise on the evolutionary and neuro-anatomic basis of primary and secondary language acquistion in animals, including humans.  The challenge, of course, was to integrate what is sometimes called the "German School" of biolinguistic tradition with my own clinical observations and the emerging brain imaging data into a unified theory and describe the basic tenants of this "new," neurobiologically-based, language acquisition theory.  In effect, the theory had to (1) fit what was known about exceptional, effective learning, (2) result in new, measurable, testable hypotheses for cross-validation, and (3) result in testable predictions that could advance TESL, TESOL, TOEFL and learning knowledge.  

It is my pleasure to describe a neurobiological theory and method of language acquistion and learning, as well as some implications of this theory for learning.