Why do we forget words?

Even with the best will in the world, students forget words. As a rule, forgetting is rapid at first, but gradually slows down. It has been estimated that up to 80 per cent of material is lost within 24 hours of initial learning, but that then the rate of forgetting levels out.

Two factors seemed to determine retention. First, those words that were easy to learn were better retained. Secondly, those words that were learned over spaced learning sessions were retained better than words that were learned in concentrated bursts – consistent with the principle of distributed practice.

More important, perhaps, as a remedy against forgetting, is recycling. Research shows that spaced review of learned material can dramatically reduce the rate of forgetting. But it’s not enough simply to repeat words, or to re-encounter them in their original contexts. Much better is to recycle them in a different ways, and, ideally, at successive levels of depth. Research suggests that if learners see or use a word in a way different from the way they first met it, then better learning is achieved.

What are the implications for teaching?

In this chapter we have looked at how the mental lexicon is structured and the way it develops, in both first and second languages. What then are the implications of these findings for the teaching of vocabulary?

• Learners need tasks and strategies to help them organise their mental lexicon by building networks of associations – the more the better.
• Teachers need to accept that the learning of new words involves a period of ‘initial fuzziness’.
• Learners need to wean themselves off a reliance on direct translation from their mother tongue.
• Words need to be presented in their typical contexts, so that learners can get a feel for their meaning, their register, their collocations, and their syntactic environments.
• Teaching should direct attention to the sound of new words, particularly the way they are stressed.
• Learners should aim to build a threshold vocabulary as quickly as possible.
• Learners need to be actively involved in the learning of words.
• Learners need multiple exposures to words and they need to retrieve words from memory repeatedly.
• Learners need to make multiple decisions about words.
• Memory of new words can be reinforced if they are used to express personally relevant meanings.
• Not all the vocabulary that the learners need can be 'taught': learners will need plentiful exposure to talk and text as well as training for self-directed learning.

How to Present Vocabulary

Using translation

Translation is very economical in terms of time, and especially suitable for dealing with incidental vocabulary that may crop up in a lesson. However, an over-reliance on translation may mean that learners fail to develop an independent L2 lexicon, with the effect that they always access L2 words by means of their L1 equivalents, rather than directly. Also, because learners don’t have to work very hard to access the meaning, it may mean that the word is less memorable. A case of ‘no pain, no gain’.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1464