Overlearning FSI or doing FSI and DLI

[Cainntear]

But I have a beef with calling this overlearning. Why "over"? To me it's just plain common sense.

I believe it's translationese. The term is attributed to a German, so was presumably coined in German with "über-". "Hyperlearning" might be a slightly better translation as it avoids the negative connotations of over-, but it's still far from perfect as it seems to imply speed, which is the opposite of what it proposes.

I suspect what we're looking at is his attempt to explain "procedural learning" before the term was coined -- even today, many teachers will tell you rules and only do enough practice to check that you've got it in declarative memory, and things probably weren't all that much different in 19th century Germany.

I wonder if we are perhaps mixing up overlearning with overstudying. In this case I'm going over the same material because I want to memorize it more completely. But I'm not really learning anything new. I'm repeating until the target material becomes second-nature.

Well, the audiolingual approach is behavioristic in origin, and doesn't seem to recognise that mass memorisation doesn't lead to internalisation, so I think when the DLI picked up on the term, they were indeed talking about overstudying.

[luke]

I'm repeating until the target material becomes second-nature.

That's a good definition of overlearning.

The term is attributed to a German, so was presumably coined in German with "über-". "Hyperlearning" might be a slightly better translation.

Insightful.

[reineke]

"Error prevention by overlearning was the preferred strategy of the Behaviourists, whose ideas so influenced the audiolingual approach to FL teaching, .."

"The language lab became the ideal teaching site to “practice until it becomes second nature” and to adhere to the adage that “language learning is overlearning ” ...

"...stated that language use involves a system of habits—habits pertaining to the perception and ... 505); “practice everything until it becomes second nature” (Bloomfield, 1942)