DEVEt.OPlNG LISTENING FLUENCY

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brain known as Broca's area. Damage to this area causes aphasia in which the sufferer "can utter at most only one or two slurred words."⁵³Yet we know this is brain damage, not muscular damage, because the same person "may be able to sing a melody rapidly, correctly and even with elegance."⁵⁴This is possiblc because music is controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain. Comprehension, on the other hand, is controlled by the part of the left brain known as Wernicke's area. "A person with Broca's aphasia may have an essentially normal comprehension of language,"⁵⁵but "a lesion in Wernicke's area can produce a severe loss of understanding, even though hearing of non-verbal sounds and music may be fully normal." ⁵⁶Speaking and listening are related. There is, as pointed out by Lashley, "too much in common to depend upon wholly different mechanisms." ^{5 7}And, indeed, the two areas are normallyconnected. "We now know that the two areas are connected by a bundle of nerve fibers known as the arcuate fasciulus. One can hypothesize that in the repetition of a heard word the auditory patterns are relayed from Wernicke's area to Broca's area." ⁵⁸"When the arcuate fasciulus is damaged, speech is fluent but abnormal and the patient can comprehend words but cannot repeat them." ⁵⁹

Brain research such as this indicates that learning to sing a song and learning to speak involve quite different mechanisms; in fact, they involve two different hemispheres of the brain. This researchs also points out that learning to listen involves some brain mechanisms which are different from the mechanisms involved in learning to speak. This research also helps us understand how the transfer from listening to speaking seems to be readily achieved while transfer from speaking to listening seems to involve no direct brain connection.
We can now deduce from the model what happens in the brain during the production
of language. When a word is heard the output from the primary auditory area of the
cortex is received by Wernicke's area.⁶⁰
Understanding the spoken name of an object involves the transfer of the auditory
stimuli from Heschl's gyrus (the primary auditory complex) to Wernicke's area and
then to the angular gyrus, which arouses the comparable visual pattern in the visual
association cortex. ⁶¹
The comprehension involves more than just the visual association cortex, although that may be the major associational cortex for object identification. One of the great advantages of the total physical response strategy suggested by Asher ⁶²may be its development of multiple associational cortex interactions with the Wernicke area, including kinesthetic associations. Comprehension thus appears to be involved with the Wernicke area for linguistic symbolic analysis and with other parts of the brain for its meaningful association. Speech, on the other hand, seems to be triggered from the Wernicke area and can be independent of meaning.
If the word is to be spoken, the pattern is transmitted from Wernicke's area to Broca's
area where the articulatory form is aroused and passed on to the motor area that
controls the movement of the muscles of speech.⁶³
A remarkable case of aphasia has provided striking confirmation of Wernicke's model. Were it not for its tragic reality, this account might be considered a parody on the parrot-like mimicry memory drills of the early "A-L" movement. Geschwind describes the case of a woman who has suffered from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning which destroyed the cortex surrounding Wernicke's area (the area which provided meaning) but left intact the cortical structure related to the mechanical production of language (Broca's area, Wernicke's area and the connecting area).⁶⁴
During the nine years we studied her she was totally helpless and required complete
nursing care. She never uttered speech spontaneously and showed no evidence of