Perhaps technology can tap into our lost language acquisition mechanics and allow us to learn language like a baby.
Why are babies so good at learning language? From birth, babies can specialize in any language they so desire. Their highly plastic developing brains gift them an incredible universal learning advantage that humans only get once in a lifetime. This critical period for language development is an adaptation from evolutionary neurobiology that allows babies to rapidly learn, create, and refine language. This ability soon fades away and adults are left with a highly specialized brain that takes a little longer than its younger self to learn new languages, but can this be changed?
One thing adult brains are comparatively good at is the ability to critically think (well for most adults). Adults can look at the how and why of things —how can I learn more efficiently? How can I learn a new language better? They can ask themselves questions like If I had the ability to learn a language incredibly fast once, why not again? How and why questions like these have guided mankind to accomplish incredible feats like the creation and advancement of technology. Perhaps, if adults use technology to their advantage, they’d finally be able to give babies a run for their, non-existent, money.
The brain has undergone an incredible amount of adaptation to do what it does today. Communication was key for survival in the EEA. Communication was grown out of necessity, not desire. Of course, it would be great to keep the amazing plasticity of a baby's brain throughout life, constantly learning and adapting to everything. However, this carries with it the incredible burden of energy costs. Around 20% of the body’s energy needs go towards the brain, and a developing child is around 2-3 times higher than that relative to their body size. Neurons don’t modify and create new connections for free. They require lots of energy from glucose as well as other nutrients and molecules, including oxygen, amino acids, and neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and acetylcholine. These molecules are involved in a range of neurobiological processes such as attention, motivation, and memory consolidation— all of which are critical for learning. Adults simply cannot afford to think like a baby, but can they copy them?
Under an MRI, we can better study the incredible amount of resources the body dedicates to its developing brain.
Mimicking Babies
Babies employ a variety of learning strategies that ease their cognitive load and allow them to learn efficiently. Their ability to incorporate context is a vital tool among these. Context is crucial for deep-level learning. Anyone can memorize that 5 plus 5 equals 10, but if they don’t understand WHY it equals 10 then they’ll never know what 5 plus 6 is, and certainly they’ll never be able to grasp calculus or rocket science for that matter. The complex rules of math build off and from each other, ebbing and flowing in an upward spiral of knowledge. Knowledge requires a deep understanding of the WHY. Babies are thrown in a new and unfamiliar world and must learn to understand the WHY. They face the challenge of mapping unfamiliar words to the new objects or concepts they represent. Luckily, their brains have adapted to actively engage in their environment by incorporating context and situational cues.
Joint attention: By coordinating their gaze with another person's, babies use contextual cues to identify the referent of a word. If a caregiver points to an object while saying its name, the baby uses the caregiver's pointing gesture to identify what object the caregiver is referring to, and the visual properties of the object to infer what part of the object the caregiver is identifying.
Imitation: Babies learn by observing and copying the speech sounds and patterns of the people around them, learning the phonemes and prosody of their native language, so they can build a mental representation of the sounds and structure of their language. When babies imitate the speech sounds and patterns of others, they are also learning about the context in which those sounds are used. For example, they may notice that certain sounds or intonation patterns are associated with particular emotions or social situations.
Theory of mind: Children develop an understanding of other people's mental states to make inferences about the meaning of new words based on the context they’re spoken in. If a parent says, "I'm feeling really tired today," a child uses their knowledge of the parent's mental state to infer the meaning of the word "tired." If the parent looks sluggish or yawns as they say that they’re tired, the child will infer that the word tired is connected to those qualities. If the parent looks happy and energetic as they say this, it may give the child the wrong interpretation of what “tired” means.
Scientists have identified these specific strategies in babies, but adults do the same thing. Why wouldn’t they? It is the most efficient way to learn a language. If someone moves to another country for three years, they’re bound to know a thing or two about the culture and language. So, what about if they can artificially move to another country? This is the advantage of technology. Adults can use mobile apps like Duolingo, to artificially engage in the culture of another language by reading interactive stories and sentences in that language. This allows adults to tap into the context of the language by focusing on a common goal, just like a baby would do with imitation and joint attention. Duolingo offers exercises that involve reading and responding to messages from native speakers. Learners engage in the theory of mind by participating in conversations and interpreting social cues and body language. Practicing language in social contexts encourages consideration of the perspectives and intentions of native speakers, and thus, a deep understanding of the language will develop.
FAST FACTS
· Studies have shown that there is a critical period of brain development during which cerebral glucose utilization is important for brain functioning.
· Real-time feedback in racing simulators can be effective in improving driving performance and safety in video games as well as in real-world driving.
· The use of mobile apps has been found to be effective in developing reading comprehension and English vocabulary learning in second language acquisition.
The (Video)game of Life
Instant feedback is essential for a child’s developing brain. To correct mistakes and improve the accuracy and fluency of their native language in real-time, babies use feedback strategies:
Corrective feedback is feedback that explicitly corrects an error in the learner's language use. This type of feedback is important because it helps learners to recognize and correct their errors in real-time, which leads to improved accuracy and fluency. If a child says "I goed to the park," a caregiver provides corrective feedback by saying "You mean 'I went to the park,' not 'goed'."
Confirmation feedback is the feedback that confirms the accuracy of the learner's language use. This type of feedback reinforces correct language use and provides learners with a sense of achievement and motivation. For example, if a child says, "I went to the park," a caregiver could provide confirmation feedback by saying "Yes, that's right!"
Elaborative feedback is feedback that provides additional information or context to the learner's language use. This type of feedback helps learners to expand their understanding of the language and use it in more complex ways. If a child says, "I saw a dog," a caregiver provides elaborative feedback by saying "Yes, that's a dog. What color was it? Was it big or small?"
This ability is not exclusive to babies. When adults learn, feedback strategies are fundamental. However, in adult life, instant feedback is not always available. Students write tests and usually must wait weeks to get their results back, and even when they do, professors just throw a grade at them without delving into specific detail about what they did wrong and how they can fix it. The student’s motivation will begin to wane with the inefficiency of their progress. Luckily, technology has made available the extremely addictive world of video games. Videogames are addictive because they give a sense of progress and achievement. If a player cannot get past a certain level or defeat a certain boss, the game provides instant feedback on how to progress:
Corrective feedback is when a player uses fire magic on an enemy that is immune to fire, and they die. A character in the game informs them that perhaps water magic is best used against fire enemies.
Conformation feedback is when a player uses a special magic attack on a boss, causing the boss to stumble back and lose a big chunk of health. The player now knows this is an effective attack to use and is motivated to use it again.
Elaborate feedback is when a player is playing in a race car simulator. The game will reward them with bonus points and special perks as they overtake other cars. The game will also display a leaderboard that shows their position relative to the other racers. Knowing how well (or bad) they are performing will keep them motivated and engaged in the game, learning the ins and outs at a faster pace. This example has been directly linked to improving real-world driving performance and safety.
In Mario Cart, a map displays the player's relative position to other racers in real-time, as well as their current ranking boldly displayed in the corner.
Videogames keep players engaged by activating reward centers in the brain, flooding it with dopamine and leaving it craving more.
Adults can take advantage of the addictive nature of video games by gamifying the language learning experience. Mobile apps like Duolingo, Babble, and Rosette Stone are developed to teach people second languages fast and efficiently. They incorporate game-like elements such as leveling systems and rewards that ignite the feeling of progress and unleash the floodgates of dopamine. Take the elaborate feedback example of a leaderboard to motivate better performance and engagement. These mobile apps display leaderboards that show the top performing language learner in the world, country, city, or even just in your friend group. Imagine if every time a student walked into a classroom, all the students’ names on the board were ranked from highest-grade student to the lowest-grade student. This would be very unethical for a teacher to do, but it would undoubtedly motivate every student to excel in the class. Language learning apps can do this without fear of ethics.
Mobile apps also have the advantage of being able to personally adapt their lesson plan to every individual student, something that would be impossible for a teacher to do. There will always be students that struggle and students that excel. Language learning apps use AI to access the learner’s performance and adjust the lessons accordingly. AI can provide personalized and instant feedback perfectly adapted to the student. This way, the student will not be overwhelmed with difficulty and lose motivation or grow bored and lose interest.
Ease of Access
Perhaps one of the reasons babies are so good at learning language is because their entire life is dedicated to doing so. It is in the interest of their survival to learn how to communicate with the people that feed and protect them. An athlete that dedicates their life to a sport, as it is their livelihood, is bound to be better than someone who just does it for fun. A professional athlete needs to learn every intricacy of the sport down to the smallest detail since any slip-up could be the difference between that signing bonus or a sad defeat. It is not reasonable to expect second language learners to dedicate their lives to learning a language, as their lives do not depend on it.
The average person learning a second language is not facing any extreme odds and the language inevitably becomes a lesser priority. Life commitments, work commitments, family commitments, or even the lack of money to pursue a quality second language education gets in the way. The beauty of technology is that it can be accessed anytime, anywhere. Sometimes access to education costs money, but it is nothing compared to the tuition cost of a traditional school. If someone only has thirty minutes to spare in a day, they can easily pull out their phone and try to learn one new word. By the end of the year, they will be vastly better at speaking the language than they would have been able to otherwise. Even if they lose interest in learning because of their lack of time, or maybe they just do not see the progress happening fast enough, language learning apps offer game-like incentives to keep learners engaged. Duolingo keeps track of how many days a learner has consistently been on the app and tallies it with a streak that the learner can see. If a learner sees that they are on a 50-day streak, they will be more motivated to open their phone for a few minutes to learn a new word and keep that streak alive. Although their life does not depend on learning the language, their streak certainly does, and with the streak comes their sense of progress and that sweet dopamine high.
Review of Position
If adults had the ability to learn language incredibly fast once, they should capture that ability and never let it fade. Can adults tap back into the critical learning period even if it is not necessary for their survival? Maybe the way students are taught language tricks their minds into thinking they no longer need these abilities as they get older, but this can be changed.
Professors, scientists, and app developers must continue to work together to develop new technologies that simulate the early learning environment of infancy.
Duolingo showcases the learner's progress prominently with motivational messages to keep learners engaged.
Technology like augmented reality or virtual reality can be adapted to create immersive environments that require learners to engage in joint attention with virtual characters or objects. In the future, augmented reality features can allow learners to point their phone camera at an object and receive feedback on how to name it in the target language, while virtual reality can simulate real-world scenarios that require joint attention, such as ordering food at a restaurant or asking for directions. Educators can use multimodal feedback that combines different types of feedback, such as visual, auditory, and haptic feedback, to provide learners with more comprehensive and effective feedback, tailored to their learning style and preferences. The accessibility of the feedback systems themselves can be adapted to all people, including those with disabilities or special needs. Feedback systems can be used to incorporate text-to-speech or speech-to-text technology to provide feedback for players who are blind or have hearing impairments. Feedback systems can also incorporate customizable settings to adjust the volume, pitch, and speed of feedback to accommodate players with different abilities and preferences, curating an environment where anyone from anywhere can learn the complexities of language fast and efficiently creating a world that is more connected than ever before.
Further Readings
Use of mobile applications in developing reading comprehension in second language Acquisition—A review study. (2020). Education Sciences, 10(12), 391. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci10120391
Xu, Y.; Yau, J.C.; Reich, S.M. Press, swipe and read: Do interactive features facilitate engagement and learning with e-Books? J. Comput. Assist. Learn. 2020.
Lin, J.; Lin, H. Mobile-Assisted ESL/EFL Vocabulary Learning: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Comput. Assist. Lang. Learn. 2019, 32, 878-919.
Zhang, M., & Li, X. (2020). The effect of mobile apps on English vocabulary learning: A systematic review. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 15(12), 4-17. This systematic review examines the effectiveness of mobile apps for English vocabulary learning and identifies some of the key features that make these apps effective.
Song, L., & Liu, X. (2020). Mobile-assisted language learning: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation, 14(1), 1-23. This meta-analysis examines the effectiveness of mobile-assisted language learning and identifies some of the factors that contribute to its success.
Park, Y. (2020). Technology-enhanced language learning: A review of theoretical frameworks and empirical research. Language Learning & Technology, 24(3), 1-29. This review article examines the theoretical frameworks and empirical research on technology-enhanced language learning, including mobile apps.
Herscovitch, P., & Raichle, M. E. (1985). Energy metabolism of the brain. In M. J. Brown, E. M. Joyce, & E. R. Brown (Eds.), The biological basis of clinical observations (pp. 31-53). Springer US. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-1317-0_3
Chugani, H. T. (1998). A critical period of brain development: Studies of cerebral glucose utilization with PET. Preventive Medicine, 27(2), 184-188. https://doi.org/10.1006/pmed.1998.0272
Effects of feedback complexity on skill learning and overnight consolidation in a video game, E. M. van der Meer, E. J. C. de Lange, and R. L. J. M. Janssen (2018) found that more elaborate feedback (i.e., feedback that provides specific information on various aspects of performance) improved skill learning and overnight consolidation in a video game.
The Effectiveness of Real-Time Feedback in Improving Driver Performance and Safety: A Systematic Review, R. A. Horswill, M. A. Marrington, and N. A. McCullough (2018) found that real-time feedback can be effective in improving driving performance and safety in video games as well as in real-world driving.
Effects of Feedback on Motivation, Achievement, and Behavior in a Serious Game for Children, M. E. P. van der Kuil, W. A. van Dijk, and W. van Joolingen (2021) found that feedback was a key factor in motivating children to continue playing a serious game and improving their achievement and behavior.