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记不住单词?请这些助记手段来帮忙! - 英语教学法原著选读82

 昵称70926123 2020-07-21

记不住单词,这几乎是所有英语学习者共同的问题。即便是记忆能力很强的人,也不可能百分之百记住所学过的单词,“过目不忘”只是一种传说,所以总会有这种感觉:这个词似曾相识,怎么就不认识了呢?

助记手段在国内的英语教辅市场上可谓林林总总,琳琅满目,最多的就是那种“联想记忆法”,往往从各种匪夷所思的角度分析单词,然后建立“记忆联系”,这里就不举例了。一般来说我不太赞成这样的方法,因为这种做法还是从单词到单词,并没有从句子、语篇的层面上解决问题,不利于英语学习的健康进展。

今天跟大家选读的是一段关于助记手段的教学法英文原文,探讨了现在能够用到的几种主要的助记手段,包括:

1、语言类,如同义词、近义词、同类词等;

2、视觉类,如图片、视频等。

在今天的选文中,一种叫做“Keyword”的助记方法特别引人注目,因为这种方法和前面说的各种“联想记忆法”很像。文章中说到,研究表明这种方法只是在一些时候对许多学生有用,比如英语学习的初级阶段,所以我们还是不能过于依赖这种办法。初学英语的时候我们还用汉字给单词注音呢,比如“三克油”、“汉德”、“切尔”,过两年谁还去关注这些注音的汉字呢?

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以下英文原文取自上海外语教育出版社出版的“教学法丛书”中的《词汇:描述、习得与教学》分册:

原文

Thesis Title: Current Trends in Vocabulary Teaching

Author: Anita J. Sokmen

3 Mnemonic devices.

Mnemonic devices are aids to memory. They may be verbal, visual or a combination of both. Advocates of mnemonic devices believe that they are so efficient in storing words that the mind is then freer to deal with comprehension (Cohen, 1987). The most common verbal mnemonic device is using the rhyming of poetry or song to enhance memory. According to Baddeley (1990), this combining of rhyme with meaning has a very powerful effect on retention. That many of us can still remember lines from songs taught in our first year in a foreign language class attests to the powerfulness of this memory aid. Regarding visual devices, in early stages, students can benefit from word/picture activities which set up mental links. Because of personal investment, student-generated visuals are even more memorable. A classroom version of the party game Pictionary is usually a lively, productive way to associate a picture with a word. Days later, holding up their hurried drawings, students will remember the target words they laboured to visualize for their team.

Of all the mnemonic devices, the most often studied with the most impressive results is a technique which employs both an acoustic and a visual image: Alkiason's (1975) keyword method. The keyword method has two steps: the student chooses a word in L1 which is acoustically similar to the one to be learned and then creates a visual image of that L1 word along with the L2 meaning. For example, to teach the Turkish word for door "kapi’ [kapa], an English speaker could choose the slang word for policeman, ‘cop’, as being acoustically similar and then imagines a policeman pounding on a door. Every time the student encounters the word ‘kapi’ the image of the policeman will be reinvoked, thus leading to the meaning of ‘door’. Although effective with all age groups, children find this technique to be an especially enjoyable way to learn vocabulary. Student-generated images have been found to be effective (Levin et al., 1992), but images can also be provided by the instructor. It can be assumed that while creating these images, stronger links are set up since they require the student to do deeper mental processing as they integrate the new word with a familiar one.

In Meara's (1980) survey article on vocabulary acquisition, he questioned the results of keyword studies since the focus was on receptive knowledge of discrete L2-L1 pairs, ignoring the complexity of meanings in the lexicon. However, in the years that have followed, a large body of research has been done on the effectiveness of this strategy. In Levin, et al.'s (1992) study, keyword students performed better than students using sentence-context or free study both on immediate and delayed recall of the word meanings. In Levin's (1993) 'twenty year report card’ on mnemonic strategies, he recommends that such strategies be accepted for what they can do, i.e. establish a factual base, which higher-order applications can be built on. He concludes that 'although mnemonic strategies may not be for all students all of the time, the research evidence overwhelmingly suggests that they are for many students some of the time’ (p. 242, emphasis mine). In much the same vein, Sternberg (1987) argues that this technique is limited, requiring too much effort for a learner to use over a period of time or independently. Students can benefit in two ways from experiences with mnemonic devices. Not only do they acquire the target language, but they also are taught aids to memory which can be applied to other areas of knowledge acquisition.

译文

助记手段,即帮助记忆的工具。可能是语言型、视觉型或两者兼有。提倡使用助记手段的人相信这种工具对于单词的存储很有帮助,这样一来大脑就能够腾出手来进行理解(柯汉,1987)。最常用的语言型助记手段时使用诗歌或歌曲的押韵来促进记忆。根据巴德利(1990)的观点,这种把意义和韵脚结合起来的方法对留存记忆有着强大的效果。我们很多人在学外语的最初学会的歌曲,至今还能记住其歌词,证实了这种助记手段的强大性。至于视觉型工具,在学习的早期,学生可以从单词-图片配对活动中获益,这种活动能够建立心理联系。由于有了个人的投入,学生亲手制作的视觉工具更能牢记。聚会游戏Pictionary(猜词游戏,本文左下方“阅读原文”附有英文版Wikipedia这个词条的解释)可以改为教室版本,通常就是一种生动的、有效的方法,能把单词和图片联系起来。几天后,学生拿起匆匆画出来的作品,还能想起当时他们辛辛苦苦结队构思出画面来的目标词汇。


所有的助记手段中,研究最多、结果最令人印象深刻的是一种同时使用声音和图像的技术:阿尔吉雅森(1975)的关键词法。这种方法分两个步骤:学生选择母语中的一个单词,要是读音和准备学习的词比较接近的,然后想象一个画面,以母语词展现外语词的意思。比如,教土耳其语“kapi”(门)这个词,说英语的人可以选择英语俚语中表示警察的词“cop”,因其读音和“kapi”接近,然后想象警察猛敲门的画面。学生每次遇到“kapi”这个词,警察的形象就会重新得到唤起,这样就引导到“门”的意思了。尽管对所有的年龄阶段都有效,这种学词汇的方法对儿童来说特别有趣。已经发现学生生成的图像是有效的(Levin等,1992),但也可以是由教师提供图像。可以认为在生成这些图像的时候,更强的联系得以建立,因为图像生成要求学生在把新词和熟悉的词进行结合的时候进行更深层次的处理。

米阿拉在(1980)对词汇习得的综述文章中质疑了关键词研究的结果,因为焦点是母语-外语词汇结对的输入性知识,具有离散性,对词汇意义的复杂性基本无视。然而,在此后多年,进行了大量研究,探讨这种策略的有效性。在莱文等(1992)的研究中,采用关键词法学习词汇的学生,其表现要比采用句子上下文或自由学习法的学生表现要好,不管是对词义进行立即回想还是延迟回想都是这样。在莱文(1993)的助记策略“20年报告卡”中,他建议这样的策略还是应该得到与其功能相对应的接受,比如其能够建立事实基础,在此基础上能够建立更高水平的应用。他的结论是“尽管助记手段不见得能在所有时间适合所有学生,研究证据还是压倒性地表明这些工具在一些时间对许多学生都有用”(242页,我加的着重显示)。与此基本相似,斯特恩伯格(1987)认为这种方法有局限,在一段时间内、或者在独立的情况下需要学习者花费大量精力来使用。学生能够从两方面获益于使用助记手段的经历。他们不仅能够习得目标语言,还能够学会助记手段,这些工具在其他知识习得领域也能应用。

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