Chapter One: Introduction
1. Introduction
Most normal people will learn at least one language without
any difficulties, and that language is called the first language,
our mother tongue. People start learning their first language when
they are born, and feel little stress while learning it. Through a
huge amount of listening and reading as well as speaking and
writing, they gradually build up their knowledge about the language
and its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Sooner or later,
people come to use the language freely and can say what they want by
the time they get to elementary school.
If a person grows up in bilingual circumstances (that is an
environment where people use more than two languages), he or she can
learn these languages at the same time as the first language and
they all will also become his or her first languages.
However, learning a second language is not so easy. After a
certain age if we decide to learn a foreign language, it is not so
easy to master it and some people even give up learning it. Of
course, if the target language has a lot of similarities to the
learner's first language, the difficulty he or she feels while
1
learning it might not be so serious. On the contrary, if the
distance between the first language and the target language is
great, the learner would feel more serious difficulties. Most
people who have experienced studying foreign languages will know
this because they would have had such feelings. In other words,
people can find how difficult it is to learn a language for the
first time when they try to master a second language.
One of the most difficult points about learning the second
language is building up the vocabulary. We can say that words are
the most basic and important part of learning and using languages.
This is because even if we do not know the grammar of English, we
can communicate with English-speaking people only if we have some
vocabulary knowledge. For example, we can say ‘Sydney tomorrow go I’
and people can get the message even if the grammar is wrong. If we
know the grammar but don't know the words, it must be hard to let
people know our thoughts and feelings. Therefore, learning foreign
(second) language means learning its vocabulary as well as some
important and basic grammar rules.
Most Japanese people start learning a foreign language in
junior high school, and usually the target language is English. The
distance between English and Japanese is very large, so there are a
lot of differences between them. However, they have to study
English in schools, and most of them tend to start learning it by
memorizing words. Learners try various methods to learn words by
writing, listening, and pronouncing them, for example. Regardless
of their hard work, however, their memory of the words easily
2
disappears and it takes a long time until these words really come to
stay in the learners' mind. Research suggests it takes about 8 to
20 meetings with a word before a word stays in the head (Nation,
2001)1 . Thus people have to learn the words again and again if
they want to master them perfectly, and they really do so.
However, it was not until the 19th century that people
experimentally studied the amount of forgetting that takes place
when learning new information. Since then several experiments have
been carried out by scholars such as psychologists and linguists to
look into this important area of memory research. In the next
section we will look at two experiments about memory of language;
one is by Ebbinghaus, and the other was reported by Baddeley.
A. Hermann Ebbinghaus
Ebbinghaus investigated human memory and found we cannot keep
information for a long time naturally. He published his findings in
German as Uber das Gedachtnis (On Memory) in 18852. Ebbinghaus is
considered the pioneer of the experimental study of memory.
Originally, he was interested in mental processes, and from that
research he decided to study memory traces. He focused on how words
were acquired, and on how long they stayed in memory. Actually he
was interested in the cause of forgetting as well, but this theme
was left to the psychologists in the next century. For his
research Ebbinghaus prepared an experiment to clarify the transition
of memory traces. Because he had known the relation between the
word and its meaning, he created over 2,000 nonsense syllables, for
3
the purpose of getting very pure memory traces. That was because
something "meaningful is remembered better"3 and he did not want
the experimental data tainted by other factors such as
meaningfulness. For example, qif, bpd, ngy, xcl, hfm, ckj, fon, cum,
qap, hos, leq, kof, and mec were the some of the syllables he coined
for the experiment. Moreover, because of the heavy memory demands
of this experiment he needed highly motivated subjects to help him
and these subjects should be available over a certain period of
time. Unfortunately, he couldn't find any such subjects, and
Ebbinghaus decided to conduct it with only one subject--himself.
He recorded the time it took him to memorize several “words”,
and analyzed the data by using the savings method (see below). He
prepared two versions of the lists of the syllables (lists A and B)
and learned them at certain intervals, and re-learned them. That
is, he learned each list and recorded how long it took, and after a
certain interval (30 minutes and 48 hours) he learned them again.
Then he checked the number of syllables that stayed in his memory
after every interval.
The learning and relearning times were compared, and so were
the memories after the two rest periods. Ebbinghaus, the subject of
the research, took "4 seconds to learn" list A at first, and 2
seconds to relearn it after a 30-minute rest. List B also took 4
seconds to learn at first while relearning list B after a 48-hour
interval took 3 seconds.
When analyzing the result of the experiment, he used the
4
equation below, and "calculated the amount of savings for each
interval."
(Time for original learning) - (Time for relearning)
Savings =
Time for original learning
Imagine a subject who took 60 minutes to learn words, and who needed
30 minutes to re-learn them 1 day after the original learning. In
this way, the subject saves 30 minutes for learning the words.
Therefore, the subject's savings is 0.5. If, 10 days after the
original learning, the subject took 40 minutes to re-learn the
words, so the savings will be about 0.3. This shows how much a
person can keep the memory of words.
According to his analyses of his own learning, "the savings
after 30 minutes were 50%; savings after 48 hours were 25%." This
result was shown as the famous ‘Forgetting curve’ (see Figure 1).
The retention interval is on the X axis, and the amount saved is on
the Y axis. It was shown by this 'forgetting curve’ that our time
we need to help retention reduces with time. The curve indicates
that forgetting of nonsense syllables is most rapid at the shorter
intervals--between 20 minutes and 24 hours. The decline is much
less rapid after the second day. This implies that more syllables
will be lost most rapidly soon after learning and fewer syllables
will be lost later. This means new memories are very fragile and
soon lost.
5
Figure 1: Ebbinghaus's (1885) forgetting curve
B. Alan Baddeley
Another person who studied memory was Alan Baddeley. He is
probably the world’s foremost authority on human memory. He was
interested in how memory worked too, and his study was inspired by
Ebbinghaus's work.
Baddeley reviewed four experiments about memory in his very
famous book Human Memory (1990)4 . In it he said our every day
memory works on many different tasks such as remembering how to
drive a car, play the piano, use language and remember faces, but we
don't think much about our memory on a daily basis. In fact,
however, Baddeley pointedly says "the time at which we are most
aware of our memory is when it fails."5
When we meet a person we know or see a picture of the person,
we can immediately remember his or her name. That is people have
memorized a person by linking his or her name and a face. This fact
6
has been shown by testing people's memory of their high-school
classmates6 . The subjects were asked to answer the classmates name
when they saw their pictures, and some despite various ways to trick
them and regardless of the way of answering, the results were clear.
The percentage of correct answers showed a downward curve in
relation to the passage of time. This is another forgetting curve.
Interestingly, when the teacher subjects were shown their students'
pictures, their memory of students' face was lower than the memory
of their names, but the reason of this difference was explained that
teachers had "more individual encounters with the student's name in
connection with tasks such as grading than with the student's face".
In an experiment about the retention of foreign language, the
experimenter investigated how much of the memory of the language
retain in the subjects' mind over 50 years. The result was that
their memories did not so rapidly decay even when they did not use
the language during that period7 .
Another type of memory is the memory which was stored in
people's mind by experiencing something physically or mentally. We
call this 'experimental memory'. This type of memory can be studied
from a behaviorist position, as well. For example, if you want to
play the piano well, you will practice it repeatedly until your
fingers come to move freely on the keyboards. If you drive a car,
you must take enough time to learn how to control the machine as
well as to learn the traffic rules. After a while, you will have
mastered the activity even subconsciously because you have practiced
with part of your body.
One more type of memory Baddeley introduced was
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"autobiographical incidents", which were demonstrated in an
experiment carried out by Linton (1975)8 . The procedure was
similar to Ebbinghaus’s in that she selected a sample of incidents
and events at random and memorized their date and brief description,
and after a certain interval she checked if she could remember the
date and description. The items that were completely forgotten were
dropped from her samples. In contrast to Ebbinghaus she found that
about 5% of the samples were lost per year but in a linear way.
This result was not logarithmic as the Ebbinghaus result would
suggest.
Baddeley studied more about the memory being based on these
experiments and Ebbinghaus's work, and showed something about why we
forget. He explained that time was an important factor for memory
as Ebbinghaus suggested, and he referred to the relationship between
sleep and forgetting and the role of interference. In addition, he
tried to determine the forgetting rate. Baddeley showed that our
memory worked in various ways, so Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve
would not be appropriate for every aspect of memory.
2. The focus of the thesis
From the above we can see that there are still some points to
examine closely. The most important point is that if we are
interested in the working of our memory during learning foreign
languages, there are not many studies about it. Even Ebbinghaus's,
or the studies Baddeley reported, are not able to be said to
8
satisfactorily demonstrate the rate of forgetting of new foreign
words.
There are some reasons for this. The first reason is that
although their research is so interesting we can not get enough
knowledge about foreign language learning. Ebbinghaus's study was
too much focused on pure memory. He used nonsense syllables which
he made for his experiment to avoid creating unnaturally high
scores. However, in foreign language learning we cannot separate
the sign, or form and meaning.
In addition, we should be cautious about Ebbinghaus's study
because he examined only one subject, and the only one was
Ebbinghaus himself. The reliability and generalizability of an
experiment would be less if the experimenter and the subject are the
same person. Despite this, he did not collect more objective data
with several subjects.
Another problem is the time his experiment was carried out.
It was in 1885, that is, the result of the experiment, the
forgetting curve, was published about 120 years ago. Therefore it
is long overdue for an update and with a specific reference to
foreign language word learning.
Although, Baddeley's focus is wider, in contrast to
Ebbinghaus, his thoughts about memory involved not only foreign
language but also various daily experiences. Besides, he seemed to
depend on other studies too much, so the basis of his opinions is as
old or inappropriate for second language learning as Ebbinghaus's
forgetting curve.
9
Another point to discuss was that the researchers used the
saving method. The results of the experiment shown above in Figure
1 was just shown as the rate, and there were no specific numerical
values to refer to.
Accordingly, we have to carry out an experiment which focuses
on foreign language learning and with numerical values.
3. Research questions
There are two research questions for this experiment, and they
are as follows:
(1) At what rate do people forget words naturally?
(2) Does the time taken to re-learn words decrease the
natural forgetting rate?
In the following chapter we will see the design, the procedure, and
the results of two experiments concerning the memory of foreign
words. In Chapter Three we will discuss these findings.
10
Chapter Two: The Studies
1. Introduction
In this chapter, we will conduct two experiments. As we found
in Chapter One, we have to investigate our memory of learning
languages more in detail, although there have been some other
studies already but they did not look at the learning of foreign
languages directly. In regard to each experiment, we will look at
the method first, and the results. Later in Chapter Three, we will
analyze and discuss the data from the experiments.
2. Introduction of the Experiments
There are two experiments. The first experiment is prepared
to verify Ebbinghaus's findings, that is, to verify the rate at
which people forget words naturally. This question is based on
Ebbinghaus's "forgetting curve" study. We replicated his work
focusing on natural forgetting, but with 10 subjects and the target
language was a real language--not a language which was made only for
11
this experiment.
The second experiment is based on Pimsleur's work (1967) and
our conviction of the effect of re-learning. By this experiment we
can see the amount of influence that re-learning has in building up
our foreign language vocabulary. Therefore, the research question
seeks to discover if the time taken to re-learn words decreases the
natural forgetting rate over time. In other words, "does re-
learning decrease the time taken to re-learn the words?"
For both these experiments only one kind of test was
prepared, but actually it was designed in order to get some answers
to these two questions. One is how quickly do foreign language
learners forget the new vocabulary, and the other is whether re-
learning strengthens their vocabulary knowledge.
Firstly, we will look at Experiment 1, and later at Experiment
2. The results of the experiments will be discussed in Chapter
Three.
3. Experiment 1
A. Introduction of Experiment 1
Experiment 1 was planned and carried out to verify
Ebbinghaus's "forgetting curve" as he did in 1885. Though this is
based on his study, this experiment was designed to remove some of
12
the disadvantages of the way in which he conducted it. In this
section we will look through the method of Experiment 1, and in the
following section we will see that of Experiment 2.
B. Method
a) Subjects
The subjects were 10 female Japanese-speaking students from 18
to 22 years old and they all belong to the English department of
their college. They had some experiences of learning foreign
languages for some periods but had not learned any Asian language.
Their language proficiency is not important for this study as the
test words were all a new foreign language.
b) Test design
The target language of this experiment was decided to be
Indonesian. There are several reasons why Indonesian was chosen.
Firstly, as this experiment deals with forgetting, it is important
that the subjects do not already know words. Therefore they had to
learn a new language. Moreover, the language had to be a natural
one, not a nonsense one like in Ebbinghaus’s experiment. Secondly,
Indonesian is written in the Roman alphabet with which the subjects
are familiar. Thirdly, as Indonesian is a new language for them,
learning Indonesian would not cause then to lose their motivation to
learn new language in this experiment.
The experimenter had to avoid some things which might
influence the subjects' motivation as much as possible because the
13
learner's motivation is one of the most important points when
learning a foreign language (e.g. Lightbown and Spada, 1999 . 56-
58) .
The test words for the experiment were selected at random
using this procedure. Firstly, some Indonesian words were selected
by using a few internet web sites and dictionaries. Nouns, verbs,
and adjectives were chosen for the test. If the words looked too
hard to learn, for example if they had a long spelling and difficult
meaning, the subjects' motivation might be decreased, so those words
were avoided, as well as loan words. If the loan words already
existed in Japanese (e.g Taksi in Indonesian is taxi in English and
タクシー in Japanese) their appearances might make them too easy to
learn and remember which would lead to little forgetting. In that
case, the result of this experiment would not be so useful.
Therefore, the words were chosen from an Indonesian vocabulary list
at elementary level, and they didn't include loan words.
For this experiment, 20 words were prepared, and this
decision was made considering the subjects' motivation too. If the
1 Nation, P. (2001)
2 Ebbinghaus,H. (1885)
3 Harberlandt K. (1994) 207-209.
4 Baddeley, A. (1990) 234-261.
5 Baddeley, A. Ibid. 233.
6 Bahrick, H., Bahrick, O. and Wittlinger, R. (1975)
7 Bahrick, H. (1984)
8 Linton, M. (1975)
14
subjects saw a list of 30 words and were soon asked to learn them
perfectly, they would feel that the task was impossible and this
feeling might decrease their motivation. However, if there were
only 10, small number of words would not show a clear difference
statistically. Thus, it seemed that 20 words were the most suitable
for this experiment.
After collecting the test items, the type of the test was
selected. The experimenter selected a productive style of test,
that is, the Indonesian words are written on the test paper in
advance and the subject will write their meanings in Japanese (See
Appendix 1). If the test was matching style, the subjects could
easily choose the correct item even if they actually could not
understand the Indonesian word, because they could see the meanings
on the paper. This would not be good because the score of the test
would be very high and would involve prompted recall. Moreover, if
the subjects had to write down the correct Indonesian words
equivalent to the Japanese, they would feel much more pressure when
they memorize the words, and it might affect their motivation.
The subjects did not have a chance to ask about this
experiment until they finished the chain of tests, and the
researcher of course did not explain about it and just only gave
them some directions when they were taking the tests.
c) Pilot study
After deciding the test words and the test style, the
researcher conducted a pilot test to check whether the test really
worked well or not. The pilot test was carried out with 4 students
15
who were not the subjects of the main experiments. So as not to
make them feel pressure, the directions were given in Japanese, but
never explained the details of this experiment. However, after
taking the test, they said they gradually lost their motivation
while they were memorizing the words, although care was taken in
selecting them. The students complained that some of the words were
very unfamiliar in structure, so they could not imagine their
pronunciation, and that annoyed them. In fact, the time they needed
to learn the 20 test words was much longer than expected.
Therefore, the words had to be chosen again. This time the words
were selected not only considering of the length of the spelling and
of the origin, but also the phonetic structure of the words. For the
main experiments, the experimenter chose 20 Indonesian words which
had consonant-vowel structure, which is the same structure as
Japanese words, and which would lessen the difficulty of learning
them. The words were piloted again to verify that the new 20 words
work well. The 20 test words are shown in Table 1.
Table 1: The test words
Indonesian meaning Indonesian meaning
1 bangun
to get up( 起 き
る)
1
1 kuda horse( 馬)
2 bunga flower( 花)
1
2 lalu to go through(通る)
3 cuci to wash( 洗う)
1
3 maju
to make progress( 進
む)
16
4 guru teacher( 先生)
1
4 makan to eat( 食べる)
5 hujan rain( 雨)
1
5 mata eye(目)
6 ibu mother( 母)
1
6 matahari sun(太陽)
7 ikan fish( 魚)
1
7 pisau knife( ナイフ)
8 kaki foot( 足)
1
8 ramai lively( 賑やかな)
9 kemarin yesterday( 昨日)
1
9 sepatu shoe( 靴)
10 kiri left( 左)
2
0 utara north( 北)
d) Procedure
The whole procedure of the experiment was decided. The two
most important things to carry out the experiment were not to
decrease the subjects' motivation and to get the natural forgetting
rate. Thus the all instructions were given in Japanese. Before
starting the experiment, the researcher told the subjects that she
would not answer the questions about the experiment and she could
not explain about it too until after all the tests had been
completed. Also, the subjects were asked not to speak about this
experiment even with the other subjects and to try not to write down
and remember the words.
17
The researcher timed every subject for each task. In total
eight versions of the test were taken by the subjects in Experiment
1. On the first day of the experiment, the subjects were shown a
list of 20 Indonesian words, and were asked to memorize them in any
way they liked. The subjects could learn them by writing,
pronouncing, or using cards which were given with the word list.
Indonesian was written on one side of the card, and Japanese was on
the other side. When the subjects felt they got 20 words perfectly,
they took TEST 0 (see Appendix 1) to check their memory. The
subjects had 3 minutes to answer the test. If the score on TEST 0
was 20, they could go to the next step, but if not, they had to
learn the words again until they really got 20 points on TEST 0.
Experiment 1 was designed to show how much memory would be lost as
time passed, so in order to show this, the memory had to be maximum
or the forgetting curve would have no baseline data of 20 words
learned from which decay could be measured. The subjects could not
check the word list and cards again. If they could not get 20
points, they were just given the word list and cards again, and had
soon to start learning again until they got a perfect score.
When a subject could get 20 points on TEST 0, they were handed
a distraction exercise. The subjects were directed to solve maths
questions as quickly as possible for 5 minutes (See Appendix 2).
This was just a distraction to remove the subjects' attention from
the test words, so how quickly they could calculate had nothing to
do with the experiment. The subjects of course did not know this
fact.
18
After a 5 minute distraction, the subjects had to take the
next test which was the first of the ‘forgetting rate tests’. TEST
I had the same questions as TEST 0 but were printed in a different
order to remove any learning or memory effect from serial
positioning, and all the subsequent tests differed only by changing
the order of test items. From this test the natural forgetting of
words were recorded, and the subjects were given 3 minutes answering
time.
There was a gap of one hour before the next test. The subjects
had to spend the time doing a distracting exercise by drawing
pictures, being interviewed on the test, or chatting with the
researcher.
After passing TEST 0, and the distraction was finished, the
subjects had to take another version of the test which again showed
the same words in a new order. The answering time was 3 minutes as
well.
The next test was carried out on the following day, that is,
24 hours after learning the words. TEST IV was carried out 1 week
later from the first day of the experiment, and after this test to
TEST VII the test was carried out every week for 4 weeks. Of course
the subjects had no chance to learn or see the words again. Thus in
Experiment 1 the subjects took 8 memory tests over a 4 week period.
The procedure is summarized in Table 2.
Table 2: Summary of tests for Experiment 1
Step Subjects were to... Time Passage
19
1
1) be given a list of 20 words and the cards
2) Learn the 20 words
3) take TEST 0 many times till they get 20 points
4) have 5 minute distraction
5) take TEST I
6) have 1 hour distraction
7) take TEST II
0
plus 5 min.
plus 1 hour
2 1) take TEST III plus 1 day
3 1) take TEST IV plus 1 week
4 1) take TEST V plus 2 weeks
5 1) take TEST VI plus 3 weeks
6 1) take TEST VII plus 4 weeks
e) Results
The results by subject of Experiment 1 are shown in Table 3
and Figure 2. They show the mean scores for the tests over time.
The graphical data by subjects is in Appendix 3. The subjects took
an average of 23.1 (s.d. 5.99) minutes to learn the 20 words
perfectly.
The results show mean score of 20 points for TEST 0 dropping
gradually to 16.4 over 4 weeks. These results will be discussed in
Chapter Three.
Table 3: Results by subject for Experiment 1 (Max = 20)
Subjects
Learning
Times Scores
20
5 min.
1
hour 1 day
1
week
2
weeks
3
weeks
4
weeks
Test
0 Test Ⅰ
Test
Ⅱ Test Ⅲ
Test
Ⅳ Test Ⅴ
Test
Ⅵ
Test
Ⅶ
1 14 20 20 20 20 20 19 20 19
2 18 20 20 19 19 17 19 20 18
3 19 20 20 19 20 13 12 13 14
4 30 20 20 20 20 20 18 17 20
5 18 20 16 19 20 20 18 18 18
6 21 20 20 20 19 20 20 20 20
7 24 20 19 18 18 19 20 17 13
8 28 20 19 20 18 14 10 11 10
9 27 20 20 20 20 18 16 17 18
10 32 20 20 20 18 14 12 13 14
mean 23.1 20 19.4 19.5 19.2 17.5 16.4 16.6 16.4
s.d. 5.99 0 1.26 0.71 0.92 2.84 3.72 3.24 3.41
Figure 2: Forgetting curve of mean scores for the 20 words
21
in Experiment 1 (n=10)
On average, the subjects remembered 16 of the 20 words over 4
weeks.
4. Experiment 2
A. Introduction of Experiment 2
Experiment 1 was carried out to see how many words were lost
over time. In this section we will look at Experiment 2.
This experiment is identical to Experiment 1 in many ways
except that it shows us whether relearning effects our memory or
22
not. As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, Experiment 1
and 2 were carried out with the same tests but there was a
difference in the procedure.
B. Method
a) Subjects
For Experiment 2 there were also 10 Japanese female college
students belonging to English department, but they were not the
subjects of Experiment 1. All these subjects had also learned
foreign languages before.
b) Test design
The test words were the same as Experiment 1, and so was the
test procedure. Also, there were 8 versions of the same tests, and
the answering time was also 3 minutes.
c) Procedure
Basically the procedure of Experiment 2 was same as that of
Experiment 1. The only difference between Experiment 1 and 2 was
that in Experiment 2 the subjects were able to re-learn the words
list for a fixed time after they had taken their timed test.
23
Table 4: Summary of tests for Experiment 2
On the first day of the experiment, the subjects of
Experiment 2 took tests following the same procedure as for
Experiment 1. However, on the second day of the experiment, they
were given the next memory test but then permitted to re-learn the
words until they felt they could remember them all perfectly. It is
important to note that the re-learning time was taken for the
subjects of Experiment 2 after taking their tests. This was done to
see if less time was taken to learn the words after each meeting.
The assumption was that if the re-learning times reduced, the words
were becoming more and more well-learned.
24
Step Subjects were to... Time Passage1
1) be given a list of 20 words and the cards2) Learn the 20 words3) take TEST 0 many times until they get 20 points4) have 5 minute distraction5) take TEST I6) have 1 hour distraction7) take TEST II
0
plus 5 min.
plus 1 hour2
1) take Test III2) be given the list and the cards to Re-Learn3) have 5 minutes distraction4) take TEST 0
plus 1 day
3
1) take TEST IV2) be given the list and the cards to Re-Learn3) have 5 minutes distraction4) take TEST 0
plus 1 week
4
1) take TEST V2) be given the list and the cards to Re-Learn3) have 5 minutes distraction4) take TEST 0
plus 2 weeks
5
1) take TEST VI2) be given the list and the cards to Re-Learn3) have 5 minutes distraction4) take TEST 0
plus 3 weeks
6
1) take TEST VII2) be given the list and the cards to Re-Learn3) have 5 minutes distraction4) take TEST 0
plus 4 weeks
At each subsequent time interval the subjects were first given
their normal test, then were allowed to relearn their words and take
TEST 0 again at the end of 4 weeks. In this way it was confirmed
that the subjects had relearned the words perfectly. At each
subsequent test time, the time taken to relearn the words was then
measured to see if re-learning made a difference to the relearning
times. The same 5-minute distracting time was used as in Experiment
1. The subjects took a total of 13 tests during the experimental
period. The procedure is shown in Table 4.
d) Results
The learning times and the scores of Experiment 2 are shown in
Table 5, and Figure 3 shows the mean scores for the tests over time.
Table 5: Test scores by subject in Experiment 2
In Appendix 4 the graphical data by subject is also shown. The
subjects took a mean 28.8 (s.d. 4.47) minutes to learn the 20 words.
The data show that the mean score averaged 20 as one would expect
25
Times 5 min 1 H 1 day 1 week 2 weeks 3 weeks 4 weeks
Test 0
Test Ⅰ
Test Ⅱ
Test Ⅲ
Test 0
Test Ⅳ
Test 0
Test Ⅴ
Test 0
Test Ⅵ
Test 0
Test Ⅶ
Test 0
1 23 20 19 20 20 20 20 19 19 20 20 20 20 202 34 20 20 19 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 203 23 20 19 20 20 20 18 20 20 20 18 20 20 204 31 20 20 18 16 19 18 19 19 20 19 20 20 195 26 20 20 19 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 206 27 20 20 19 20 19 19 19 20 20 20 20 20 207 34 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 19 208 33 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 209 25 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 2010 32 20 20 20 18 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20Mean 28.8 20 19.819.519.419.8 19.5 19.7 19.8 20 19.7 20 19.919.9s.d. 4.47 0 0.420.711.350.42 0.85 0.48 0.42 0 0.67 0 0.320.32
Subject Learning SCORES
because they met the words several times.
Figure 3: Forgetting curve of mean scores for the 20 words
in Experiment 2(n=10)
Table 6: Re-learning times needed
Subject Re-Learning Times Needed
Plus 1 day
(after Test Ⅲ)
Plus 1 week
(after Test Ⅳ)
Plus 2 weeks
(after Test Ⅴ)
Plus 3 weeks
(after Test Ⅵ)
Plus 4 weeks
(after Test
Ⅶ)
1 2 2 3 1 0.5
2 3 2 2 1 1
3 6 3 2.5 2 1.5
26
4 6 2 2 2 1.5
5 3 2 3 1.5 1
6 3 2 1.5 1 1
7 3 2 1 1 1
8 4 2 3 0.5 0.5
9 3 2 2 1 1
10 3 3 2 1 0.5
Mean 3.6 2.2 2.2 1.2 0.95
s.d. 1.35 0.42 0.67 0.48 0.37
The re-learning times for the 10 subjects in Experiment 2 are shown
in Table 6 and Appendix 5.
Below in Figure 4, the mean re-learning times are shown.
These data show a mean decrease in re-learning times from Test 3 (1
day after the baseline TEST O) of 3.6 minutes (s.d. 1.35) to 0.95
minutes (0.37) after 4 weeks.
Figure 4: Mean Re-learning times between tests by the subjects
for Experiment 2
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5. Summary
In this chapter we have seen the method and the results of two
experiments. In the next chapter, we will look at the data, and
discuss the findings of these experiments more in detail to find
answers to the two research questions posed in Chapter One.
Pimsleur, P. (1967) 73-75.
Lightbown, P. and Spada, N. (1999) 56-58.
Waring, R. (1997) 94-114.
28
Chapter Three: Analysis and Discussion
1. Introduction
The two experiments were designed and carried out as we have
seen in the former chapter. In this chapter, we will look at the
result of each experiment and discuss the findings in more detail.
2. Results of Experiment 1
A. Summary of Experiment 1
We carried out this experiment to look for the answer to the
question of how quickly second (foreign) language learners forget
words learned from word cards. The aim was to replicate Ebbinghaus's
experiment.
The subjects were asked to learn 20 Indonesian words without
being informed of the aim of the experiment. They were timed for
their memorization of the words, and the follow-up tests recorded
how much they forget during the experimental period. First, they
29
had to memorize the words perfectly, and after that they had to take
several tests at certain time intervals.
B. Findings
The aim of Experiment 1 was to verify the validity of the
forgetting curve, and the results are shown in Table 3, Figure 2,
And Appendix 3 in Chapter Two.
Compared to Ebbinghaus's experiment, this study had more
subjects than his, and the most important point was that the target
of this experiment was a real language though in his experiment the
target was man-made non-sense syllables. However, the intervals
were decided differently, and the total period for the experiment
was also different.
Basically, the result of the experiment showed a similar
decline to Ebbinghaus's curve, but it was not so steep. There is
great individual variation in the amount of forgetting, although the
scores generally gradually decreased (See Figure 5).
Figure 5: Mean Scores of Experiment 1
30
Some of the subjects forget words in a similar way to Ebbinghaus's
forgetting curve, but a few subjects did not--they even retained
most of the words over the 4 weeks. For example, Subjects 1 and 2
learned 20 words very quickly but did not forget many of them. On
the contrary, Subjects 8 and 10 forget most of the words although
they took much longer to learn the words initially. However, it is
clear that natural forgetting progresses in proportion to the time
passage when we look at Appendix 3 in Chapter Two.
3. Results of Experiment 2
A. Summary of Experiment 2
The design of this experiment was the same as that of
Experiment 1. The only difference was that the subjects could re-
learn the list of words after taking each test, after which they
rested for 5 minutes as a distraction, and then took the test again
to check the effect of the re-learning.
B. Findings
In Experiment 2, there are also individual differences in
learning times and in the scores of the tests similar to those in
Experiment 1.
31
Thanks to the re-learning, they seldom forgot words, and could
keep higher scores throughout the experimental period. Moreover,
the mean scores of Experiment 2 gradually improved not only the
score after re-learning but also before (See Figure 6).
Because of the re-learning, the scores are naturally higher
than those of Experiment 1. When we compare the scores of before and
after re-learning, the latter is higher than the former. That is,
the change of the scores shows us the effect of re-learning. We can
find this in Table 5, Figure 3, and Appendix 4 in Chapter Two and
Figure 6 below.
Figure 6: Mean scores of Experiment 2
Interestingly, the time they required for relearning reduced
as we can see in Table 6, Figure 4, and Appendix 5 in Chapter Two.
Therefore, we can see the importance of relearning when learning
word cards to study the vocabulary of the foreign language.
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4. Comment
When the subjects finished taking the series of tests, the
researcher interviewed them about how they had learned the 20 words.
Prior to the experiment, all of them had no knowledge of Indonesian.
Most subjects said they learned the words by writing the spelling,
and few of them by just looking at them or pronouncing them.
Writing words in order to learn them required people to use their
eyes and hands, and to move them. This monitor-manual movement
might have stimulated their memory, and help them to memorize the
words.
However, according to the subjects of Experiment 1, the memory
which had been made by physical movement did not last long in their
mind. The subjects who used this way gradually forgot the words in
line with Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve. Therefore, we cannot
conclude that writing down the word pair is the most effective way
to prevent forgetting.
Yet the subjects who showed high scores in the chain of tests
said they learned the words by connecting them with another image,
in other words, by creating mnemonics. In other words, they
memorized by drawing a mental picture of the word, or when they
connected the new word to a word in their first language that had
similar pronunciation, and connect the word and the image. This
does not always require a learner to part of their body. However,
33
people who learned the words in this way could keep the memory for a
long time. This implies that mnemonics are very successful for this
type of learning. (See Ellis, N. for a review.)
This fact would encourage people who are learning foreign
languages and who are teaching languages. As we know, learning a
foreign language involves learning its vocabulary, so the finding of
an efficient way of vocabulary building would help the acquisition
of the language.
Compared with Ebbinghaus's "forgetting curve", the curve we
could get by this experiments were not so steep. There are several
possible reasons for this.
Firstly, it might be caused by the difference of the design of
the experiment. Ebbinghaus created a huge number of nonsense
syllables as the target to learn, but for this experiment 20 words
of a real language were used. People are accustomed more to the
real words than to non-sense syllables, therefore, the subjects of
these experiments may have been able to learn and keep them more
easily.
Secondly, the difference of the experimental method might be a
part of the reason. The subjects of this experiments used the word
cards to learn the words, unlike Ebbinghaus. Using such cards to
learn new words can aid memorization of them, because it involves
testing your memory with the cards by yourself. The effect of
studying with word cards was shown by Waring in 1997 .
Another reason is that the subjects of these experiments all
had learned foreign languages. Owing to the experiences of learning
a second language they might have special techniques to learn new
34
words and store them in their memory for a long time, and this may
have benefited their retention of the words. If the subjects had
never learned foreign language before, the direction itself by the
researcher might have confused the subjects. In that case, the
results of these experiments would be changed.
One more possible reason is the difference of the behavior of
the requirement of learning in the experiment. Ebbinghaus and other
scholars did not pressure the subjects in this way and they
collected the data which the subjects learned without pressure . In
this experiment, however, the researcher pressured the subjects to
memorize the words perfectly initially. This was to create a base
knowledge from which the learners’ vocabulary could be measured for
decay. This procedure might influence the subjects mentally, as it
requires them to work harder than if they had not been directed to
do so, so strictly. Thus the pressure of the test seems important
for the language learners and may have helped them to retain the
words to some extent.
5. Weak points of the Experiments
There are several weak points of this study that we must be
aware of.
Firstly, the number of the subjects was quite small. If more
subjects had been tested, the experiment could lead to greater
reliability. Also, having more subjects could clarify not only the
35
tendencies and the characteristics but also the exceptions.
Secondly, our subjects had similar backgrounds. In this
experiment the subjects were all female college students, and their
first language was only Japanese.
Thirdly, the target language was Indonesian, and it was
limited only to elementary level words. Thus, the test words could
not be selected from various types.
In addition, the strict requirement to get the base knowledge
level seemed to have influenced the subjects. If we wish to measure
more natural forgetting, future researcher might be better if there
were less pressure.
6. Further research
As we looked at the experiment and its results, we could find
the answers to the first two questions. Ebbinghaus's forgetting
curve could be applied to foreign language learning, but the speed
and the amount of forgetting depends on the individual's memory.
Therefore, we need to examine more subjects to get a better, more
universal, forgetting curve.
If we could find such a forgetting curve, we would be able to
devise teaching methodologies to prevent our vocabulary from
decaying, which would certainly help our second language learning.
For that, we have to conduct this research again with many more
subjects who have various backgrounds and compare those results with
36
these. For example, there is a need to compare young children's
memory, adults’, and older people's; males’ and females’; and
Chinese-speaking people's and French-speaking people's learning of
English. Besides this, other languages would need to be
investigated. If there is a difference between languages for
forgetting rates, we might be able to rank languages from the point
of view of which language is easier or harder to master as a foreign
language.
7.Conclusion
In this thesis, we carried out two experiments for the purpose
of getting answers to two research questions. The first was the
rate at which people forget words naturally, and the other was to
examine if the time taken to re-learn words decreases the natural
forgetting rate. These questions are interesting for foreign
language learners and their teachers because the answers to these
question would be useful for their language learning.
When we started the experiments, we focused on vocabulary
because we thought vocabulary building was one of the most basic and
important aspects of learning a foreign language. According to
Experiment 1, we found that the forgetting curve was not as steep as
Ebbinghaus’s, possibly because of the pressure the subjects faced
when having to learn the words initially. This requirement for
perfect initial knowledge may have aided their retention. Secondly,
there was a big difference between the time each subject needed to
37
learn words, and the rate of forgetting differed clearly by
individuals. Also, we could find there was a good way to build up
vocabulary effectively, that is learning words by connecting certain
images or the word of the first language which has similar
pronunciation. In addition to this, Experiment 2 showed that re-
learning could prevent the learner from forgetting the words
naturally. Thus we are now getting a clearer picture of an
effective way to learn foreign words when using word cards.
We cannot say that we could find the best way of learning
words, so more experiments varying the test design, the subjects,
and the testing period and so on need to be carried out. When the
various studies are carried out, we may then discover an efficient
way of learning bilingual word pairs.
Beaton, A., Gruneberg, M., and Ellis, N. (1995) 112-120.
Waring, R. (1997) 94-114.
Atkinson, R. and Shiffrin, R. (1968) 89-195.
38