Interhemispheric foreign language learning is a form of learning that activates both hemispheres of the brain, based especially on the discovery of the mirror neurons by Giacomo Rizzolatti. It could be applied to many types of learning, but so far has been scientifically applied only to second language teaching and foreign language learning. Traditional foreign language learning, which focuses on learning vocabulary and grammar and using textbooks, mainly activates the left hemisphere. Interhemispheric learning, however, also stimulates the right hemisphere and enhances interaction between both hemispheres. Research shows that gestures and all nonverbal communication activate Brodmann area 44 and 45, responsible for language (Broca's area) in the left hemisphere. Research on mirror neurons also shows that mental imagining gestures without actually carrying out gestures also activate the same area of the brain. Those results are used now for foreign language teaching and learning.
Read more about Interhemispheric Foreign Language Learning: How Does It Work?, The Crucial Factor: The Behavior of The Language Teacher, Empirical Studies
Famous quotes containing the words foreign, language and/or learning:
“I am ... willing to make it clear that American foreign policy must uphold the sanctity of international treaties. That is the cornerstone on which all relations between nations must rest.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It’s a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.”
—Frederico Fellini (1920–1993)
“This great purple butterfly,
In the prison of my hands,
Has a learning in his eye
Not a poor fool understands.
Once he lived a schoolmaster
With a stark, denying look....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)