#83, Research Paper: ‘Forgetting vs. Remembering: Implications in Language Teaching’ by Laleh Fakhraei Faruji

Laleh Fakhraei Faruji is a Ph.D Candidate in Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Department of Literature & Foreign Languages, Tehran, Iran.

If asked, most of us would probably say that our biggest memory problem is forgetting things we want to remember. Due to the importance of forgetting, and implications of theories of forgetting in language teaching, the researcher in this paper provides a brief account of forgetting and its definitions, and then explains the relationship between rote and meaningful learning and forgetting. Forgetting is always referred to in negative terms, and described as a state or condition where memory does not work normally and seems to be faulty. However researcher argues that forgetting is not always negative; rather, in some occasions, it may be the most efficient thing one can do in order to retrieve memories.

According to Cubelli (2010, p. 35), etymologically, the word “to forget” derives from the Old English word forgytan, which is composed by for- (passing by, letting go) and gietan (to grasp).

Why do we forget? This question was once one of the most prominent topics of research on memory.  The original work in this area was done by Ebbinghaus (1885, as cited in Levy et al. 2010, p. 135), who carefully documented the rate at which he forgot nonsense syllables.

Different scholars provided various definitions of forgetting. Tulving (1974) defined forgetting as “the inability to recall something now that could be recalled on an earlier occasion”. Davis (2008 as cited in Roediger et al., 2010, p. 2) defined the strong form of forgetting as complete loss from storage, by saying that forgetting is  “the theoretical possibility that refers to a total erasure of the original memory that cannot be recalled, no matter what techniques are used to aid recall”. Roediger et al. (2010, p. 3) referred to the weak form of the concept of forgetting and stated that all events that have been encoded and stored from age 7 persist in the nervous system, and the inability to access them now is due to retrieval failure. (more…)

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#83, Susan Ryan’s Tip: Three Strategies for Listening to Spoken English

Many people tell me that they sometimes have trouble understanding American English speakers.

In response to this concern I will describe three listening strategies you can use to increase your understanding of spoken American English.

But first, you need to remember that written English and spoken English are very different. English is not a phonetic language. That means that there is not always a one-on-one relationship between the letters in the English alphabet and spoken sounds.

In fact, the 26 letters in the English (Roman) alphabet make many different sounds in spoken American English. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, American English has 25 consonant sounds and up to 18 vowel sounds (the exact number of sounds may vary from region to region). (more…)

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