A healthy brain can be taught a new word in less than 15 minutes, according to scientists. This discovery will deprive many students of their excuse for not studying a foreign language.
Cambridge neuroscientists found that all you need to do is to listen to a word 160 times over a span of 15 minutes. The secret is just hearing a word repeatedly. After that, the brain will have formed a completely new network of neurons specifically tasked with remembering that word.
Dr. Yury Shtyrov and his team reached this conclusion after placing electrodes on the heads of 16 healthy volunteers to monitor their brain activity. They recorded the pulses generated when the subjects listened to a familiar word. Then the volunteers were made to listen to a made-up word, over and over again. Initially, the brain had to make an effort to recognize the new word. However, after 160 repetitions over 14 minutes, the new memory traces were "virtually indistinguishable" from those of the already familiar word, said Dr. Shtyrov.
I guess that hearing a word 160 times does not seem like a particularly amusing way to learn a language, but at least it gives one hope that becoming comfortably proficient in a foreign language is possible.
This research gives us a hint of the importance of recycling content throughout lessons when you are teaching a foreign language. It is not a secret that the more you see or hear something, the more you will remember it. On the other hand, maybe the key to retaining information is to forget that you are trying to learn it in the first place.
Dr. Yury Shtyrov and his team reached this conclusion after placing electrodes on the heads of 16 healthy volunteers to monitor their brain activity. They recorded the pulses generated when the subjects listened to a familiar word. Then the volunteers were made to listen to a made-up word, over and over again. Initially, the brain had to make an effort to recognize the new word. However, after 160 repetitions over 14 minutes, the new memory traces were "virtually indistinguishable" from those of the already familiar word, said Dr. Shtyrov.
I guess that hearing a word 160 times does not seem like a particularly amusing way to learn a language, but at least it gives one hope that becoming comfortably proficient in a foreign language is possible.
This research gives us a hint of the importance of recycling content throughout lessons when you are teaching a foreign language. It is not a secret that the more you see or hear something, the more you will remember it. On the other hand, maybe the key to retaining information is to forget that you are trying to learn it in the first place.
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