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How do we learn unconsciously? The neurology behind how we learn languages, and
implications for foreign language teaching.

What is happening in our brains as we learn a concept or react to a stimulus? What does it really
mean to learn something? Why are there children who can learn to talk and communicate
even though they cannot learn to do other things due to a learning disability? Why do we find
that some students who are inattentive during class still have learned something in spite of their
apparent distraction? Is it something that we, as teachers, are doing, or is it something the
students do unconsciously? Why do we sometimes find ourselves unconsciously mimicking the
accent of the person with whom we are speaking? Is intrinsic motivation the only important
quality for learning a language? How do we learn our first language? Is it different from learning
a second one? What role does the unconscious play and how can we teachers use the
phenomenon to improve second language teaching and learning?
I think it is important for teachers to have an understanding of how we learn and to know some
underlying basic neurology in order to understand and improve how we reach students.
Therefore I have undergone an extensive investigation of studies, experiments, methods and
theories in order to better comprehend unconscious learning and also the way we learn our first
(native) language and second languages. I hope to share and use this information in teaching so
that students can learn a second language more effectively and easily.
Let us begin with a discussion of what is meant by learning. What does it mean to learn
something? Learning involves linking and making connections. Most scientists believe that we
learn both implicitly and explicitly.
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That is, implicit learning involves the limbic striatum, or basal ganglia, evolutionarily the oldest
parts of the brain, the brain parts which we share with other animals. It is learning we do
without thinking about it. An example might be the learning which takes place when we learn
to take our first breath outside of our mothers womb. Explicit learning usually implies more
conscious awareness and for language learning has been shown to take place in Broca and
Wernickes areas and surrounding territories. When we focus on something with our full
attention we are learning explicitly.
Most current scientific theories on learning refer to learning as a function of making
connections, both within the brain and also between the brain and the outside world. Thus,
when learning occurs, a neuro-chemical communication has been facilitated between neurons
and neural circuits, thus making it easier for successive connections of a similar manner. It is like
forming and making preparation for an easier link in the future. Thus, our second breath is
easier to take than our first one. Once we make the connection frequently enough, it becomes
a well-worn path to the point that this path becomes automatic, or something ingrained in our
memory. However, especially for more complex output, we might initially need to put
conscious thought into forming the connection, or initially be required to react to some stimulus
in order to begin making the necessary desired connections.
Donald O. Hebb, sometimes called the father of neuropsychology was one of the first to
observe learning occurring when neurons streamline into pathways and then streamline into
other pathways and efficient clusters that act in concert with one another. The Hebbian
principle is Neurons that fire together, wire together. If we did not have systems of neurons
working together, everything we do would be tremendously difficult and taxing. Excitation of a
neuron is believed to be a process of breaking down or depolarizing the membrane at the point
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of the synaptic connection. (31) This is important because this excitation or activation can now
be measured using neuroimaging and watching for neurons which signal a connection. It is this
neuroimaging that has given us a wealth of information about how we learn.
In the 21st century, many brain studies make use of neuroimaging to try and determine which
part or parts of the brain are activated when learning is taking place thereby theorizing which
part(s) of the brain relate to learning and to using a particular type of knowledge. That is, they
monitor the brain waves of the subjects in order to determine the places in the brain where the
most neurons are firing or making connections at a given moment when the subject is busy with
a particular type of task.
In order to study this, scientists sometimes use subjects (people) deficient in particular areas.
Many language studies use people with aphasia, as this is a disorder having to do with speech
and communication.
In order to understand some of the studies, we need some background information about
aphasia. Aphasia is usually associated with older people, but it can have younger victims too.
Typically the disorder is caused by a stroke, tumor or physical injury to the brain in the language
areas. There are at least six different types of aphasia. Two major types are Wernickes
(Sensory) Aphasia, and Brocas (Production) Aphasia. These aphasia types are so named
according to the area in the brain which is damaged. Wernickes area is a major language area
in the temporal lobe, concerned with comprehension. In most people Wernickes area is
situated in the left hemisphere near the parietal lobe. (In about 20 percent of left-handed
people, it is in the right hemisphere.) The parietal lobe is the top-back subdivision of the
cerebral cortex and is concerned with spatial computations, body orientation and attention.
Wernickes area is also adjacent to the auditory cortex; therefore Wernickes aphasia victims
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have better speech (than Brocas aphasia victims) but bad comprehension. Brocas area is in the
frontal-lobe brain region (left inferior frontal gyrus) and is concerned with articulating speech.
Brocas area is next to the motor cortex in the brain, so people with damage to the Broca area
can understand more speech but have more trouble actually speaking. (8)(51)(15)(11)
As demonstrated by various neuroimaging studies, in order to truly communicate effectively,
the different parts of the brain must be working properly and in tandem. One must be able to
make an utterance and then understand the response of another person in order to make an
appropriate response. As we will see later, this interplay is something we learn at a very early
age.
Humans have an entire section of the brain dedicated only to language, whereas the lower
species do not have it or it is much less developed then in humans. Brocas area is the most
well-known and it is believed to link the written word to the spoken word. This is where one
sounds out a word.(11) Geschwinds territory is in the lower parietal lobe, between Broca and
Wernickes areas. It is associated with the acquisition of language during childhood and it is
where sight, sound and body sensation come together. (12) The arcuate fasciculus is the name
given to a thick nerve-fiber tract which connects the three areas. The existence of this fiber
connection is a physical demonstration that the parts of the brain work in concert.
Indeed, the brain works best with its different parts working together. The brain can also
sometimes compensate for deficiencies, especially if the deficiency is caught early enough. That
is why it is thought to be so important to employ speech therapy for stutterers as young as
possible. We are trying to teach them to know how to ignite the areas in the brain that
normally ignite for non-stutterers. It is best to do this teaching when the connections are more
elastic, as opposed to when they are older. In the case of aphasia victims, speech therapists
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sometimes attempt to teach them to use non-damaged parts of the brain to take over the tasks
usually done by the areas which are now damaged. Unfortunately, because most aphasia victims
are over 60 years of age, this is often unsuccessful due to a lack of brain elasticity which would
be present in a much younger person.
In bilingual people, different languages are stored in slightly different parts of the brain, so that
the two languages do not interfere with each other. This also means that different groups of
neurons are used to produce each language. Because a new language learned later in life has
less intense associations than the native language(s), the brain is less active with the new
language than with the native language(s.) There is however, some overlapping of the places in
the brain where the different languages are stored.
Jos Luis Atienza Merino of Universidad de Oviedo hypothesizes that ones native language is
more than just English, or Spanish, or French, but is instead a more essential element of the
unconscious of the person him/her/self. (1) Therefore learning a first language and then a
foreign language becomes ways for the unconscious to express itself in a new way. This
argument suggests that much of ones native language is learned implicitly, and subsequent
languages are learned more explicitly. This is why learning a third language is easier than
learning a second language. The student has already explicitly built the neural network which
enables the flow of information whereby one is able to communicate a similar thought by a
different type of verbal communication and can merely apply that knowledge to how to learn
another language.
In the 1990s, Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues discovered what they called mirror
neurons. In a study of macaque monkeys, they inadvertently discovered that the same neurons
would react whether the monkey was given a peanut or if it watched another monkey being
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given a peanut. This led to studies on human beings and it was revealed that humans have even
more active sets of mirror neurons than the lower species. The same neurons fire when a
person performs an action and when they observe another person perform the same action.
This phenomenon is often best explained by thinking of how it is used by professional athletes.
Sports trainers show athletes videos of people performing a sport; this helps athletes improve
their own performance by watching someone else.
Mirror neurons also play a large role in language learning. Frans De Waal (20) found that in
teaching, the mirroring works both ways. That is, language learning becomes similar to a type of
interactive dance in which the teacher models a behavior, the student repeats it and the teacher
remodels the behavior, reinforcing student behavior which is appropriate and correcting what is
wrong. This is similar to the parent who repeatedly pronounces dada or mama to their child,
and then smiles in positive reinforcement when the child says something which approaches the
word. This is also a demonstration of why it is so important for students to get personal
feedback of what they have pronounced correctly or incorrectly.
What makes us start to create connections in our brain? It is usually some sort of positive
reinforcement, (however, it can also be some sort of negative reinforcement. ) In order for us to
make a connection, initially it should be pleasurable or rewarding in some way. That is why
babies easily develop the language they hear the most. They get used to hearing the sounds
made by their caregivers, so those are the sounds which become most important to them, as
those are the sounds they associate with getting fed or cleansed. Babies are also learning that if
they are able to establish a connection with other people and communicate their needs, a
caregiver is more readily able to give them what they require or want.
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Many mothers around the world claim that they can detect what their child needs from the
way it cries. A 2009 study by Birgit Mampe (6) found that infants cry using voice patterns they
learned in utero. That is, French babies cry with an upward inflection, while German babies use
a falling inflection. Henry W. Mahler describes rythmicity as an essential ingredient in human
communication and development. Can it be that newborn babies are actually communicating
and using language even by merely crying? Are they developing the appropriate way to
communicate in order to insure their own survival or to establish a human connection? I believe
that crying babies are using a native language both to communicate and to establish a human
connection.

Language is often defined as a systematic way of conveying meaning using symbols and/or
sounds. (14) Language is infinitely generative because one can combine these symbols in an
infinite number of combinations. Thus there are infinitely many ways to communicate even
within any one language and this number increases exponentially if one adds multiple
languages.
There is evidence that babies as young as four months old are already selecting which
phonemes appear in their native language and which ones they can ignore. (23) That is, the
baby is eliminating the ability to easily recognize and produce foreign sounds. While this may
seem like a bad thing, it is actually positive, because by eliminating extraneous sounds, the baby
can better focus on those which are important to his positive reinforcement and survival. In her
2007 studies with 18 month old babies, Dietrich (19) determined that Dutch babies could
distinguish between longer and shorter vowel duration, whereas English native speaking babies
could not. That is significant because such a difference in phonemes can mean a different word
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and meaning in Dutch, whereas in English, it does not. So babies as young as 1 years are
already demonstrating that they know if such things are important to their native language or
not.
Experiments done by French neuroscientist Olivier Pascalis (43) have shown that newborn
babies prefer a face to a non-face and by three months they can tell the difference between
human and non-human faces. His studies have also shown that at six months, babies can
differentiate between different monkey faces, but they start losing that ability around nine
months and also start preferring faces of their own race, in much the same way they start
preferring sounds of their native language. If however, the babies are given practice at
categorizing different monkey faces between the ages of three and nine months, they retain
that ability. This and numerous other studies (27) (38) (46) demonstrate that very small babies
have a tremendously elastic brain which is ready to make the necessary connections wherever it
is useful to them. However, as they age and as they choose what connections are important,
they lose the easy ability to form some of the neural networks which, even though they had
been formed early in life, have gone into disuse.
Therefore, teachers of second languages are attempting to reawaken neurons which have not
been used or which have gone into disuse. We are forming new connections and networks in
the brains of our students, connections which were available at birth, but had not been
important to the student at an earlier time. It is my belief that the older the student is, the
more important that they be focused for learning a language, as implicit learning takes place
more easily when the brain is more elastic, when they were younger. Therefore, while implicit
learning still occurs, the older the student is, the more he needs to concentrate on explicit
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learning to form the long-lasting connections necessary to help him express himself in a new
language.
Pierre Perruchet of Dijon, France, is one of many who have done experiments with artificial
language. His findings lead him to believe that we humans teach ourselves a language by
unconsciously noticing the statistical regularities in that language. He also concludes that this
implicit learning is independent of intellectual capabilities. (17) If this is true, this could explain
why even those with reduced mental capacity are able to communicate and use language.
However, I believe the bulk of their language learning takes place when they are quite young
and their brains are more receptive to implicit learning. I believe that brain elasticity plays a
major role for the learning disabled and that the learning disabled student has more trouble
making the explicit brain connections then the implicit connections due to some lack of control
to create new neural connections
However, we DO continue to learn intrinsically despite advancing age and reduced brain
elasticity. Two other studies stand out which do seem to demonstrate at least, that learning
does occur when one is not totally attentive. The first was by Bekinschtein and associates of
Wellcome Trust Biomedical Research in 2009. (2) He attempted to see if one could learn to
associate a certain sound (tone) with the reflexive action of an involuntary response when the
tone is paired with a stimulus which creates the involuntary response. He used two different
tones; one of which was followed by a puff of air to the eye to see if the subjects would blink
when they heard the tone played without the puff of air. That is, he tried to measure trace
learning whereby the subject learns to expect a noxious situation following a neutral stimulus
(the tone.) To differentiate between conscious and unconscious learners, he used three
different groups of subjects: the fully conscious group of subjects, a group in vegetative state,
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and a third group heavily sedated using propofol. The vegetative state (unconscious) group was
regarded as awake but not aware not enough to produce volitional movements while the
levels of the drug made the propofol (control) group show significant decrease in absolute
cerebral blood flow. The results showed that the conscious group demonstrated the highest
degree of trace learning; the unconscious group also showed some trace learning, while the
control group showed no learning. (Moreover, it was noted that among the vegetative group,
those who DID show the trace learning were more likely to recover from the vegetative state
then those who did not show trace learning.) The conclusion was that unconscious learning is
quite possible.
A second example which demonstrates unconscious learning is the 2012 work of Anat Arzi of the
Weizmann Institute of Science. (10) She used 55 healthy participants in an attempt to
associate odors with sounds. To mimic unconsciousness, the test subjects were sleeping when
the paired stimuli were presented. Participants were exposed to unpleasant odors similar to
rotting fish after a certain sound and pleasant odors like shampoo following a different sound.
The group found that the participants sniffed strongly or weakly on hearing the relevant tone
even though there was no odor and they were completely unaware of why they were sniffing
or that they had learned any relationship between the sounds and smells. The results were seen
regardless of when in the sleep cycle that the sounds and smells had been presented, but the
sniffing responses were slightly more pronounced in those participants who learned the
association during the rapid eye movement stage of sleep.
Studies by Malia Mason from Columbia University (41) demonstrate that our minds wander to a
certain extent particularly in the medial prefrontal cortex (primarily responsible for executive
or planning and higher level cognition functions,) even when we are focused on a project. She
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gives the example of when you are driving, but your mind shifts to your personal goals or
projects. She argues that if there would be something which happens on the road suddenly, you
have the ability to shift your thinking back to focus on the driving and avoid an accident. She
believes that this amounts to a type of cognitive cross-training which is actually good to help
us minimize our attention blindness, assist in multitasking and allow our brains to generate
more ideas and work more efficiently. Cathy Davidson (18) agrees and adds that this sort of
daydreaming better prepares us to unlearn one set of habits and learn something new. So
perhaps that daydreaming student is just training his mind! However, it is important that the
teacher recognize a wandering mind and bring it back into focus, so that any unconscious
learning which has taken place can be made more permanent. The older and less elastic the
brain is, the more repetitions are required, and also the more important explicit (focused)
learning becomes for long-term retention.
Timing for learning a second language is important. Claude Hagge believes the optimal ages or
learning a language is between 3 and 4 years and then again between 10 and 13 years of age.
(32) Ghislaine Calves puts the critical age for language learning around seven years of age, (9)
while Fred Genesee of McGill University believes the critical age is from birth to age two. (28)
The debate about exactly when it is best to learn a language continues, but it is generally agreed
that it is easier to learn language when one is younger and the brain elasticity is greater. Almost
all agree that it is easier to learn a new language before the onset of puberty. Studies of the
area in the brain known as Geschwinds territory agrees with a critical age of seven, as the
Geschwinds territory is one of the last parts of the brain to mature, at between five and seven
years of age. In any case, these experts suggest that it is highly detrimental to eliminate the
study of foreign language in early and middle schools. While it is certainly not impossible to
begin a new language past the critical age, it is much more difficult, both physically and
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mentally. Therefore, teachers need to avail themselves of all necessary tools to effectuate target
language learning, especially for the older student. In addition, it should not be forgotten that
older students do have factors which assist them in learning, namely their maturation with its
underlying motivation, as well as their cognitive development and academic training to learn.
I believe immersion is a valuable tool in learning a new language. Often more time is spent in
the pursuit of language learning in immersion than non-immersion and I believe that more time
and attention to the pursuit of a language always yields better results. In addition, studies
show that immersion learning mimics the way we learn our native language as evidenced by
displaying increases in left lateralization ( in right handed people) similar to that usually
associated with the higher proficiency in ones native language. (42) Immersion is more similar
to intrinsic learning, while typical (grammar-based) classroom learning is more extrinsic.
That same 2012 study by Morgan-Short compares both types of learning and also measures
language retention after a period of no exposure to the new language. The researchers used
artificial language trainees to measure how well subjects could retain what they had learned
months earlier. Their findings indicate that not only was much of the language retained after
the intervening months, but sometimes language ability actually increased. They attribute this
result to several factors, including a shift in reliance from declarative to procedural memory.
This is similar to the effect of subconsciously thinking something over and letting our brain sort
out how things work. Thus, we humans are better capable of remembering and using
information which deals with the pattern of how things work as opposed to trying to remember
something with rote memory. This demonstrates that knowing grammar whether it is learned
intrinsically or extrinsically has more value than mere memorization of specific examples.
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Indeed, cognitive neuroscience has revealed that both human and animal learners show
improvements on a wide range of tasks subsequent to periods without practice with the task or
to exposure to the stimuli. (42) I think this outcome is particularly important for second
language learners, for there is almost always an intervening period of time during which the
learner has no exposure to the target language. It is heartening to know that the learning is not
lost, and might actually be enhanced with the passage of time. As always, more studies are
needed to fully explain this phenomenon.
This knowledge of how the brain works implies multiple methods to approach second language
learning. It is important to begin language learning as early as possible and to use repetition to
encourage the formation of brain connections. It is essential to have maximum interaction
between the individual student and teacher so that the teacher can praise the correct student
attempts and dissuade incorrect utterances. Thus small class size for languages is crucial. We
should maximize opportunities for collaboration in order to employ mirror neurons and also
because students help each other to see some things which others dont. Also use realia and
mimic real life situations and use films of real people in real situations to maximize the effect of
mirror neurons. Use different types of presentations (i.e. written, audio only and also
audiovisual) to appeal to different types of learners and also to get the brain working holistically.
Realize that day-dreaming students may actually be learning something but they still need to be
brought back to conscious learning in order to make their unconscious learning more
permanent. Make language learning fun to bring the pleasure aspect into making new neural
connections. Make the human connection by (again) using realia and mimicking real life. Make
it even more real and important by giving immediate or near term opportunities for travel to a
place where the target language is spoken. Use declarative memory in the short term, but
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facilitate the switch to procedural memory which is longer lasting and uses brain connections
more similar to native language learning in the brain.
We do learn unconsciously. However, as we grow older we are forced to rely more and more on
extrinsic learning and we need to use our academic skills and self motivation to compensate for
loss of elasticity in the brain. The more we use the brain, the more it can give us, especially in
terms of different and more accurate ways of expressing ourselves and sharing our ideas. This is
what allows us to make connections and to effectuate that which makes us human and
separates us from other animals.