Language, Cognition, and Education

Categories: Language

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Language is a universal tool central to all societies. With the hundreds of languages that are spoken in the world, each is attached with its own connection to the brain and how the speakers of those languages process the world around them. Lera Boroditsky, cognitive scientist, explores this connection between native acquired language and through processes, understanding, and cognitive ability. In her TEDTalk, “How language shapes the way we think,” Boroditsky discusses the ways certain cultures explain and relay information, and how languages of all cultures have different cognitive abilities because of how languages are used and expressed.

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Since people of different languages process information and think through situations in multiple ways, there can be discrepancies when people of dissimilar first languages interact with each other. There can also be issues when a person attempts to learn a second language. The thought processes and the first language can impede the level of fluency or ability a speaker is able to achieve in the second language; however, individuals who grew up bilingual or multilingual are shown to have enhanced cognitive abilities in certain areas, particularly in problem solving.

To extend these thoughts, people and specifically students, of one first language who move to an area where a different native language is spoken are bound to encounter difficulties not only in learning the language, but in understanding the cognitive approaches that the new culture or society use to process the world.

The implications of language affecting cognition are numerous, however, as a teacher whose native language is English with a large population of students whose first language is Spanish, this topic interests me because it helps to explain some of the issues English as Second Language (ESL) and English Language Learners (ELL) students face.

Not only are these students trying to learn a second language, they are attempting to understand a completely different cognitive approach. By understanding that the students whose first language that is not English have different cognitive abilities and approaches than students whose first language is English will help me become a better teacher because I will be able to learn new ways to teach these ESL and ELL students so that they are able to understand my classes through their own cognitive abilities.

Other teachers who have students in which their first language is non-native to the area, may have interest in understanding the thought process of that other language, and this will result in a better educational experience for the non-native speaking students as their teachers will have knowledge as to how to teach to that language’s specific way of thinking. There is even application for outside the classroom. Employers as well as the general society would benefit from understanding the many approaches to cognition that exist. This understanding would lead to less conflicts.

The community I work in has a heavy Hispanic influence. Many of these Spanish-speaking individuals work for a pig processing plant. The employers of this plant are mostly English speakers with little or no background in Spanish. Just like in the classroom, misunderstandings occur between these two languages, not only in communication but in how the individuals think about solving problems. I believe that if awareness of cognitive difference between languages were brought to people’s attention, then just maybe there could be a step in the direction of unity.

A young, seven-year-old boy walks into a new classroom. His family has just moved to the area. He does not know any of the teachers. He doesn’t know any of the students. He doesn’t even know the language that will be spoken in the class today. This young boy who is very intelligent and considered one of the top students in his home country knows that he is about to be faced with academic struggle for the first time. He is nervous, scared, and anxious.

This scene is recreated on a daily basis here in the United States. As teachers, we have probably encountered this scenario a time or two. I know I have. I also know that this student has a long road ahead of him. Not only will he have to learn a new language, which will be difficult, but this student will accomplish, but this student will have to adjust his cognitively as well.

Second language learning (SLL) and the success thereof, depends on several factors including age. If we return to our scenario, this young student, although completely overwhelmed by the thought of learning a second language, will approach fluency simply because of his age and the stage of his brain will allow him to do so. Age, however, is not the only factor. Martha Kruse, professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, writes in her book Short Course in Descriptive Linguistics, “SLL’s may transfer English SVO [subject, verb, object] word order to other languages,” and the same is true of those learning English (Kruse 2018). The grammatical structures that are inherent to our native first language not only structure our speech, but they also help to structure how we view the world. This can cause first language interference. As the young boy in our little story begins to learn the new language he will encounter, he will have to adjust to the grammatical structure of the that language as well as the cognitive structure.

With approximately 7,000 spoken languages in the world, all with different structures, creates 7,000 different cognitive universes (Boroditsky 2018). Boroditsky gives examples of this differences in cognition based on language in her TEDTalk. One example in particular, is the idea of masculine and feminine words in different languages. She discusses specifically the words for the sun and for the moon in Spanish and in German. In Spanish the sun is “el sol”, a masculine construction, while in German the word for sun is “die sonne”, which is considered a feminine word. Boroditsky further explains that these masculine and feminine constructions affect the way native speakers of these languages view the sun and the how they would describe the sun. Spanish speakers would describe masculine constructions with words that are considered to be masculine such as strong, while German speakers would use feminine associated words such as beautiful (2018).

Dedre Gentner of Northwestern University, states in her article “Language as Cognitive Tool Kit: How Language Supports Relational Thought”, “…an English speaker might as a companion to ‘please pass me the plate on your right’; a Tzeltal speaker would ask for the plate to the north…Many studies suggest that this difference in language affects the way people think about space, even in nonlinguistic tasks…” (652). Gentner’s example exposes just a portion of the cognitive differences between languages. If we were to turn these two individuals on way or another, the English speaker would still ask for the plate on the right, but the Tzeltal speaker would refer the plate with a different cardinal direction. Now, I don’t know about you, but I always have to think extremely hard about which direction is which.