How do we learn languages?

Samuel Weiss-Cowie’s fascination with language learning began at the age of 15 when he started learning Korean. He is now in the third year of his PhD looking at how the brain learns a new language or new words in a native language.

He says: “I wanted to see what was happening in the brain to make this process easier. My interest is in natural ways of learning and how we figure out what the meaning is based on the context.” Most of his research has involved people learning new words in their native language and he would ideally like to focus on new language learners. He uses behavioural methods from Psychology and neuroimaging so that he can see how learning occurs in real time and how people become attuned to two separate learning processes, the cognitive process of learning how to use new words and the more perceptual process of understanding different accents. One experiment involved putting nonsense words into sentences to see if speakers could work out how to use them from the context in which they were used.

Through investigating the neural underpinnings of speech perception, Samuel says his goal is to research the ways in which our brains deal with ambiguous speech. He states: “As anyone who has learned a new language will attest, it can be exceptionally difficult to identify the words produced by native speakers. Myriad factors – such as a loud environment, accented speech, or unfamiliar vocabulary – can also make fulfilling one’s role as a listener more difficult, even in one’s native language. By discovering what scenarios allow for optimal word learning, I hope to inform more effective methods in language pedagogy.”

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