COMO O CÉREBRO APRENDE UMA LÍNGUA ADICIONAL: UMA REVISÃO DA LITERATURA

Abstract

This investigation approaches two questions: How does our brain learn an additional language? Is this a topic of interest to our peers, teachers-researchers of additional languages in Brazil who publish their studies in Portuguese? So, our main purposes were: (1) exploring the field of neuroscience through a bibliographical review and (2) finding out studies published in Portuguese in Brazil which relate neuroscience and additional language acquisition/learning. Our bibliographical review approached brain functions, the structure of the cerebral cortex, the relation between learning and language processing, and factors that influence language acquisition. Our quantitative field research methodology was a systematic review made at Google Scholar in search of studies published in Portuguese over the last 10 years in Brazil. By making use of logical operators, we found five papers that link cognitive neuroscience to additional language learning. The main themes of these papers were vocabulary and memory. All five studies qualitatively analyzed pointed out that vocabulary acquisition depends on memory and that efficient storage depends on attention and emotion.