Question

What are the main factors that impact how you know what you know? What role does language play in that understanding?

Please be specific.

Answer 1

The main factors which affect how we get information and what we know are

• Source of information
• Language of the content and information
• The way it is presented or conveyed to us
• Our previous knowledge about it
• Personal biases or prejudices
• Extent of information which is provided and conveyed .
• Environment both external and internal
• Grasping of information and later processing it to extract the central idea
• Our own understanding of the subject or content .

Language is very important or we can say vital in understanding . It acts as a communication channel and a bridge . If proper language is used only then an individual is used to understand the things or contents . We can take an example of Afrcian tribes . Small children from the tribes are taught in the school about solar energy . The language of instruction was English for the first lecture . Many students were not able to understand what was conveyed to them because of the language barrier . In a next lecture they were conveyed in their own mother tongue which resulted in better understanding . This shows the importance of language and how it bridges the gap between information, content and understanding .It is one of the vital pillars of better understanding .