LANGUAGE I Memory and Learning

Train your brain!wahrend Kinder spielend leicht Sprachen lernen, mUssen sich Erwachsene dabei ziemlichanstrengen. MARK FLETCHER und JOANNA WESTCOMBE sagen Ihnen, woran das liegt, undzeigen Wege und Methoden auf, wie das Erlernen einer Fremdsprache auch fUr die GroBenzum Kinderspiel werden kann.

We are born to learn. Watch a two-year-old childthe first time you present her with a conker (seepage 46). Notice how she focuses in on the new

shape in front of her. Then watch as she puts allher senses to use, picking it up with finger andthumb, examining it from all sides, then rollingit around and banging it on the table before try-ing to put it in her mouth. Provide her with thename, give her some conkers to play with againthe next day and that's it: she'll always rememberwhat conkers are.

If we were so good at learning about the world at theage of two, why do we often find learning languages asadults difficult? On the next pages we'll first take a look at

our brain and memory, as wellas the things that make us indi-vidual, such as the differentways we learn. In the secondpart of the article we'll show,with the help of exercises andtips, how to use this knowledgeto become a better learner.

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°0 ThebrainLet's first look at the three different parts of the brain thatare important for learning.

Your brain makes up about two per cent of your bodyweight, but it needs about 20 per cent of your oxygen(SauerstojJ) intake to function. The brain stem (Stamm-hirn) works with your heart to make sure that enoughblood is pumped to your brain for you to concentrate onwhat you are studying. CD

Have you noticed how you can usually remember a lotabout things you really enjoyed - or hated? If you are ner-vous or worried about making mistakes or being laughedat, however, you have a mental block. There is a close linkbetween our feelings and how well we remember things. Infact, the hippocampus, which some say contains the mem-ory, is part of the limbic system, our emotional brain. 0

The neocortex, our thinking brain, helps us plan anddeal with the complex activities and relationships in ourlives. The neocortex is the part of the brain that likes get-ting involved in communication and problem-solving ac-tivities. It says: "Thank you for your input. Now I'd liketo try this myself." ®

Learning stylesWe all have the same basic

brain structure, but we learn indifferent ways. If you find alesson or subject boring ordifficult, you may be frus-trated at not receiving the in-

formation in a form that youcan easily process.

Do you need to see things before you un-derstand them? Do you like to have a good view of theboard in the classroom? You probably have a visual learningstyle. If you are an auditory learner, it is important for youto hear clearly. You prefer a quiet learning environment,enjoy following discussions and may be good at puttingideas into words. If you prefer moving around to sitting stillat a desk for long periods and like to have something in yourhands when learning, you have a kinaesthetic preference.

At this point we would like to apologize to all readerswho would have preferred to hear this article on CD or tohave taken part in an interactive workshop. Why? Becauseall of us have a mixture of visual, auditory and kinaestheticlearning styles. The more styles you use, the easier it is toremember new language.

Left and rightAnother way of looking at the learningbrain is to divide the neocortex into its two sides, or hemi-spheres. The left hemisphere is associated with logical andsystematic processes. This is also where the two main lan-guage areas are found. The "left brain" likes a structure forlearning; for example, an English lesson with clear learningtargets. It enjoys problem-solving activities and grammarexplanations.

The right hemisphere is more intuitive. It is stimulatedby music, rhythm and colour, and sees the "big picture"rather than the details. The "right brain" likes to see anoverview of the whole English course. It enjoys workingwith pictures and diagrams, and it likes the creative natureof role plays.

Of course, the two hemispheres are physically con-nected and work together. The more you actively involveeach area in your learning, the more they can support eachother and the stronger the connections that are made tothe memory.

MULTIPLE-INTELLIGENCES THEORY

The theory of multiple intelligences was first sug-gested by psychologist Howard Gardner in 1983.Gardner has identified eight intelligences, includinglinguistic, mathematical, spatial and interpersonal.These correspond to our individual abilities and tal-ents. The theory suggests that in order to learn well,we - and our teachers - need to know where ourstrengths lie, and that we also need to work on the in-telligences that are not so well developed.

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LANGUAGE I Memory and Learning

How do we remember? Why do we forget?The memory is hugely complex and not completely under-stood. Looked at simply, it consists of two parts, the short-term and the long-term memory. The short-term memorycan hold only about seven items at a time. The long-termmemory has an unlimited capacity and is made up of net-works, called "schemas". To find its way into the long-termmemory, information such as new English words needs tobe able to find a home in such a network. These networksare essential for effective learning. The more networksthere are, the easier it is to find a home. The more inter-connected and organized the networks in your long-term

memory are, the easier it is to find the words and phraseswhen you need to speak or write them later.

When we are not motivated to remember somethingnew, it just disappears from our short-term memory. Weforget it. We forget things we think we have alreadylearned when they don't have enough connections to ourmemory networks and when they are not used oftenenough. In many cases, we don't want to remember thingsthat were stressful or traumatic. New memories may over-ride (auler Kraft setzen) old ones, or old memories mayprevent new ones being stored.

Look at the words in the box below for one minute. Thenclose the magazine, take a piece of paper and write downas many of the words asyou can remember.

sheepbedgoateedoor

riverclouddogcow

chairpigtablefarm

Lookat the words you havewritten down and askyourselfhow you remembered them. Everybody will have his orher own method of doing this, probably involving one ormore of the following activities:

Although the exercise above tests only your short-term,working memory, it reveals some important things aboutlanguage learning.• Everyone has different preferences for learning and

remembering.

• making a story or stories with the words• putting the words in sensegroups such asanimals, the

interior of a room, and so on• making a picture out of the words; e.g, a pig sitting on

a table• personalizing the words; for example, picturing your

favourite chair or river• putting words together, such as sheepdog, river bed,

pig farmYou probably remembered the word in blue and the firstand/or last word you read. You might have remembered"goatee" because it looks like "goat", but without knowingwhat it means (Ziegenbortl.

• As soon as you try to learn something, like a word, yourbrain immediately wants to organize it and give it mean-ing. It does this by engaging the senses, by using colourand pictures, by trying to make connections betweenwords, and by linking them to something familiar.

Build your internal dictionaryNow that you know more about the

brain, look at how you can turn yourmemory into a complete, cross-referenced, user-friendly mental

dictionary.

°0Energy levelsYour brain stem is happy when you are warm or coolenough, and when you are not hungry, full, thirsty or tired.You probably know whether you need silence, the hum(Summen) of the fridge, Bach or Bruce Springsteen in orderto learn well. Take breaks. Get up and hang the washing onthe line, and drink lots of water. If you find it difficult tofocus, however, give yourself ten-minute blocks where youare not allowed to check your e-mail or phone a friend.

Get organizedYou are the only person who can learn the English youneed, so take responsibility for your learning. Organizeyour learning times; for example, set a regular time eachday or week for self-study. Divide your vocabulary note-book into different sections for grammar, vocabulary andso on. This will engage your left brain. When you get yourissue of Spotlight each month, keep your right brain happyby first looking through the headlines and pictures.

Use the contents pages of Spotlight tocross off the pages that you have read. Inyour vocabulary book or on your vocabu-lary cards, always note the article and pagenumber where you found the word.

Make choicesRemember that your short-term memory can hold onlyabout seven items, so don't try to remember the wholeword list from our travel article on Jordan. Choose wordsin which you want to invest. If you don't make this in-vestment, you will just waste time relearning words.

Find an article that you have enjoyed, andchoose seven items from the text and/orword list that you think will be a goodinvestment.

Reading

Paul Torday-The Hopeless Life ofCharlie Summers

Charlie Eckhat einen neuen Job:Er soll seine Kontakte nutzen,urn reiche Kunden fur einen In-vestmentfonds zu kiidern. BeimGolfen in Frankreich lernt erCharlie Summers kennen. Derplant gerade einen grofsen Coup...Mit Humor bringt der Romanauf den Punkt, was die Finanz-blase zum Platzen gebracht hat.

Englisch. Gebunden.288 Seiten. Art.Nr.15502.€ 13,50 (Dl/€ 14,00 (Al.

w€lReading

Aatish Taseer -The Temple-Goers

Ein junger lnder kehrt nachmehreren Jahren im Ausland inseinen Heimatort Delhi zuriickund findet dort rasch einen Platzzwischen den Reichen und Scho-nen. Erst als er sich mit dem cha-rismatischen Aakash anfreun-det, entdeckt er langsam dieanderen Seiten der Stadt: Mord,Korruption und eine skrupelloseGesellschaft.

Englisch. Broschiert.304 Seiten. Art.Nr. 15501.€ 15,60 (Dl/€ 16,10 (Al.

Reading

Barbara Trapido -Sex & StravinskyDer Roman spielt an drei sehrunterschiedlichen Schauplatzen:in Oxford, im Senegal und in denVororten von Durban in Sud-afrika. lm Mittelpunkt: ZweiPaare, die eigentlich den fal-schen Partner geheiratet haben,das Leben ihrer Eltern sowie derpubertierenden Tiichter und diezahlreichen Leichen, die jedervon ihnen im Keller hat.

Englisch. Broschiert.320 Seiten. Art.Nr.15503.€ 16,90 (Dl/€ 17,40 (Al.

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LANGUAGE I Memory and Learning

Be activeEngaging your senses, mak-ing mental images, using hu-mour - all of these stimulatedifferent parts of the brain, increasing and strengthening themessages being sent to the memory. Whether you write,draw, tell jokes or stories, or ask questions using the wordsyou want to learn - the more you interact with the words,the stronger and more meaningful the connections to yourlong-term memory will be.

Make pictures in your mind. Make these mental im-ages move, and make them in colour and larger than life.Use a variety of coloured marker pens for your vocabularynotes. Have a system: for example, highlight social Englishphrases in orange and phrases to use at meetings in green.When taking vocabulary notes, draw pictures instead ofwriting explanations if you can. Use symbols in your work,for example, warning triangles for typical mistakes or srni-leys for words you really like.

Read the dialogues in Everyday Englishand imagine what Angie and Mia look like,how they speak and so on. Play dialoguefour in your head like a home movie, em-phasizing the phrases you want to learn.

The more absurd or surreal the pictures and stories you in-vent, the more they will be memorable. Laughing as youlearn sends all sorts of delicious chemicals along the tracksof your brain to strengthen the links to your memory.

Having problems with the word "generi-cide" (page 68)? Imagine you want to eatthe word. Will you cut it into pieces with aknife, or will you swallow it whole? Or ima-gine hitting someone you don't like over

the head with it. Will the word bend, crack or fall apart?

Get connectedSome very old memorizing techniques work by makingconnections - by association. They can help you tomemorize things quickly and easily, and then to be able toremember them for a long time afterwards. Rather thanjust being tricks, it is now known that these techniques,called mnemonics (Eselsbrucken), just use the brain's nat-ural ability. Here are some examples.

If you are having difficulty learning a word, think of aterm that sounds the same in German, and build a mentalpicture of the two items together. For example, if you al-ways forget the word "sparrow" (Spatz), then think ofthe German "Sperre" and imagine a line of birds blockingyour way.

Another technique is to establish a route in your mindthrough a house that you know well. You then "place" oneof the items you want to remember in each room and re-view the words by walking the route. A third technique isthe number-rhyme system. First, establish a rhyming wordfor each number from one to ten, for example one = gun,two = shoe,' three = tree. You pick ten words to learn, andassociate each with one of the rhyming words. For exam-ple, if you want to learn "mock" (page 34), you might linkit to two-shoe, and imagine a pair of bright green mock-alligator shoes.

As we saw in the exercise on page 16, your brain can'tdeal with words in isolation. It wants to group them to-gether or to make sense of them with the information youalready have. The clearer the group or the context, or thebigger the "chunk" (Stuck) of language, the more connec-tions will be found to the long-term memory. So make as-sociations to the things you already know. Always start yourstudy time by reviewing your notes from the previous ses-sion, and finish by summarizing what you have just done.

Before you look at Vocabulary (pages 46-47), ask yourself how many trees and partsof trees you can name in English. After youhave worked on the Vocabulary pages,think of particular trees you know in places

you love and name them in your mind in English.

/Mind mapsMind-mapping is a non-linear method ofnote-taking and study. It links key words andideas in a similar way to that in which thebrain is thought to organize and link informa-tion. Mind maps were first made popular byTony Buzan, who has introduced many peo-ple to memory-training techniques.Here's an incomplete mind map on the sub-ject of I Ask Myself (page 26). Complete thebranches with words from the article.

Don't try to learn everything! Just as we choose 15 wordsand phrases from all our word lists for the Word Builderon pages 57-58, select what is important to you.

Make sure you work with the language as often as possible.Some people say you need to look at it after ten minutes,after 24 hours, after a week and after a month.

Remember, remember, remember!There are another three "R"s that are well known in the English-speaking world (in addition to "reading, writingand arithmetic") that encourage us to be environmentally friendly. We can apply them here to learning.

Become kinaesthetic by testing yourselfwith your vocabulary cards.Study your vocabulary notes; or runthrough words in your head before you goto sleep at night. The dreaming phase of

sleep is thought to be especially important in consolidat-ing learning.Tell somebody about an article you have read using thenew words you have learned from it.

RecycleYou will need to use new language in different contextsbefore you can really say that it has found a place in yourinternal dictionary.

Choose six words from your vocabularybank. Write them at the top of a piece ofpaper and then give yourself two minutes towrite a quick story using all the words.

Reduce

Reuse

The two-year old child has one mission in life: to learn.Our adult lives are full of things that get in the way oflearning, that make the connections in our brain becomeloose or confused. In this article, we have presented youwith lots of brain-friendly ideas on learning languages.Now it's up to you to select those ideas that you think willbe useful to you personally. Why not drink a glass ofwater, take a piece of paper and some coloured pens, andtryout a mind map of this article - just to start with?You have an amazing brain, so use your head! •

FURTHER INFORMATION

http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl!custom/resources_ftp/clienUtp/ks3/ict/mu/tip/e_int/ offersaclearintroductionto multiple·intelligencestheoryandatestthat youcando.

www.brainboxx.co.ukoffers allsortsof gamesfor learningandasectionon learningstyles.

Use YourHead byTonyBuzan(BBCActive,15BN978·0-56·348899·6)isausefulintroductiontomemorytechniques,includingmind-mapping.

Mark Fletcher, who also illustrated this article, frequently gives seminars on brain·friendly learningand teaching in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He is the author of the Pictures of English Tensesseries (Brain- Friendly Publications) and many other books. markfletcher@brainfriendlylearning.org

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