The Bilingual BrainWhen Karl Kim immigrated to the United Statesfrom Koreaas a teenager,he had a hard time learning English.Now he speaks it fluently,andhe had a

unique opportunityto see how our brains adapt to a second language.As a graduate student,Kimworked in the lab of Joy Hirsch,a neuroscientist in New York.______(46)

They found evidencethat children and adults don't use the same parts of the brain when they learna second language. The researchers used an instrument called an MRI

(magnetic resonanceimaging)scanner to study the brains of two groups of bilingualpeople.______(47)The other consisted of people who,like Kim, learned theirsecond

language later inlife.People from both groups were placed inside the MRI scanner.This allowedKim and Hirsch to see which parts of the brain were getting more blood and

were moreactive.They asked people from both groups to think about what they had done theday before,first in one language and then the other.They couldn't speak outloud

because any movementwould disrupt the scanning. Kim and Hirsch looked specifically at two languagecenters in the brain-Broca's area,which is believed to control speech

production,andWernicke's area,which is thought to process meaning.Kim and Hirsch found thatboth groups of people used the same part of Wernicke's area no matter what

language they werespeaking. ______(48) People who learned a second language as children used thesame region in Broca's area for both their first and second

languages.People wholearned a second language later in life used a different part of Broca's area fortheir second language.______(49)Hirsch believes that when language is

first beingprogrammed in young children,their brains may mix the sounds and structures ofall languages in the same area.Once that programming is complete,the processing

of a new languagemust be taken over by a different part of the brain. A second possibility issimply that we may acquire languages differently as children than we do as

adults.Hirsch thinksthat mothers teach a baby to speak by using different methods involving touch'sound,and sight.______(50)______(50)

A.But their use ofBroca's area was different.

B.One groupconsisted of those who had learned a second language as children.

C.How does Hirschexplain this difference?

D.We use specialparts of the brain for language learning.

E.And that is verydifferent from learning a language in a high school or college class.