Category: cognitive science

The Value of Repetition

Posted on | by Pearson
Stacy Hagen
By Stacy Hagen

As teachers, we are trained to focus on activities that are communicative and task-based. Grammar practice, particularly at the sentence level, often brings associations of rote drills and repetition. However, Zoltan Dornyei (2009) points out that communicative language teaching is based on learning by doing and does not look at how people actually learn. Some second language researchers have turned to cognitive science to look at what is happening in the adult brain as we learn, and findings related to memory and skill acquisition have important implications for how we practice the skills.

This article explains the value of repetition in the grammar class.

For a long time, we were taught that repetition was a bad word.  This goes back to the audio-lingual era of drill and kill.  But research from cognitive science tells us that repetition has value. 

First, brain scans show that repetition causes the brain to physically change.  New connections are formed between neurons (think of neurons as information messengers).  And the connections between neurons are thicker, stronger, and more hard-wired.

This helps students retain and solidify what they have learned.  Without a lot of repetition or review, students are less likely to recall what they have learned. 

The trick is to make repetition interesting.  I’m sure you know all these techniques for repetition:

role play

drama techniques

story-telling

pairworks

strip stories

songs/chants

Let me show you another technique to make repetition interesting:  4/3/2.  It works well for the re-telling of a story or an event.   In this exercise from the new edition of the Fundamentals of English Grammar, there are two fables.  Half the class has story A and half the class has story B.

Give students time to learn their story well enough to retell it.  Partner A then tells Partner B the story in 4 minutes.  Next, Partner A tells another student the same story in 3 minutes.  Finally, Partner A has 2 minutes to tell a final person.

Often during the first telling, students voices are very low and the language is halting.  The second time it’s better, but by the third time, the class can become very animated.  It’s a wonderful way to work in repetition and encourage fluency at the same time.

References:

Nation, I.S.P & Jonathan Newton. 2008. Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking. New York: Routhledge.

Stacy Hagen is a teacher, a teacher trainer, and the co-author of the best-selling Azar-Hagen Grammar Series. The most recent edition of Fundamentals of English Grammar is now available. pearsoneltusa.com/azar

Cover of Fundamentals of English Grammar 5E

Reducing Cognitive Load

Posted on | by Pearson
Stacy Hagen
By Stacy Hagen

As teachers, we are trained to focus on activities that are communicative and task-based. Grammar practice, particularly at the sentence level, often brings associations of rote drills and repetition. However, Zoltan Dornyei (2009) points out that communicative language teaching is based on learning by doing and does not look at how people actually learn. Some second language researchers have turned to cognitive science to look at what is happening in the adult brain as we learn, and findings related to memory and skill acquisition have important implications for how we practice the skills.

This article discusses the concept of cognitive load.

Our working memory (think of this as our immediate memory) has capacity limits.  Basically, we can’t handle as much information as had previously been believed.  New research on learning tells us that students benefit if we can reduce the cognitive load.

Scientist used to think that 5-7 chunks* of information could be held in our working memory.  But new research tells us that two to four chunks are more realistic.  The implication for teachers is that we need to break our explanations into more manageable chunks for our students. In practical terms, one of the things we can do is to introduce less information at one time.  You’ll see this in the fifth edition of the Azar-Hagen Grammar Series.  Long charts have been broken up into smaller ones.  Here’s an example from the Fundamentals of English Grammar, Fifth Edition:

example of a grammar chart with information in manageable chunks

Previously, this introduction to articles was in a two-page chart.  Now there are two new charts, and we have simplified the explanations.  We also use pictures to illustrate the concept of specific and non-specific. This is more manageable and user-friendly for students.

As you will see in the new editions of the Fundamentals of English Grammar and Understanding and Using English Grammar, the presentation of material in the grammar charts helps reduce the cognitive load. Breaking down explanations and exercises into shorter pieces or sub-tasks helps reduce the working memory load, allowing learners to absorb material better.

*A chunk is a single unit.  Think of a phone number.  There are 10 digits or 10 unrelated numbers.  But we can group phone numbers into 3 chunks to make it easier to remember.

References:

Dornyei, Zoltan. 2009. The Psychology of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stacy Hagen is a teacher, a teacher trainer, and the co-author of the best-selling Azar-Hagen Grammar Series. The most recent edition of Fundamentals of English Grammar is now available. pearsoneltusa.com/azar

New Insights into Grammar Practice from Cognitive Science

Posted on | by Pearson

stacy 

New Insights into Grammar Practice from Cognitive Science

By Stacy Hagen

Grammar practice, particularly at the sentence level, may bring up associations of rote drills or mindless repetition. As teachers, we’re supposed to focus on activities that are communicative or task-based. Yet, as Dörnyei (2009) points out, communicative language teaching is based on learning by doing and does not look at how people actually learn. Some second language researchers have turned to cognitive science to look at what is happening in the adult brain as we learn, and findings related to memory and skill acquisition have important implications for how we practice the skills. Let’s take a look at a few key points.

Automatization

Our working memory, where we hold and process information for a short time, is limited to only a few items, perhaps four at the most. The good news is that we can create more room in our working memory by making a skill automatic. In skill acquisition theory, this is known as automatization. Once a behavior becomes automatic and moves to procedural memory (a part of our long-term memory), there is room to handle more complex tasks. An easy example to relate to comes from math. After children have learned their times tables and can automatically retrieve information from their procedural memory, their working memory is free to do more complicated math.

In language development, it is our procedural memory that allows us to speak automatically without focusing on grammar or syntax. DeKeyser (2007) found in his research with second language learners that repeated practice led to automatization: the error rate and reaction time declined as a result of practice.

In the classroom, we need to provide sufficient, repeated practice, and the repetition should be interesting and meaningful.  Role-play, games, stories, personalized practice, and fun fluency techniques, as in the following activity, are just a few of the ways we can make repetition relevant and engaging.

Midas

Incremental practice and spaced repetition

Another insight from cognitive science is the importance of presenting information in bite-size pieces. Breaking down exercises into shorter pieces or subtasks can help reduce the working memory load. Incremental step-by-step practice helps students absorb material better. Long grammar charts are useful references for teachers, but students benefit more from practicing fewer points at any one time.

Similarly, learners retain information better when practice is spread out over time (spaced practice) rather than condensed (massed practice). Gerunds and infinitives are a good example. Traditionally, grammar books cover them in one or two chapters, and there are often upwards of 200 to learn. Teaching gerunds and infinitives in small numbers from the beginning of the term, with lots of time for recycling, will result in deeper learning as the information moves into long-term storage.

As a profession, we have gotten away from asking students to memorize. Nevertheless, a useful technique called spaced repetition can help memorize some basic grammar structures. Basically, spaced repetition is a way of memorizing information by spacing out practice at specific intervals. Hinkel (2015), in her book Effective Curriculum for Teaching L2 Writing, says that spaced repetition is the single most important technique in all vocabulary teaching. Likewise, there are grammar structures that lend themselves to memorization: irregular past tense and past participle forms, gerunds and infinitives, preposition combinations with verbs and adjectives, and two- and three-word verbs. Students who know their past participles don’t need to worry about forms as they create sentences requiring perfect verbs.

flashcards

Pattern seeking

Another interesting finding is that the adult brain is a pattern-seeking organ. Carefully designed charts and exercises can help learners see patterns, which in turn, helps them make sense of the information they are learning. Having students complete exercises that specifically focus on grammatical patterns (such as in the example below) allows them to gain a fuller understanding of the target grammar they are learning.

movies

This is an exciting time for our field. Cognitive science is shedding new light on how we learn, and researchers have found that repeated, meaningful practice can help our students learn more efficiently and deeply.

The new edition of Understanding and Using English Grammar incorporates the findings from cognitive science research. Click here to learn more about the new edition.  

References

DeKeyser, Robert M. 2007. Practice in a Second Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dörnyei, Zoltan. 2009. The Psychology of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hinkel, Eli. 2015. Effective Curriculum for Teaching L2 Writing: Principles and Techniques, New York: Routledge.