Tell them how it is. Be dissilusionizers! A few simple ideas about remembering

Spending long hours on learning vocabulary? Not anymore! With our new super effective method, you’ll learn ten times faster. Join us now! – a friend of mine stuck a leaflet under my nose, waiting for encouragement. I have much comprehension for him and other learners who long to master a foreign language with a minimum of time and effort (well, after all it’s all about conserving energy, isn’t it?) but I have no warm feelings for those who delude their future students with promises never to be kept. But, on the other hand… so many abilities of human mind are said to be still unexplored…

Spending long hours on learning vocabulary? Not anymore! With our new super effective method, you’ll learn ten times faster. Join us now! – a friend of mine stuck a leaflet under my nose, waiting for encouragement. I have much comprehension for him and other learners who long to master a foreign language with a minimum of time and effort (well, after all it’s all about conserving energy, isn’t it?) but I have no warm feelings for those who delude their future students with promises never to be kept. But, on the other hand… so many abilities of human mind are said to be still unexplored…

After giving my friend a much discouraging reply concerning the truthfulness of the ad, I started ruminating over the most effective ways of teaching vocabulary. And it was when to the surface of my consciousness bubbled the Latin dictum: Repetitio est mater studiorum. Most people who went through school education must have heard it frequently enough to hold it true but, interestingly enough, they’ve maintained childlike faith that foreign words may be learnt without toilsome revising. But to what extent is this centuries-old saying justified? Do we have any proof it is actually relevant? All in good time. Let’s start with something as basic as memory itself.

Repetitio est mater studiorum…

Memory has been for decades the object of numerous and varied studies. What most researchers agree on is that there are different types of memory. Short-term memory holds usually no more than 7 items (e.g., words or numbers) for a few seconds. After being given someone’s phone number, we can hold it in our memory long enough to dial it. But after we get through, we usually forget the number. Long-term memory is responsible for holding information for much longer periods (sometimes for the span of life). And when speaking about remembering, recalling or forgetting in the context of learning and acquiring knowledge, it is usually long term memory that one thinks about. The very concepts of both kinds of memory may seem a bit vague, as is the case with most psychological terms. However, they have firm biological substrate. Brain resonance examinations show that the region of brain particularly related to short-term memory is the pre-frontal lobes, while that responsible for storing pieces of information is located in the inner fold of temporal lobe. Equally welldocumented seems the process of remembering, which can be described as transferring pieces of information from short-term memory to longterm memory. The most basic way to transfer something to long term memory is to repeat it. But passive exposure would also do. In one of their studies, Cambridge scientists put electrodes on the heads of volunteers to monitor their brain activity. After they listened to some new words, in their brains was registered the forming of new neural networks specialized in “recognizing” these specific words. The only applicative problem was that the volunteers were exposed to as many as six hundred repetitions… This much overwhelming number could be hardly referred to, when brought into the field of foreign language learning. Passive exposure would not lead to productive mastery either. An important conclusion, however, is the one concerning formation of neural networks along with passive repetitions. With active ones, the process is even more distinctive.

Scientists are not of one mind as to how many repetitions guarantee remembering a new word. But they tend to opt for not fewer than twenty. And, at this point, like an echo reverberates in my head a secret “promise” given us (students) by one of our lecturers: “I guarantee that if you make three sentences with a word you want to remember, you won’t forget this word till the end of your lives”, she said. This personal discovery of hers, being a result of many years’ studying Italian, is in perfect accordance with Tulving’s psychological deep processing theory. Tulving claimed that learning new words is much more effective if they are presented in a complex semantic context. In other words, it is always better to provide a learner with an interesting sentence (The great bird swooped down and carried off the struggling chicken) than just a single word (a chicken). Of course, the complexity of such sentences should be tailored to learners’ level.

A series of studies conducted by Tulving showed also that remembering is even faster when a new word has some personal relevance. Obviously, words usually are not personally relevant per se. It would be our task as teachers to make them so by, e.g., asking learners questions (To what extent does it concern you? Is it something you yourself would like to have) or by incorporating these new words into interactive exercises whose aim is apparently different than just learning new words (task-based learning).

Emotional reinforcement

In his theory, Tulving claimed that a factor which markedly boosts the process of remembering is also emotions involved. Just like repetition, emotional arousal is a sort of reinforcement for the remembering process. It does not even seem necessary to state that things which arouse emotions are remembered quicker and in a more durable way. But how, on earth, are we to provide emotional context to every linguistic item we want to teach? And isn’t this “common truth” in sharp opposition to, e.g., Gattegno’s postulate for low affective filter as a crucial factor for acquisition to take place? To my way of thinking, it is not so much about getting students excessively excited. It is rather about some emotional charge of the material to be learnt. In the context of foreign language learning, arousing emotions would equal arousing interest, as strong emotions of another kind might be counterproductive. It goes without saying that repetition and emotional reinforcement are not two alternative ways of supporting remembering process. They are complementary. Monotonous revising, devoid of any pleasure and interest, is almost always doomed to fail while emotional factors, if not accompanied by repeating, are often not enough for our brains to form a new neural connection, that is, to encode a new piece of information.

Memory train

Any reflection over memory processes would be much incomplete if one failed to mention association, which makes the core of some very popular memo techniques.

Without much exaggeration, our memory could be compared to a train where each newlyremembered piece of information goes to its respective carriage. If, trying to remember a new word, we turn to associating this word with some piece of our former knowledge, the process of learning will probably be grossly facilitated. A new word will be encoded into memory material which is already consolidated and has its “place” in neural systems. And here the question arises: why shouldn’t one give up toilsome repeating in favour of associating? It’d be so much quicker! But associations have their catches too. First of all, associating is really helpful in remembering new words but does not guarantee durability of a memory trace. In other words, we could be more able to remember a given word but after a few weeks, despite having used association, we can still have problem recalling it, unless we decide to make some traditional revising… Besides, associating is, per force, a semantic process – we put words together to create some meaning. And when creating meaning, we can easily lose sight of form. That is why, in classroom context, there should be applied two types of vocabulary exercises, those form- and meaningfocused. When our students are engaged in doing an association exercise which is about creating a story, they might get easily “distracted” by the very meaning of the narrative (let alone other linguistic and extra-linguistic factors). Thus, it would be useful to provide them with some short exercises on the form of the words to be learnt. Such exercises would not have to be very elaborated and they could be quiz-like (anagrams, how many consonants/vowels has this word got? What is its first/last letter etc.).

While revising, emotional reinforcement and association all belong to a very general discourse on memory, there remain factors very specific for a foreign language classroom. One of them is the extent to which students use their mother tongue. I remember asking once my students what sort of dictionaries they used (mono or bilingual). Most of them replied they used bilingual but saying that, they seemed embarrassed and tried to give me some excuse. And yet, various studies show that learners using bilingual dictionaries have better linguistic outcomes than those using only monolingual. In defiance to constant attempts of demonising every use of L1 in the foreign language classroom, it is worth underlining that a native language is present during lexical processing of a target language in both beginning and more advanced students. It is also quite likely that in the process of remembering, a new word from a foreign language is attached to its equivalent in a native language. This way, a native language is a kind of vehicle for encoding this new target word. But what is really crucial for good outcome in learning vocabulary is students’ awareness. It is important that they do not underestimate the importance of revising. After all, it is they who are to take most responsibility for their linguistic progress. So, in order not to fall prey to frustration, we should take on a thankless role of bores reciting over and over again how useful and beneficial revising is. Since, however, a great part of students will not, for different reasons, find enough time to do the revising job at home, we could, not so say have to, provide them with some recycling exercises during our classes. Sometimes, especially if we’re bound by syllabuses and some top-down recommendations, it may appear that too much recycling slows down the process of exploring new material. But paradoxically, more slowly means more in general – it’s like making one step back so that we can take two steps forward.

Since, willy-nilly, I dedicate much of lesson time to revision, I keep developing a kit of exercises which would be universal enough to hold different lexical items.

Here are some examples of exercises I turn to most willingly:

1. I’m pretty aware of the fact that probably most of my students do not revise before the lesson and if I wanted to “interrogate” them on some new words from the previous lesson, they would start leafing through their notes nervously. So to spare time, I often turn to one of my favourite props – paper slips. I prepare a series of mini dialogues (A, B) where only A or B has a line with a new word to be revised or new words get “squeezed” in lines of both A and B:
A: How did you feel after yesterday dinner?
B: I was delighted!
or

A: How did you feel after yesterday dinner?
Were you frustrated? B: Oh, no, not at all, I felt delighted!

I cut up all mini dialogues so that A’s speech is on one paper slip and B’s on another and I distribute them among students (one needs to get concentrated in order not to give one student A and B from the same dialogue).

It is much more fun if the paper slips are distributed randomly – this way a student reciting his/her line (A) never knows from whom to expect a reply (B) and all students have to be focused as it may be them having the line matching what has just been said. To make it more challenging, we can ask students not to read their line but just take a quick look and then say it.

Mini dialogues are a very capacious exercise. We can conveniently fit in there practically any lexical material we want to recycle. Besides, it is good to provide new language items with some communication context or at least to build them into a sentence rather than present them separately.

2. Equally capacious is a kind of exercise I simply call “eliciting”. On paper slips, I write words or expressions I want to revise and then give them to students (usually one per each). A student who’s got a slip with a given word or expression has to make other students guess it by improvising a short speech. Other students are expected to join this improvised conversation, hurrying with the right words.
Student 1 (on a paper slip: have a sweet tooth): Err, you know I feel bad. I’ve already eaten two chocolates today. I just couldn’t resist, as usual…
Student 2: Yeah, nothing doing, you have a sweet tooth.
Student 1: Yes, I really have a sweet tooth.

It is important that students do not slip into mere defining a given word/expression. Their task (apart from making guess on one side and guessing on the other) is to pretend to be engaged in a conversation. It’s good to instruct a student who is to guess the word to continue “the conversation” even if he/she, for the time being, doesn’t know what word another student has on mind.

3. Role plays are a good, old tool which has a great dynamizing power. I’ve never met a student who wouldn’t care about doing well in a role play. At the very signal that we’re going to have a role play, most students get straight on their chairs. If there are five people in the group, I make up a role play/conversation with just five lines – in Polish (e.g., if I want to revise the expression to be keen on sth – John: Jesteś na obiedzie u przyjaciół, na stół właśnie wjeżdża zupa krewetkowa. Chcesz zapytać czy możesz prosić o coś innego, bo za krewetkami nie przepadasz). In each line, there’s a word/expression I want to recycle. Some lines are more elaborated than others – like the one above – because a student needs to know the context. But as a matter of fact, he/she is expected to say only the part with the word underlined. I ask students not to read but recite without any further looking at their lines. Each student receives only his/ her lines on separate paper slips. How do they know whose turn it is? I write above each line in Polish some hint in English, e.g.

After John says he’s not very keen on shrimps Caroline: Mówisz, że zupa jest pyszna. Prosisz, by John chociaż spróbował.

4. As far as mini dialogues are concerned, eliciting and role plays require some preparation on the part of a teacher, “Get rid of it” exercise requires none. I write words/ expressions to be revised on paper slips (one on each) and make students pick up two or three (it depends on both the number of words and the number of students). They are not to show their words to other students. Their task is to improvise a conversation (which would sound meaningful and natural) and, at the same time, to use up their words before other students. The person who is the first to get rid of all the words he/she picked up, wins. If students tend to be rather shy, it’s good to provide them with some communicative context. We may say, e.g., “You’re a group of friends doing internship at one of Italian universities. Now you’re having a break and have decided to go to one of nearby cafés to have a chat.” To make the exercise run more smoothly, we can ask students to converse over the subject of our choice or to deal with some problem situation. To prevent the conversation from becoming a mere exchange of unlinked sentences, we may also want to give students some extra hints, e.g. each of them would have to ask at least one question to keep the conversation going.

“Get rid of it!” exercise, apart from being useful in revising vocabulary, serves also other communication purposes. It makes students to try to be creative, improves fluency and boosts some extra linguistic skills.

Magdalena Torzecka