Comprehension: Essential Aspect of Language Skill - Term Paper Example

? Comprehension: Essential Aspect Of Language Skill of the of the Introduction Language is one of the most important aspects of human life. It is through ‘language’ that human beings are able to communicate with each other. Not only that, but human beings cannot even ‘think’ without language, as it is the language that gives meaning and content to their thoughts (Kellogg, 2003, p.265). Language is also an essential aspect of the society as it is culture oriented and hence, helps in building relationships, groups and community. Hence, learning a language is one of the most interesting and essential part of developmental stages of human beings. However, learning language is not as easy as it seems, because it not only means learning to speak the language but also means learning to read and write it. Hence, learning language is a complicated phenomenon which needs efforts on different levels of mind and body. Even though human mind is capable of learning many languages, some people find it difficult to learn different functions related to language. The reason of these problems lies in the cognitive process of learning a language. The only way human beings can solve language related problems is by understanding the cognitive reasons behind the problems and solving it. Hence, ‘cognitive psychology,’ the field of psychology that helps in understand different functions of learning language, is the only field of study that can help human beings in solving the language problems, as it not only shows how human beings learn language, but also throws an insight on different language related disorders and its causes. Cognitive Psychology Human beings learn different things by perceiving and processing the information. Cognitive psychology is the field that studies “how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information” (Sternberg, 2009, p.2). Cognitive psychologists study how people remember or forget things, and process information related to various shapes, sounds and visuals perceived through environment (Sternberg, 2009, p.2). Hence, cognitive psychology also helps in understanding how people learn languages, as learning language involves perceiving and learning shapes of alphabets, their sounds and remembering the information about all the aspects of language. However, to understand how people comprehend and produce language, it is necessary to understand what ‘language’ really means. Definition of Language Language can be defined as a system of symbols, used by two or more individuals to communicate and express their ideas, thoughts, feelings, desires, intentions, beliefs, emotions etc., through different words and letters (Kellogg, 2003, p.265). Language helps to give meaning to the thoughts and actions of a person and hence, it also helps people in expressing those ideas and feelings that are not factual in nature (Kellogg, 2003, p.266). Language helps people to express various mental, emotional and psychological expressions with the help of symbols, letters and sounds (Kellogg, 2003, p.266). However, what really helps people in becoming fluent in language is the cognitive ability of comprehension and production of language. Hence, language comprehension and production is an important aspect of language learning process, as it not only helps people in learning the language but also helps in using language in different areas of life by brining the knowledge of language in practice. Language Comprehension People are able to understand and grasp what others are saying through the process of language comprehension. Language comprehension is high-level cognitive process through which people not only recognize the spoken or written words and sentences, but are also able to perceive the meaning of it (Kellogg, 2003, p. 324). Hence, the process of language comprehension also involves the memory and perceptual ability of a person (Kellogg, 2003, p.324). Moreover, comprehension also means understanding the real meaning of the words by inferring meanings that are not clearly stated, and “identifying the intended meaning of a sentence when words with more than one literal meaning are used” by the speaker (Kellogg, 2003, p.333). Hence, comprehension of language requires a person to bring his knowledge and experience of social interaction into practice, as it involves not just recognizing the words but also giving it meaning appropriate to the context (Kellogg, 2003, p.324). According to Kintsch (1990), who developed the text comprehension model, as people read, they try to store in their active memory as much information as possible in the text (Sternberg, 2009, p.415). However, instead of storing the exact words given in the text, people extract the fundamental idea or message in the text and store the simplified version of the idea in their active memory (Sternberg, 2009, p.415). This simplified version of ideas, or the “briefest unit of language,” is known as preposition (Sternberg, 2009, p.415). According to Kintsch, rather than storing words, the working memory stores the prepositions (Sternberg, 2009, p.415). In this way, the mental structures that provide meaning to words, sentences, and relationship of one sentence to the other, are built in mind (Kellogg, 2003, p.333). During the process of language comprehension, mental structure are developed step by step with the progressing speech or text, as the necessary information is brought to the working memory when the representations of the words and sentences stored in the long term memory are activated (Sternberg, 2009, p.333). In this way, language is comprehended in four steps. However, comprehension is not the only aspect of language acquiring skill. To express their own self, people also need to use language. It is the process of ‘language production’ that helps people to express themselves through speech or writing. Language Production Language production is a cognitive process which is used by human beings to produce ‘meaningful’ language so that other people can understand what they are saying (Goldstein, 2008, p.381). Hence, language production is a goal oriented process as people produce language with the aim of making themselves understood clearly by others (Brown, 2007, p.100). As people achieve the skill of language production rapidly and easily through cognitive process, it is assumed that language production is an easy process (Goldstein, 2008, p.381). However, for producing speech, person has to go through series of stages of language production like planning, intending a particular sound, and then producing that sound (Brown, 2007, p.100). Hence, it is a complex process which involves many different functions of mind (Goldstein, 2008, p.381). Moreover, it also involves the ability to remember. Memory plays an important role in the cognitive process of language production. This is because to produce a language, person has to retrieve strings of words from his memory and assemble them in proper manner so as to form meaningful sentences while speaking (Goldstein, 2008, p.381). The complexity of the language production process can be understood from the fact that from a lexicon of more than 50,000 words, speaker has to rapidly retrieve three words per second in order to have normal conversation with other people (Goldstein, 2008, p.381). This shows how fast the mind has to process the function of retrieving right and meaningful words to produce an appropriate speech, and to create meaningful sentences. Moreover, according to Levelt (2001), language production involves not only retrieving right words rapidly, but also involves forming grammatically correct sentences by combining and putting the words in correct orders (Goldstein, 2008, p.381). Hence, language production is a complex process which involves different aspects of mind. As the cognitive process of language production is such a complex and intricate process, many people suffer from disorders related to language production. To cure the cognitive disorders related to language comprehension and production, it is essential to understand the root cause of the disorders. Language Disorders Speech Errors Speech production is a complex process and hence, it is common for people to make speech errors (Brown, 2007, p.100). According to Dell & O’ Seaghdha (1991), speech errors occur due to the complexity of the speech production process as during the process, the mind activates the incorrect items stored in the memory rather than activating the right ones (Brown, 2007, p.101). Hence, errors like producing words too early in sentences, or exchanging one word for other, occur during speech production (Brown, 2007, p.101). However, there are other language disorders that occur due to problem in the brain structure of a person. Aphasia Aphasia is a language related disorder that is caused when a specific area “located in the third convolution of frontal lobe in the left hemisphere of brain,” that controls speech, is damaged (Kellogg, 2003, p.284). Aphasia is also known as ‘Broca’s aphasia’ in honor of a scientist named Broca, who investigated and studied the localization of language in brain, in the year 1861 (Kellogg, 2003, p.284). People suffering from aphasia are not able to speak fluently “without effort and with correct grammar” (Kellogg, 2003, p.284). They have broken and halting speech as their sentences are not structured grammatically and they consist only of short noun sequences (Kellogg, 2003, p.284). However, studies have found that single words and short grammatical sentences are comprehended properly by people suffering from aphasia (Kellogg, 2003, p.284). Dyslexia Dyslexia is one of the major disorders related to language comprehension and production. Dyslexia can be defined as a condition where a person lacks the phonological skills (Hoien & Lundberg, 2000, p. 64). Due to lack of phonological skills, people suffering from dyslexia are not able to manipulate phonemes, which weaken their reading and writing skills (Hoien & Lundberg, 2000, p. 64). Also, Moat has found that people suffering from dyslexia make spelling errors due to their lack of ability to “perform phonological and morphophonological analysis” (Hoien & Lundberg, 2000, p. 65). Conclusion Problems in language comprehension leads to different kinds of disorders like aphasia and dyslexia. The cognitive process of language comprehension plays an essential role in human being’s effort of acquiring language skills. Hence, if human beings are to become fluent in language skills then they should make sure that their cognitive process of comprehension is faultless and healthy. References Brown, C. (2007). Cognitive Psychology. London, UK: SAGE Publications Ltd. Goldstein, E.B. (2008). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth Learning. Hoien, T. & Lundberg, I. (2000). Dyslexia: From Theory to Intervention. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Kellogg, R.T.(2003). Cognitive Psycholog. (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. Sternberg, R.J. (2009). Cognitive Psychology (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cenagage Learning. Read More