Memory

No, I'm not going to sing Barbara Streisand at you... but rather share some reflections on the influence this has on teaching and learning My students have made comments such as ‘oh that’s one of the first things I learnt’ when I give them a phrase or item of vocabulary accompanied by ‘why couldn’t I remember it?’ frustration. I have been told previously that it takes 20 exposures to a word to have a high probability of it being learnt. I have certainly noticed this in my own experience and even recall of words that I could previously use, therefore practice is an issue. I remember being taught certain patterns such as numbers and months of the year in other languages as a rhythm or chant. This was very successful in raining this long term. I can recall finding dates and the associated historical events for exams particularly difficult. I seem to overall have a greater capacity for left brain thinking- for example I am better with remembering language and do ok with things like chemical formulae. This probably explains why I use what D Child refers to as a verbal symbolic process to ensure information is transferred to the LTM. Perhaps a visual process would be better in this case. I found his comment about meaning being linked to long term memory very interesting. In relation to language learning and teaching I have found this to be more complex than this. There is a need for absolute clarity in semantic meaning when introducing or clarifying a word or phrase. One important method for discerning whether this has been achieved is concept checking. As teachers will often not share a native language with their students, this checking is often done in the language being taught. It is thought that students being asked to think about and question the language themselves and to ‘discover’ their way to the solution aids longer term retention. Recently however I have come question this. I do agree that self-discovery can aid retention; I personally find it very effective. However there is no denying the fact the when teaching there is an immediate visible penny-drop when a native language translation is mentioned. For me the bigger question is whether my own and my students’ frustration is to do with information not being stored and going out of the short term memory or not transferring to the long term memory. I guess I just have to find more effective ways of maintain the information short term and therefore give it more opportunity to be accessible long term.