The Problem of Memorization and the Utility of Forgetting
Concerning culture as a process, one would say that it means learning a great many things and then forgetting them; and the forgetting is as necessary as the learning. Diligent as one must be in learning, one must be as diligent in forgetting; otherwise the process is one of pedantry, not culture. The trouble with the pedant is not that be has learned too much, for one can never do that, but that he has not forgotten enough. In the view of culture, the human spirit is somewhat like the old fashioned hectograph which had to be laid aside for a day or so after each use, to let the surface impression sink down into the gelatine pad. The pedant's learning remains too long on the surface of his mind; it confuses and distorts succeeding impressions, thus aiding him only to give himself a conventional account of things, rather than leaving his consciousness free to penetrate as close as possible to their reality, and to see them as they actually are. [my italics]
- Albert Jay Nock
What Nock has to say about culture applies in great measure to language learning. When you know, say, the rules for the subjunctive in French, you've learned a lot. But it's only when you use the subjunctive without thinking about it or even realizing you've done it that you've actually learned French (as opposed to knowing about French).
The other day, I wrote about memorization. This is the pedant's part. The next step is forgetting - i.e., knowing so naturally that you needn't use your knowledge consciously.
Whether you learn words or phrases, whether you learn with an SRS, through mnemonics or through, as I put it, brute force, the prime value in learning "language items" is as a crutch so that you can get through real-life language more easily, that is, expand the range of comprehensible input at a fast enough pace that you can more easily build that critical mass of knowledge that enables you to process language automatically rather than consciously.
How do you apply memorization, then? Well, if you have a Teach Yourself course or Routledge Colloquial, you can learn all the vocabulary. Then, when you read the dialogs instead of flipping back and forth to the glossary, you'll be able to focus on what the words are doing. If you're working through newspaper articles, you can skim for vocabulary you don't know, then learn it before reading so that the experience will be more natural. If you like to learn with music, you can find the lyrics for a song and memorize any words you don't know so that you'll know what you're listening for the next time you hear it.
The one key thing to understand is that memorization, however you approach it, is not language learning per se. It's the conscious part of learning that carries you through between ignorance of a language and the ability to speak it - to use it unconsciously. If you memorize words you aren't going to be using, you'll lose them. But if you memorize words or phrases that you're likely to encounter in your interactions with the language you're learning, then you're doing something even better than memorizing - you're getting ready to forget!
- Albert Jay Nock
What Nock has to say about culture applies in great measure to language learning. When you know, say, the rules for the subjunctive in French, you've learned a lot. But it's only when you use the subjunctive without thinking about it or even realizing you've done it that you've actually learned French (as opposed to knowing about French).
The other day, I wrote about memorization. This is the pedant's part. The next step is forgetting - i.e., knowing so naturally that you needn't use your knowledge consciously.
Whether you learn words or phrases, whether you learn with an SRS, through mnemonics or through, as I put it, brute force, the prime value in learning "language items" is as a crutch so that you can get through real-life language more easily, that is, expand the range of comprehensible input at a fast enough pace that you can more easily build that critical mass of knowledge that enables you to process language automatically rather than consciously.
How do you apply memorization, then? Well, if you have a Teach Yourself course or Routledge Colloquial, you can learn all the vocabulary. Then, when you read the dialogs instead of flipping back and forth to the glossary, you'll be able to focus on what the words are doing. If you're working through newspaper articles, you can skim for vocabulary you don't know, then learn it before reading so that the experience will be more natural. If you like to learn with music, you can find the lyrics for a song and memorize any words you don't know so that you'll know what you're listening for the next time you hear it.
The one key thing to understand is that memorization, however you approach it, is not language learning per se. It's the conscious part of learning that carries you through between ignorance of a language and the ability to speak it - to use it unconsciously. If you memorize words you aren't going to be using, you'll lose them. But if you memorize words or phrases that you're likely to encounter in your interactions with the language you're learning, then you're doing something even better than memorizing - you're getting ready to forget!
1 Comments:
I agree with what you're saying in principle here, but I disagree with calling it "forgetting".
Forgetting is not the same as "unconscious competence". Forgetting leads to conscious incompetence!
But you are right to say something isn't truly learned until you have unconscious competence.
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