Memorization and You

General discussion about learning languages
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reineke
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Re: Memorization and You

Postby reineke » Tue Mar 07, 2017 9:49 pm

Cainntear wrote:
reineke wrote:

I never said I believed in learning styles -- I've been telling people they're nonsense for years...


I know. Like I occasionally mention, I don't necessarily post these studies because I'm in disagreement with a poster. This particular study is interesting for other reasons:

"that the natural way for the brain to learn words is by collecting multiple sensory and sensorimotor experiences. In fact, evidence-based literature in the domain of vocabulary acquisition demonstrates that the inclusion of multiple modalities leads to best results. Impoverished linguistic input by allowing only one modality, for example only acoustic or visual input—the so called learning style (Pashler et al., 2008) of the student—reduces the chances of acquiring words."
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Re: Memorization and You

Postby Iversen » Tue Mar 07, 2017 11:10 pm

I do believe that there are differences between learners, but not necessarily in a way that follows the diagrams set up by pedagogical gurus. I'm willing to believe that these differences mostly are habits rather than caused by our genes, but also that some traits may have a genetic basis or be caused by random influences during pregnancy or whatever. I can see from people I have worked with that they have different preferencies, but why it is like that is a mystery. It is nevertheless relevant to ask how stable such preferencies are, and what happens if you try to force them or lure them to do things differently.

Take for instance wordlists. For me it is a pleasure to do them, and when I read something in a language where I have done them I can recognize many of the words I understand from my lists so I know that the method works - at least for me. I have even made statistical analyses of my learning where I could measure the effect of doing those lists. On the other hand there are excellent language learners who don't use them and who probably would fall asleep or get severely restless if they tried. Instead they claim they learn while doing conversations or reading novels. Maybe we could be forced to change our habits, but so far I haven't seen any scientific proof that you learn better with a method you hate with a vengeance than with one that suits your current set of habits (or whatever you call them).

This doesn't mean that you ONLY should learn using one method. It is unlikely that there only is one pathway into your brain, and getting your input in several different ways should logically be better than just getting it in one way. For instance I know that my wordlists are efficient when it comes to extending my passive vocabulary, but I also know that I need more than wordlists to make those words active - like for instance thinking silently in a language or writing messsages in my log thread or doing L1 -> L2 translations. But what would happen if somebody tried to force me to do chorusing or classroom style acting? Well, I would hate it, and I would not even want to learn anything from such activities.

So I definitely have a learning style, but it is an open question whether it is caused by my genes, by early experiences with people who tried to make me conform or just from my circumstances in general here and now. And even though I recognize that some of systems set up by learning style protagonists sound plausible I also have found things where they simply don't function properly in my case. For instance one of the systems sorts people into those that focus on details and those that prefer dealing with systems and generalizations. For me that's absurd - I focus on details all the time, but when I do so I have constantly some kind of system in my mind where I try to make those details fit. The distinction is rotten in itself, and it would be a surprise if the use of it could give results that would survive a scientific test.

The basic problem with tests on learning styles is that the usual system with a control group and double blind testing is hard to use on something as complicated and all-encompassing as language learning, and instead the researchers study the effect of limited and concrete actions like showing people pictures of dogs while asking them to remember the word for such an odd creature.

Concerning the memorization of related notions: my experience is that you shouldn't try to learn more than maybe two or three parallel words in one go - like the words for three berries or capital cities of African nations. The main exception from this is when each word is so amply illustrated that you effectively are studying a topic instead of just memorizing words.
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Re: Memorization and You

Postby Tomás » Wed Mar 08, 2017 1:37 am

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Re: Memorization and You

Postby Finny » Wed Mar 08, 2017 2:21 am

I'm much more a fan of osmosis-type memorization (implicit) than the active stuff. I never drilled anything (i.e., repeated aloud or wrote repeatedly until it stuck) when learning Spanish, and I'm taking the same approach with French. So far, so good. Yeah, I'll look up words when I'd like to use them, but if I forget them a day or two later, I'll just look them up again as needed. My approach is generally to put myself in front of the language while reading or listening to the radio a lot and let things sort themselves out. There are things that I look up repeatedly (e.g., pronunciation guides for plus), but I try not to get too attached to learning whatever I see when I look them up for the rest of my life; eventually it'll sink in if I need it to.

So no, I don't have a super memory, but I have a lot more fun with my approach.
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Re: Memorization and You

Postby Tomás » Wed Mar 08, 2017 5:04 am

Finny wrote:I'm much more a fan of osmosis-type memorization (implicit) than the active stuff. I never drilled anything (i.e., repeated aloud or wrote repeatedly until it stuck) when learning Spanish, and I'm taking the same approach with French. So far, so good. Yeah, I'll look up words when I'd like to use them, but if I forget them a day or two later, I'll just look them up again as needed. My approach is generally to put myself in front of the language while reading or listening to the radio a lot and let things sort themselves out. There are things that I look up repeatedly (e.g., pronunciation guides for plus), but I try not to get too attached to learning whatever I see when I look them up for the rest of my life; eventually it'll sink in if I need it to.

So no, I don't have a super memory, but I have a lot more fun with my approach.


That's the approach I'm taking with Spanish, but that's *after* I had already memorized several thousand words--enough to get the gist of most stories. I'm doing the same with French--cramming the first several thousand words in the frequency dictionary until I can read independently. Then I'll move to osmosis via extensive reading and listening. But I need that base to build on first.
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Re: Memorization and You

Postby yong321 » Wed Mar 08, 2017 4:19 pm

Iversen said:
> So I definitely have a learning style, but it is an open question whether it is caused by my genes, by early experiences with people

Your definition of "style" is different from the researchers' definition. According to the quote in reineke's message:
"Impoverished linguistic input by allowing only one modality, for example only acoustic or visual input—the so called learning style (Pashler et al., 2008) of the student—reduces the chances of acquiring words."

That "learning style" refers to allowing only one modality of input and rejecting other modalities. That's an unrealistic way to learn a language not practiced by anyone in the world. It hardly needs research to understand the obvious fact that it is inferior to a multi-modality learning. Your style, as you correctly said, is a personal habit, which every human being has. Every one has a preference to which method works better for him and the preference may change during different stages of the learning. This preference, as part of the style, is something one cannot avoid having.
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Re: Memorization and You

Postby reineke » Wed Mar 08, 2017 6:03 pm

yong321 wrote:Iversen said:
> So I definitely have a learning style, but it is an open question whether it is caused by my genes, by early experiences with people

Iversen's view of learning styles is different
Your definition of "style" is different from the researchers' definition. According to the quote in reineke's message:
"Impoverished linguistic input by allowing only one modality, for example only acoustic or visual input—the so called learning style (Pashler et al., 2008) of the student—reduces the chances of acquiring words."

That "learning style" refers to allowing only one modality of input and rejecting other modalities. That's an unrealistic way to learn a language not practiced by anyone in the world. It hardly needs research to understand the obvious fact that it is inferior to a multi-modality learning..


Millions of people study vocabulary through word lists, textboooks and text-based flashcards. In classrooms students may be asked to recognize new words through listening activities but it is no secret that educated adults prefer to build their vocabulary through textual resources. I'd say that most learners purposely memorize vocabulary. Even Paul Nation advocates studying some vocabulary out of context:

"•What deliberate learning should you do? You need to organize your own deliberate learning. The most important deliberate learning activity is using word cards (see Activity 5.1). You need to take control of this very effective activity and keep using it to learn new vocabulary and even more importantly to keep revising previously met vocabulary. You may find that some teachers advise against using this strategy largely because of the belief that all vocabulary learning needs to occur in context. They are wrong. It is important that there is vocabulary learning in context through meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, and fluency development, but it is also important that there is deliberate decontextualised learning through the use of word cards, because such learning is very efficient and effective."

Conti:

Patterns first – why you should ‘ditch’ word lists, traditional grammar rules and…your textbook

"Learning single words, from word lists, e.g. the ones found in textbooks or that many teachers upload to Quizlet or Memrise is a clumsy and inefficient way of learning a language. "

" Masses of research indicate clearly that extensive" exposure to phonological, collocational, morphological and syntactic patterns does sensitise learners to them. Unlike it is common practice in many modern language classrooms these days, students should process the target chunks/patterns as extensively as possible before having a go at deploying them in oral or written production."

"Autonomous learning of patterns as the ultimate foundation for successful L2 life-long learning

Students must become effective pattern-recognizers and pattern-deployers."

https://gianfrancoconti.wordpress.com/

P.S. I don't use word cards. Nothing to do with Conti. I'm my own man.
Last edited by reineke on Wed Sep 20, 2017 6:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Memorization and You

Postby Carmody » Wed Mar 08, 2017 9:39 pm

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Cainntear
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Re: Memorization and You

Postby Cainntear » Wed Mar 08, 2017 9:51 pm

yong321 wrote:That "learning style" refers to allowing only one modality of input and rejecting other modalities. That's an unrealistic way to learn a language not practiced by anyone in the world. It hardly needs research to understand the obvious fact that it is inferior to a multi-modality learning.

Ah, if only that were so. (You can tell I'm in a jaded cynical mood when I use a hypothetical subjunctive.) Pashler et al's paper was absolutely necessary because the bigger part of the teaching profession believed this bullshit.

Prior to the paper, it was practically impossible to challenge learning styles, even with something as sound as the idea that all knowledge is multimodal, or the suggestion (my father's favourite) that there are more neurons in the optical parts of the brain than anywhere else, so short of illness or disability, everyone on the planet is capable of processing more information visually than through any other means. The closest I got to convincing someone was when I was accused of disregarding individual learner differences and I responded by throwing the accusation right back at the accuser -- learning styles was attempting to pigeon-hole people in a small number of categories, with a tendency to ignore actual individual differences.

What Pashler and his team did was look through all the published research that claimed to show that you could teach to learner styles and prove that it was all nonsense. They showed that the entire profession had accepted something based on papers that didn't actually show any evidence of what they were trying to prove. The message spread quite quickly through certain areas of teaching, but there are still far too many people who stick with the idea.
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Re: Memorization and You

Postby Tomás » Wed Mar 08, 2017 11:51 pm

Cainntear wrote:
yong321 wrote:That "learning style" refers to allowing only one modality of input and rejecting other modalities. That's an unrealistic way to learn a language not practiced by anyone in the world. It hardly needs research to understand the obvious fact that it is inferior to a multi-modality learning.

Ah, if only that were so. (You can tell I'm in a jaded cynical mood when I use a hypothetical subjunctive.) Pashler et al's paper was absolutely necessary because the bigger part of the teaching profession believed this bullshit.

Prior to the paper, it was practically impossible to challenge learning styles, even with something as sound as the idea that all knowledge is multimodal, or the suggestion (my father's favourite) that there are more neurons in the optical parts of the brain than anywhere else, so short of illness or disability, everyone on the planet is capable of processing more information visually than through any other means. The closest I got to convincing someone was when I was accused of disregarding individual learner differences and I responded by throwing the accusation right back at the accuser -- learning styles was attempting to pigeon-hole people in a small number of categories, with a tendency to ignore actual individual differences.

What Pashler and his team did was look through all the published research that claimed to show that you could teach to learner styles and prove that it was all nonsense. They showed that the entire profession had accepted something based on papers that didn't actually show any evidence of what they were trying to prove. The message spread quite quickly through certain areas of teaching, but there are still far too many people who stick with the idea.


Even if learning styles were a real thing, everyone still needs to learn to read and to synthesize written information. Otherwise, the people who can do so will leave the olfactory and kinestetic learners in the dust.
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