THINKING ABOUT MEMORY

-
Sort of out of the blue I started thinking about MEMORY. As in, the way we talk about memory in human language processing and learning, although I'm not clear how that separates from memory in general learning or just memory of life.
So I remember how memory was always presented as an academic topic as something like THREE parts--processing, short-term, and long-term. And one obvious problem for learning another language is that, no matter how much we pound it into our 'heads', it doesn't 'write to long-term memory (of course that is not the only problem).
But it seems to me that the only way memory works in conscious or active learning is if we put it into processing memory. I doubt short-term memory can just write to long-term memory. This is why, to try and remember, we repeat things to ourselves. Or perhaps short-term memory just blends into long-term memory, and long-term learning is simply over-learning into the same memory.
Now I have to work on breaking down processing memory into parts that might be useful for thinking about second language learning--such as 'phonological memory', and why that proves problematic for second language learners.









The next diagram is my attempt to visualize how memory might participate
in knowledge forms (schema).






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Japanese publishers of EFL textbooks and materials

-
Japanese publishers of EFL textbooks and materials  Charles Jannuzi, University of Fukui, Japan Most 'western' publishers do not actually develop and produce textbooks and materials for the EFL market in Japan. Rather, they produce a lot of generic courses and supplementary material that they label 'communicative' and for 'false beginners' and hope EFL teachers here will adopt and adapt them to their classrooms. There are some problems with this approach to mass market publishing. First, many of the western publishers are not very reliable in providing support to the teachers who use their textbooks. For example, many of these publishers are reluctant to provide free teachers' manuals/answer keys and CDs/DVDs (such as for listening courses). Second, if their books are not in stock with the distributors that university bookstores use, it can be a very long time to get the textbooks--and the prices can be quite inflated. Third, using such materials is a bit
Read more

Implementing Better Multiple Choice for EFL Learning and Testing (a presentation made at IELT-CON 2021 / PELLTA)

-
Image
The conference was done online, and this is the video for my presentation.  https://youtu.be/BiGx_BgE3Fg A video of the presentation, "Implementing Better Multiple Choice for EFL Learning and Testing." by Charles Jannuzi, University of Fukui, Japan This presentation describes and explains procedures and techniques by which teachers can create their own collections of multiple-choice (objective-response) items for language practice and testing for courses. The focus is specifically how to devise and deploy multiple choice questions (MCQ) to enable language practice and testing that are more organic to assigned courses and their designated syllabuses, materials, and classroom content. It is hoped that these explanations and examples will serve, for example, teachers who have to give grades based on objective evaluation to large numbers of students and who do not have time for alternative means (e.g., oral interviews). A couple of notes of correction and clarification: 1.
Read more

Teaching English /r/ and /l/ to EFL learners: a lexical approach (parts 1-3 final)

-
Teaching English /r/ and /l/ to EFL learners: a lexical approach (parts 1-3 final) Charles Jannuzi University of Fukui, Japan Introduction English /r/, /l/ and contrasts across these two categories of sounds are often cited as pronunciation and listening perception problems for a variety of EFL learners, most from E. Asia. The language backgrounds most often associated with these problems are Japanese, Korean, Chinese and some languages of SE Asia (e.g., Thai but also Cantonese Chinese). Other language speakers have also expressed an interest in improving their pronunciation of English /r/ and /l/, including Russian and German EFL learners. Perhaps the most well-known group to have a problem with the two categories of sounds is Japanese EFL learners. This could be because their native language background creates the most difficult problems to overcome, both in terms of listening perception and spoken production. It could also be because Japan attained affluence b
Read more