艾宾浩斯遗忘曲线在小学英语教学中的应用研究

论文总字数：29846字

摘 要

遗忘曲线由德国心理学家艾宾浩斯研究发现，描述了人类大脑对新事物遗忘的规律。通过人体大脑对新事物遗忘的直观描述，人们从遗忘曲线中掌握遗忘规律并加以利用，从而提升自我记忆能力。英语教学内容繁多复杂，对学生的记忆能力要求较高。如何帮助学生,特别是小学生更有效、更准确记住所学英语内容，这是所有老师关心的一个问题。本课题拟采用心理学方法，基于对艾宾浩斯遗忘曲线规律的分析，对小学生的记忆与遗忘过程进行探索，从而达到改善英语教学质量，提升英语学习效果的目的。

关键词：遗忘曲线, 小学生，英语学习

Contents

1. Introduction......................................................................................... 1

2. Literature Review................................................................................ 1

2.1. Brief Introduction about Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve......................2

2.2. Review on Primary School Student’s English Learning.....................3

3. The Study on the Application of Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve in Primary School English Teaching and Learning...................................3

• 1. .Application of Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve in the representation of the teaching material contents...............................................................5

3.2.Application of Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve as meaningful memory methods.................................................................................................9

4. Conclusion...........................................................................................10

1. Introduction

Along with the transition of the pattern of primary school students’ education and the development of internationalization of Chinese society, people have a higher and higher demand to English education. English is a subject which requires an extremely high memory. In particular, the memory of words, phrases, sentencesand grammar plays an important role in the basic English learning. Meanwhile, in primary school’s English learning, the teacher usually needs students to memorize a great number of words, phrases and etc. in the book so students need to have a high memory ability. In fact, the memory ability of primary school students can’t be developed by nature. It needs to be developed by teachers according to the learning contents and memory rules in the teaching process.

As is known to all, Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve vividly described the forgetting rules humans’ brains had to new things (Richard 2012: 12). After learning, some people may forget what they have just recited immediately. Meanwhile the forgetting process isn’t equilibrium. At the beginningt, people will forget much and fast, but later they will forget slowly and less. After quite a long time, people will forget little. If students can memorize and review according to the forgetting rules, they can master the knowledge, getting twice the result with half the effort. Therefore, the thesis tries to have an exploration on the application of Forgetting Curve in primary English teaching and learning.

The whole thesis consists of four parts. Part one presents a brief introduction. Part two is a literature review, which has a brief review about Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve and the primary English learning. Part three gives a representation of the teaching material contents and introduce meaningful memory methods. The last part draws a conclusion. This thesis is aimed to analyze the memorizing and forgetting process of primary school students according to Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve so as to improve the quality and efficiency of English learning.

1. Literature Review

2.1. Brief introduction about Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

According to the study of Ebbinghaus, the curve directly manifests the most important forgetting rules: the forgetting process isn’t an equilibrium. At first, after 1 or 2 days, people will forget most of what they have just memorized the most quickly and then about 4 or 5 days later, they will forget the contents slowly and less. After a long time, after about 10 days, they will forget little. On the whole, the process of forgetting is much quicker before it gets slow (Lynch, B.K. 2011). Generally speaking, people will forget the most at first, so people will keep what they have memorized deeply in mind if they keep repeating them quickly and continuously after the interval of 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 12h, 1day, 2days, 4days and etc.Besides the intervals, there are also many other important factors contributing to forgetting such as the learning contents. The learning contents which are less important, less interesting and less meaningful will be forgotten more quickly and easily by primary school students. In contrast, contents which students are more familiar with and more interested in are harder to be forgotten.

2.2 . Review on Primary School Student’s English Learning

Primary school English education is an enlightenment to students, laying a solid foundation to their English learning in their lifetime, whose importance is evident. However, at present, there are several serious problems.

Firstly, the spelling of English words is a great challenge for many primary school students. They learnt Chinese pinyin when they were very young, therefore, at first, they would easily mix them with English words. For example, when primary school students spell the word ‘duck’, they would possibly delete ‘c’ and mix it with ‘duk’, because in English, there are more consonants (Ellis, R. 2009: 12) while in Chinese pinyin there are much fewer, so students would easily mix them. In this condition, students with no memory skills have no choice but to memorize the words mechanically with great efforts. Therefore, English learning becomes a great challenge and difficulty to them.

Secondly, effective vocabulary teaching is not only a precondition but also a promise in the whole English learning, which is of great significance. However, in the traditional vocabulary lessons, the teaching method is fixed, inefficient and unscientific, which seriously contributes to a low-efficient English learning. In the traditional vocabulary lessons, the teacher teaches students mechanically following the glossary in the book. The teacher reads the words in turn from the first one to the last one and then the students just repeat the words mechanically and constantly after him. After students are able to read, which means the teacher has finished his task and students quickly begin to read by themselves to recite the words. If students can recite the words and write them correctly which means they have mastered these words. However, in fact, this memory method is of low efficiency and leads to several disadvantages as follows:

Firstly, the students just continuously chant and repeat after the teacher without thinking in mind at all, so with no language contexts they would forget the words easily especially for primary school students who have less patience and would easily feel bored. Sometimes they could even mix the words with meanings of other words.

Secondly, this method adds extreme load to students’ memory ( Bachman 2010:15). Reciting words mechanically is much more a physical labor rather than amental one, so students would easily get tired both physically and mentally. Consequently, students would be afraid of reciting words and gradually they would feel impatient and have less interest in learning English.

Thirdly, lacking an English-learning environment, students would easily lose learning interest and become afraid of speaking English. In traditional English classes, the teachers mostly keep on talking and teaching, while the students just listen and follow their footsteps. Teachers pay no attention to using different teaching methods or students’ different reactions in class at all. On the whole, the teacher spends most of the time and efforts in teaching students’ basic English knowledge with almost no communications between students. It is a cramming teaching and the class atmosphere is so boring that most students would easily get rigid minds. On the whole, the boring and rigid English-learning methods make it hard for students to memorize and of course easy to forget.

3. The Study on the Application of Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve in Primary School English Teaching and Learning

3.1 Application of Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve in representation of the teaching material contents

According to the curve, as we know, to avoid forgetting, we must immediately keep repeating and reviewing the contents which we have learnt before. In a whole English class, the lead-in plays a particularly important role, a link between the old and new knowledge. Therefore, it is advantageous to gain new insights through reviewing the old materials. In order to lead in new insights and meanwhile help students review and consolidate the old materials, the teacher can encourage students to read and perform the words and sentences they have learnt before. For example, in Grade4 Unit5 before the teacher teaches the sentences ‘What’s this……’ ‘It’s a……’, the teacher can firstly help students review the learned sentences ‘This is a……’ ‘That is a……’, then shows students the real objects such as a book, a pen, a bag or pictures of an animal and encourage students to use the new words and sentences to practice and talk with their partners. Consequently, by constant repetition and practice, students can memorize both the new words and old expressions more easily.

According to the forgetting rules, if the memory contents are more meaningful, more interesting and students are more familiar with, it would be more difficult for students to forget them. In contrast, students would more easily forget contents which are less meaningful and less interesting. As a consequence, on the one hand, by vivid language and colorful story plots, primary school students’ attention can be successfully drawn and their learning interest can easily be aroused. For example, when the teacher teaches Grade5 Unit2 ‘What color is it’, it is quite boring to directly teach students words of different colors, and by mechanical practice students would forget them easily and quickly. However, the teacher can make up an interesting story to attract students. For example, “I have many animal toys. They are black dogs, yellow cats, white rabbits and pink pigs and etc. I like them so much.” Students are encouraged to discuss in groups and make up different new stories by using words of different colors. Then the teacher can show students all kinds of beautiful pictures of rainbows and encourage students to talk about their favorite colors so as to help students consolidate these words. In this way, students can easily be activated and are more possible to memorize these words rather than forgetting them easily.

On the other hand, with the help of multi-media, which is vivid and appealing, PPT and flash animation are becoming more and more popular among primary school students. They can help teachers build dynamic and abundant teaching situations and plots so that students can be both physically and mentally absorbed in learning. For example, when the teacher teaches Grade6 Unit3 ‘My friends’, to practice sentences like ‘What’s his name? His name is…… He has…..’, he can use PPT to show students their familiar and favorite cartoon characters like Snow White, Cinderalla, Mickey Mouse and etc or some popular stars like Yao Ming, Yang Mi, Hu Ge and etc and encourage students to use them to make up different sentences. As a consequence, students can be easily attracted and encouraged to share with their partners their ideas. In this way, they can memorize what they have learnt more easily.

3.2 Application of Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve as meaningful memory methods

3.2.1 Setting accurate review points

According to the forgetting curve, as we know, to avoid forgetting what we have learnt, we must keep repeating and reviewing it. Meanwhile, when people memorize something, at the first time, they will forget most of the contents; therefore, when the teacher directs the students to review, he must pay attention to the intervals between the reviews. At first, the intervals between the reviews must be as short as possible and students must review the knowledge frequently. Later, the intervals could be gradually longer but students still need to review it from time to time. Therefore, to save time and efforts and memorize what we have learnt the most efficiently, on the one hand, students can review the old knowledge following the memory periods:

Memory Intervals

the first memory period: 5 minutes

the second memory period: 30minutes

the third memory period: 12hours

the fourth memory period: 1day

the fifth memory period: 2days

the sixth memory period: 4days

the seventh memory period: 7days

the eighth memory period: 15days

Tips:

1. Revision and repetition is always more important than memorizing the new knowledge, so we must keep reviewing high-frequently.

2. We must keep persisting through the whole 15 days without any day off, after a whole memory period, we still need to revise what we have recited an hour a day.On the other hand, there are several key points and effective methods of reviewing as follows:

1. Review after class

After class, students can spare several minutes to review the words and phrases quickly learnt in this lesson to consolidate them in time.

2. Review after school

After school, students should review again what they have learnt in order to consolidate it. Meanwhile, students should master the correct review methods:

Firstly, students should quickly read aloud all the words and sentences learnt today and mark those which they can’t read well. Secondly, students listen to the tape and read after it to check their pronunciations. In this way, on the one hand, students can correct their wrong pronunciations in time. On the other hand, to the words which students can’t read, they can repeat after the tape many times and finally master them. Thirdly, according to the Chinese, students can have a dictation of the words and phrases on their own and then correct their mistakes. In this way, students can save time and pay more attention to those which they haven’t mastered. Finally, students listen to the tape of the article learnt today and repeat after it. Then, students try to recite the article after they can read it correctly.

3. Review before sleeping and after getting up

According to the proactive inhibition and retroactive inhibition（Jin Liang, 2004）, people would mostly memorize the contents which they learn at first or in the end because people at that time are interfered by only a single inhibition. Therefore, if students review the knowledge before they sleep or after they get up, they can memorize it getting twice the result with half the effort. 4. Review at weekends

To consolidate the knowledge, students should make a summary weekly. After a week, students may possibly forget some words or phrases, so if students review them in time, they can have a deep memory.

3.2.2 Building up meaningful connections

According to the forgetting rules, it is clear that contents which are less important, less meaningful and less interesting are easier to be forgotten. In contrast, it would be harder to forget those which are more important, more meaningful and more interesting. Therefore, to help students memorize and consolidate what they have learnt more easily, we can build up meaningful connections between words and sentences.

1.Homophones Memory Method

In English, there are many homophones, they are words which have the same pronunciations but different spellings. Therefore, if we can memorize one word we can also memorize the others more easily. For saving time and efforts, we need to conclude and summarize them. For example:

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