In 2009 researcher Victor Ferreira conducted study showing that people form sentences with procedural memory.
To understand how big a deal this is, I have to explain some things first.
Procedural memory(n).
Also called implicit memory. Guides the processes we perform and most frequently resides below the level of conscious awareness. Retrieved and utilized for the execution of the integrated procedures involved in both cognitive and motor skills; from tying shoes to flying an airplane to reading. Accessed and used without the need for conscious control or attention. It is created through "procedural learning" or, repeating a complex activity over and over again until we figure out how to make all of the relevant neural systems work together to automatically produce the activity.
This study (among others) suggest that learning a language is like learning to tie your shoes, or to ride a bike. For anyone who's been in a language class before, does this sound like a typical class to you? If it does, tell me where you're learning. I'd like to speak to the teacher.
Most classes use a declarative or explicit approach to language teaching, at least in the early levels, and they usually never leave this approach.
Declarative memory(n).
Also called explicit memory. One of two types of long term human memory. Memories which can be consciously recalled such as facts and events. Declarative memory can be divided into two categories: episodic memory which stores specific personal experiences and semantic memory which stores factual information.
Ah, this sounds like language study! In language classes we can easily recall the drudgery of memorizing vocabulary lists and doing grammar exercises. The formula of A + B = Z. If we remember enough formulas, we can figure it out. The only reason it hasn't worked yet, we think, is because we haven't worked hard enough.
Except that the approach just doesn't work.
Memorization of rules follow a declarative path which can give a simulation of fluency up to a point. But it will never produce mastery. A native speaker learns through an implicit approach, and unless you do too, you are literally speaking a different language.
Victor Ferreira's study is one of a few I've seen about teaching syntax and grammar rules at subjects suffering from amnesia or Alzheimer's. Like his study, it is shown that people can remember how to construct sentence patterns even when they cannot explain how the rule works, or even that they had learned it.
If we think about our native language, we do the same. Most of us can't give explicit reasons for applying certain sentence structures, but we can do it continuously without error.
This shows that we use a different neural mechanism for learning languages than we do for learning academic subjects like science. Yet we continue to teach it as if it were an academic subject.
Why?
The assumption that adults cannot learn in a similar way to children is based on studies that compare explicit approaches with adults to implicit approaches to children. It's comparing oranges and apples. If more of Victors kind of studies continue, I hope there will be enough scientific evidence to appease the academic community that language learning should be trained like a sport, rather than an academic subject.
