Episode 2: The (Bilingual) Reading Brain

Summary Keywords

reading, mother tongue, language, brain, child, learning, English, bilingual, word, Chinese, school, different languages, text, speak, Malay, Mandarin, books, print, studies, parents

00:04 Dr. Maryanne Wolf

We were never born to read. Human beings invented reading only a few thousand years ago. And with this invention, we rearrange the very organization of our brain, which in turn expanded the ways we were able to think, which altered the intellectual evolution of our species.

00:30 Host, Loh Chin Ee

That's how cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Maryanne Wolf starts her book, Proust and the Squid, an exploration into the complexities of reading development. In this episode, we look at how the reading brain develops and explore the advantages of being able to read in more than one language. I'm Loh Chin Ee. Welcome to the How We Read podcast.

00:55 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Chapter One: The Learning Brain.

01:00 Host, Loh Chin Ee

In 1888, a businessman lost his ability to read after suffering a stroke. Joseph Jules Dejerie, a French neurologist, described it as alexia without agraphia, or literally, impaired reading without impaired writing. The businessman's intellect was unaffected, as well as his spoken and written language skills, and he continued to live a full life, running his business and enjoying the opera. Due to limitations of 19th century medicine, Dejerie had to wait four years, until his patient's death, before he could analyze his brain. In the autopsy, he found lesions on the left hemisphere that caused this verbal blindness. Today, the technology for studying the brain is far more sophisticated and we're learning more each day about how reading and the brain are connected. Dr. Beth O'Brien, Principal Research Scientist at the National Institute of Education conducts research on how young children learn to read and write.

02:11 Dr. Beth O’Brien

Our brain was never genetically programmed to read. Linguist Steven Pinker famously said that children might be wired for sound or language, but print is an optional accessory that must be painstakingly bolted on or learned. So without a specific reading centre, the brain does what it does with other forms of new evolutionary processes like cultural inventions like reading. It uses circuits that were evolved for other purposes.

02:38 Host, Loh Chin Ee

The human brain was not designed for reading. However, the evolutionary brain worked with pre-existing structures to make new connections within the brain’s architecture to make reading possible.

02:50 Dr. Beth O’Brien

There's no reading centre in the brain because we're not evolved to read. We invented reading as a species. A reading brain network uses neuroplasticity, the brains adaptability, or a way to adapt to do something new with parts of the brain that were developed to do other things, and to integrate them in a way that these different parts communicate in small epochs of time, so they can do so fluently. Neurologists initially thought that you have one brain with one set of brain cells at birth and you don't grow new brain cells; you only lose them over time. But what neuroscience has been learning since then is that the brain is very adaptive.

03:34 Host, Loh Chin Ee

It's amazing how many things have to happen in the brain for us to read a word, a sentence, a book.

03:42 Dr. Beth O’Brien

When you initially look at a word in printed text, within the first one tenth of a second, you see activity in the brain that increases in these visual areas at the back of the brain. The activity spreads to the visual word form area at the base of the brain between the visual and the temporal cortexes. Then within the next quarter-second, activation moves to the frontal lobe, and then also the temporal lobe. So all of this activation comes in response to a printed word stimulus and it takes place before you even move your eyes to the next word.

04:15 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Expert readers can scan up to four words per second, or 240 words per minute, or 14,400 words per hour. To give context, that's about five hours to read JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Reading thus allows us to process a lot more information in a short span of time. The human brain uses different strategies for reading different kinds of texts. Reading a wide range of texts may help us become more flexible readers.

04:48 Dr. Beth O’Brien

At some level, there are some basic similarities between reading a word, reading connected text. There were similarities between different types of texts that people read. In one study, they're reading expository science texts. And then in another study, they were reading more narrative types of texts. With the narrative types of texts, at least they could distinguish between processes related to constructing what's referred to as the situation model, kind of understanding what's going on in the narrative, and then processes that are involved with maintenance of that situation model. That type of text might have its own specific pattern of how the brain deals with processing the text, as compared to reading expository, scientifically based texts.

05:36 Host, Loh Chin Ee

I asked Beth about the impact of reading in print and digitally. Does it make a difference to children's brain development and reading comprehension?

05:46 Dr. Beth O’Brien

The jury's probably still out on this. Some initial studies were finding that at least behaviorally, when individuals are reading online formats, they might be able to read faster or just as fast as reading actual print, but they showed some negative effects on comprehension. This kind of goes back to an older set of studies that looked at what was called rapid visual serial presentation or RSVP. That's where instead of seeing like a whole line of text, each word comes up individually. And what they found with that type of presentation is you can double or triple people's reading speed. But again, comprehension suffers.

06:24 Host, Loh Chin Ee

There's a tradeoff between reading fast and reading slowly. You get information quickly when you speed read but you lose out on the finer details and opportunities for deep reflection. Reading well involves figuring out the purpose for each reading task in order to decide how best to read the text for the intended purpose.

06:44 Dr. Beth O’Brien

The more engaged that you are with the text, whether it's printed or whether it's online, the more integration and the more of the reading network that needs to be integrated, it's going to result in better comprehension.

06:58 Host, Loh Chin Ee

At the end of the day, interest is key to reading engagement and comprehension. Finding an interesting book or article is a good way to get the reading brain deeply engaged.

07:11 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Chapter Two: The Bilingual Reading Edge

07:14 Ling Xin Jin & Nadia

[Xin Jin reading aloud to Nadia]

07:30 Host, Loh Chin Ee

That was Ling Xin Jin, reading with her precocious three-year-old daughter, Nadia. Nadia loves all things Elsa and likes pretending to be a princess or fairy. Xin Jin has been speaking to Nadia in Chinese from an early age and she tells us why she made that choice.

07:51 Ling Xin Jin

To inculcate that love of Chinese language to her. I actually think it's a very, very beautiful language when you look at the idioms, the stories that you have from like the 70s, the 80s, etc. I've read a quote somewhere where it says that you don't really understand your own language until you understand a different language. So it's really about having transferable skills or transfer learning. When you learn one thing, it actually becomes easier when you learn a second. And they're very young and very malleable, like a sponge, in terms of their brain. It's, I think, the most optimal time to actually expose them to different things and different languages, multiple languages, rather than sticking to one.

08:34 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Mukhlis Abu Bakar, Associate Professor at the Asian Languages and Cultures Academic Group at the National Institute of Education explains the advantages of being bilingual.

08:46 Dr. Mukhlis Abu Bakar

A bilingual child would process information in a different way than a monolingual child. He or she is aware of two different cultures, two senses of how things can be expressed in different languages. They would have a greater empathy for different kinds of people. Importantly, I think in terms of education, they have a cognitive edge over a monolingual child. They can access a lot more information, they have a wider knowledge about anything that impinges on their daily life.

09:22 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Beth tells us that this early investment may have long term neurological impact.

09:27 Dr. Beth O’Brien

Individuals who are bilingual might have less incidents of dementia when they're going into their older years. Anytime that you're using the brain in an active way, like in reading, if you have to use it in a way that's flexible, so you're maybe using a language like Chinese where you're having to map print to whole word sounds, or there's a lot of homophones, where you have words that sound alike but in print, they look different. These types of activities and processes that you have to use your brain for will involve you to practice with more parts of the reading brain network than if you're just reading in one language.

10:09 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Dr. Sun Baoqi who researches on bilingual reading at the National Institute of Education explains the differences between learning to read in English and in another language such as Chinese.

10:22 Dr. Sun Baoqi

When we learn to write word, for English, by looking at certain letters, we know these letters stands for certain sounds. And if a child has heard the sound before, it's much easier for her or him to figure out the meaning of the word. On the other hand, Chinese is the whole word or character stands for meaning instead of sound. Knowing how to speak Chinese sometimes do not really help you to recognize the meaning of the character. You need to learn the character one by one. So this is the first difference. At the beginning stage, children will learn English relatively faster and easier. The second difference between English and Chinese is the grammar. Chinese has a simpler grammar system compared to English. The implication for this difference is at the later stage, once children learn the basic words, at decoding stage, grammar, it's much easier in Chinese. However, children will spend more time and effort in learning English grammar.

11:28 Host, Loh Chin Ee

These different ways of processing activate different parts of the brain and challenge our brains to work harder. New circuits or neural networks are created when we read in another language, boosting brain plasticity. Studies suggest that the brain responds faster to new learning. Besides enhancing brain plasticity and learning, the ability to read and understand different languages develops a greater capacity for cultural understanding. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, known as the linguistic relativity hypothesis, states that our view of the world is shaped by our language. A well-known example cited by Whorf is the word ‘snow’. Eskimos may have many words for snow compared to those who live in a place where no snow falls. In tropical Singapore, we may have many more words to describe rain and heat than Eskimos do.

12:24 Dr. Mukhlis Abu Bakar

In English, there is only one word for rice, for instance, but then in Malay because traditional society lived in an environment where they plant rice starting from paddy and so on. So in Malay, there are many different words for different stages of the rice that are being produced, we have the word ‘padi’. Padi is that grain of rice that is still attached to the stalk. And then we have beras. Beras is when the outer shell has been removed where the white grain is and that is beras. And then when that beras is cooked, then we have nasi. So we have padi, beras and nasi whereas in English it’s only rice, right? Reading in different languages would open a whole new vista for the child in understanding the different cultures and different ways of life that language represents.

13:17 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Embedded in the DNA of language is our culture. Being able to read in different languages improves cultural understanding and develops empathy. We can learn a language by listening to and speaking that language. However, being able to read in that language has additional advantages.

13:38 Dr. Mukhlis Abu Bakar

Printed text is different from spoken text. A person could be speaking and reading in English, but then he can only speak in Malay. That would not enable him to understand the full range of ideas in that second language. Unless he is also reading through the printed text.

13:56 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Children are more likely to be exposed to novel or unusual words through reading compared to listening to spoken language and watching television. Reading provides more opportunities for vocabulary building, and a larger vocabulary leads to faster processing speed and greater efficiency in reading in the target language. That's one good reason to limit screen time and get children to read more.

14:24 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Chapter Three: Supporting Early Reading Development

14:28 Ling Xin Jin & Nadia

[Xin Jin reading aloud to Nadia]

14:42 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Multicultural Singapore has a bilingual educational policy. English is used as the medium of instruction for all subjects, but all students are expected to learn the official Mother Tongue language as a second language. Depending on ethnicity and sometimes, choice, of the student, the dominant Mother Tongue languages learned could be Malay, Chinese, or Tamil. The home, other than the school, is one important place where children pick up language skills and interest. In Singapore, where more than 70% of current primary one students come from English-speaking homes, the kind of home and community immersion required for learning Mother Tongue languages may be more difficult.

15:27 Dr. Mukhlis Abu Bakar

We are a victim of our own success in the sense that the system has turned parents from speaking the Mother Tongue language at home to English. I grew up in Malay and then I learned English in school, and Malay has always been at the back of my mind even though at some stretch of my life I don't use Malay. But because I grew up with Malay, that has not gone away from me. It's just a matter of finding myself, putting my myself back into a situation where I need to use the language.

16:01 Host, Loh Chin Ee

We need to provide opportunities for the child to read and use the Mother Tongue language.

16:06 Dr. Mukhlis Abu Bakar

If the parents speak to them in English and if the parents speak among themselves in English, the child will know that, well, English is the medium of instruction, or when my parents speak and when they speak to me and I speak to them in English too. So they take the cue from the parents. But if the parents adopt a different strategy where they change, they switch languages to Malay or to Chinese, then that child would also get the cue that, well, it’s equally cool to speak in that language.

16:36 Host, Loh Chin Ee

For the parent who speaks in the Mother Tongue language, deliberately integrating the language into daily or weekly reading helps to immerse the child in the language.

16:46 Ling Xin Jin

She actually shows an interest in the language. So she goes for enrichment classes in Mandarin and she loves the class. She comes back and she's like a little teacher with her flashcard. So she's teaching her father how to read the word, correcting his pronunciation, and she will point out the similar words in storybooks that we read. She also loves to read Mandarin storybooks. So I think that's one of the successes – she's not averse to actually using the language. I guess it's more of her comfort level. She's still more comfortable speaking or replying and responding in English as compared to Mandarin most of the time.

17:27 Host, Loh Chin Ee

I am myself guilty of speaking predominantly to my children in English, purchasing many more English than Chinese books, and reading the news in English only. Using my Mother Tongue language and encouraging my children to read in Chinese takes deliberate effort on my part. I asked my guests where I can get resources and what I can do as a parent who believes in the importance of learning the Mother Tongue language.

17:52 Dr. Beth O’Brien

One area that's probably helpful is just through the national public libraries that there are many resources available to parents in terms of having books that are curated for their child's age and the language that they want the child to read in. They also offer things like workshops for different Mother Tongue languages for kids.

18:13 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Using eBooks and dual language books to integrate daily Mother Tongue reading is another way to encourage immersion in the language.

18:22 Dr. Beth O’Brien

Some of the concerns that parents had expressed in some studies is that sometimes they don't feel very confident in their own Mother Tongue proficiency so it makes this sharing and reading together with their child a little more challenging for them or uncomfortable for them. Something like an eBook is a resource that could help even the parent with words they might not be familiar with or with knowing the accurate pronunciation of the word without them having to generate the pronunciation themselves. And then there are other options like dual language books. Parents might feel more comfortable reading a story where they can have the two languages on the same page, in terms of what the story is about, and then they can help their child work through the Mother Tongue words on the page.

19:09 Host, Loh Chin Ee

It's a lot more difficult to get a wide selection on Mother Tongue books. Getting familiar English titles in Mother Tongue languages is one way to begin.

19:18 Ling Xin Jin

In terms of the quantity I still think we have a lot more English books. Unfortunately, it just feels as if it's easier to look for more interesting English books as compared to Mandarin books in bookshops or online. So we've been going down to the library pretty regularly to look at several books. I also think that there is actually a pretty good selection of books that have been translated from English to Mandarin. So for example, Have You Filled A Bucket Today?. So instead of picking out the English version, we actually pick up the Mandarin version, to read to them a familiar story, and hopefully they then get a bit more comfortable with reading it in Mandarin rather than in English.

20:03 Host, Loh Chin Ee

The school is another crucial place for learning one's Mother Tongue language. School and classroom libraries can increase students’ access to Mother Tongue books. Since the Mother Tongue collections tend to be smaller than the English collection in most schools and libraries, teachers and librarians must find ways to help children find books they might like.

20:26 Dr. Sun Baoqi

Librarians or teachers need to get more resources and get more information on children's books. It can come from different sources. For instance, teachers can spend their own time to read to select books. A second way is to type on our national library system. For some of our colleagues from NLB they are also working on book recommendations for Mother Tongue. And the third one, it comes from children. Ask children to share with us what are the books they like, especially for mother tongue books, because sometimes they have more access compared to school librarians. So tap on children and NLB, as well as their own resources, can help the school library to curate a better collection for Mother Tongue books.

21:12 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Since many children come from homes with less exposure to the Mother Tongue language these days, schools have a big part to play when it comes to learning Mother Tongue languages. We can immerse young children in environments where they are exposed to both English and mother tongue languages. This helps them to develop their awareness and understanding of the connections between the two languages.

21:33 Dr. Mukhlis Abu Bakar

In school, especially in the preschool and also in the lower primary school, there has to be more collaborative work between Mother Tongue language teachers and English teachers in trying to come up with a way of helping the children to know the differences between English and the Mother Tongue.

21:53 Dr. Mukhlis Abu Bakar

We can't afford to teach the languages separately because a bilingual child is very different from a monolingual child. A bilingual child would make use of the entire language resources that they have in order to understand a certain meaning. Certain expressions, certain sentences, certain phrases would be more amenable to the child if presented in one language and not the other. And it goes with the other expressions as well. It could be the other language.

22:25 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Schools should make deliberate effort to ensure there are dual language reading materials throughout the school in the forms of signs, notices, books. The more reading materials there are around the school, the more opportunities a child has for reading in that language.

22:41 Dr. Mukhlis Abu Bakar

School has provided in terms of compulsory learning of the Mother Tongue language, but it needs to move out of the classroom. It needs to permeate the school spaces, if not the public spaces, but I think a school is a very important place for the child to develop that appreciation. He needs to appreciate the language. He needs to value the language to know that it is important before he is encouraged to learn and speak the language. So massive exposure, providing the opportunities for them to use the language so that he or she won't feel awkward to use a language. A living language, a language that can survive the test of time is the language where the community of speakers speak it in day-to-day living.

23:31 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Living in Singapore, we are privileged to have opportunities to be exposed to the many tongues of our multilingual ancestors and neighbors. Being able to read in different languages allow us to understand our personal, regional and global cultures, and to draw on the rich histories made available through the written word transmitted across generations and across civilizations. The reading brain is a living brain, growing and adapting as we learn to read. Challenging ourselves to read different kinds of texts, read in different ways, and to read in different languages are ways of rewiring the circuits in our brains to be more flexible and adaptable for learning about each other and about the world.

24:25 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Thank you for listening to the How We Read podcast on The Bilingual Reading Brain. This episode was written and hosted by me, Loh Chin Ee, and my thanks go to my guests for sharing their thoughts and homes with us. This episode was produced by Kenn Delbridge of Splice Studios. Swipe on the cover art to see show notes with links and references. We’re available on all major podcast apps. Please subscribe to be notified of new episodes and take a moment to give us a five-star review. For more information, please visit lohchinee.com.