My Multimodal Research Presentation: Does the First Language we Learn Impact how we Learn Best?

In junior high and early high school, at one time or another, we were probably all required to take some kind of “personality test” to determine which way we learned best. When my results came back, I was shocked. Compared to the results of my classmates, who appeared to be stronger in one, maybe two areas, my learning styles were extremely flexible, almost dependent on the subject in question. For science and math class, my most efficient style was visual. For social studies and art, kinesthetic, and for English and Spanish, audial. As my class analyzed our results, I found that mine made more sense than they did at first glance. All of my results were practically balanced, proving me to be more versatile when it came to adapting my learning style. When I was thinking about a research topic, my mind drifted to my experiences with worldwide learning. My school had recently hosted two foreign exchange students, one from Thailand and one from Taiwan. My cousin had taught in China for a few months in college, and I’d taught some kids from Japan for a 4-H project.

Almost all of those kids seemed to learn better visually, and they excelled in the activities or subjects where diagrams and pictures were used, which got me thinking: Does one’s mother tongue affect the way we learn best? I’ll explore this topic today by first diving into how our brain learns a language. Next, we’ll cover the many different learning styles, as well as connections between them and two major ethnic groups. Finally, we’ll look at why these connections might exist.

So how do our brains learn a language, and what happens to them when we do? Learning a language often starts in the womb, where unborn babies can hear their mother talk. As children learn, the hippocampus and some parts of the cerebral cortex that are closely tied to learning languages begin to expand. In fact, Agnes Kovacs (2009) found out that babies who were raised in bilingual homes had more cognitive control than babies of the same age who were brought up in monolingual homes. Even if children don’t grow up in bilingual households or environments, these benefits apply to teens and even adults who choose to pursue another language. In a study by Dr. Thomas Bak (1947, 1983), it was found that children who learned a language at a young age and continued to study that language and became bilingual had better attention spans and higher levels of concentration than their peers who dropped the language. Bak tested 853 11-year-olds in 1947 and then had them retest in 2008 and 2010 when the participants were in their 70s. Just by retaining that information and using it regularly, the participants increased their concentration skills and their attention spans, keeping those benefits into their retirements.

Now let’s turn to the different learning styles and connections between them and two major ethnic groups. The three main ways people learn in a formal setting are visual, audial, and kinetic learning (Bhasin, n.d.). Visual, of course relates to seeing the information in charts or diagrams, drawing pictures, or reading notes on a topic. Audial learners prefer to hear things related to their topic, such as listening to stories or personal accounts, or having rhymes or songs to go along with the information. Kinesthetic learners like to do things and experience the topic. This can include counting on fingers, taking part in simulations, or playing games. Another factor that comes into play during learning, however, is whether the students are solitary or social learners. Visual learners may be more likely to be solitary learners, since looking at things doesn’t need to be done in a group setting. Audial learners can sway, due to the fact that some elements can be done individually, like listening to an audiobook, but things such as round table discussions need to be done with multiple people. Kinesthetic learners are likely to be group learners because most activities that require moving are done in small groups, especially at the grade school level. But how do these learning styles connect to ethnic groups? According to a study done by Janice Ellen Hale, (Hale, 2016) African American kids were more likely to be audial/kinesthetic social learners in literature classes. Hale taught a class of African American kids and she monitored the ways they learned literature best. In the research paper from the experiment, Hale recalls that an African American coworker told her to speak to her students “like their mommas do” because she noticed that they appreciated more explicitly stated things as opposed to open-ended or rhetorical ones. Prior to that, a study at Tribal College, a university comprised mainly of students of the Chippewa and Ojibway tribes, showed that Native American students were more likely to learn visually/kinesthetically on their own (Carruthers, 1989).

Now that we’ve established connections between some ethnic groups and learning styles, the question of why remains. The answer to that remains unclear, but Lera Boroditsky suggests that it’s all about language structure. In her TED Talk about how language shapes the way we think, she elaborates on the differences between languages. One of her main points was that languages vary when it comes to perceiving color and numbers. Some languages, such as Russian, have more than one word for blue (goluboy for light blue and siniy for dark blue), making speakers of that language differentiate between shades of light blue and dark blue faster than speakers of say, English, who only have one word for blue. Some languages only use the equivalents of “light” and “dark” to describe colors. Another example Boroditsky used was that some languages don’t have counting words. I mentioned above that math, at least in America, is a very visual subject. This leads to the drawing of the conclusion that the visual learning skills of native speakers of such a language may not be as high. The third of Lera’s points was that most languages have more than one “the” word, or pronouns for a noun and that whether a noun was “masculine”, “femenine” or “neutral” depended on the language. Native speakers of German and Spanish were asked to describe a bridge, an item that was masculine in German and femenine in Spanish. Of course their answers varied, but the Spanish speakers used words that also could’ve been used to describe a woman, whereas the German speakers used more masculine adjectives. My final example of how language shapes the way we think actually has to do with Ancient Greek. In an article written by Neel Burton (Burton, 2018), it was found that Ancient Greek actually had four words for different types of love; familial love, passionate love, friendship, and charitable love.

In conclusion, the language we speak does indeed shape the way we think, but only to a certain extent. As Carl Rogers put it in his book A Way of Being, he says, “I believe…the value of combining experimental with cognitive learning.” It’s not only the language we speak, but the experiences we’ve had in our lives and that shape the way we think, perceive, and look at the world. I explored the different learning styles, and connections between them and two ethnic groups, establishing that the first language one speaks does indeed influence the way one thinks. After constituting that, I gave examples of how different cultures think differently based on the structure of their languages. To further prove my point, I would like to travel later in life to observe different cultures for myself, particularly the diverse Spanish-speaking cultures and those of Europe, to help broaden my horizons and understandings of linguistics.