A study was just released today with the intriguing headline “Less Pain for Learning Gain: Research Offers a Strategy to Increase Learning With Less Effort.”
Sounds great, right? And potentially useful, too, right?
However, I’m not sure I really understand its application to the classroom, and I’d appreciate your help in either confirming what I think it says, or helping me with a new interpretation.
If I understand it correctly (and I might very well not)the experiment related to helping people learn the difference between two tones. The people who were “drilled and killed” didn’t really learn the difference. On the other hand, the people who were “drilled and killed” for the same amount of time, combined with an equal amount of time doing an unrelated puzzle while just hearing one of the tones at the same time, showed “significant learning gains.”
The article says the study has potential for “people studying a second language.”
Huh?
Are they saying that just having exposure to the second language you’re learning will help you improve your proficiency in it? If that’s the case, is this just another example of research showing us something we have all known for years?
Or is there something else I’m missing?
If you’ve missed the point, so have I.
I tend to be very suspicious of claims like this. However, what this makes me think of, and I haven’t read the study, is if you are learning a language like Hmong, which is tonal. If you don’t learn it as a child, it is so difficult, if not impossible, to hear all of the tones. I have tried and tried, having Hmong speakers saying words with different tones up close, in my ear, watching their mouth form the sounds, everything I could think of, and the words sounded exactly the same to me. Maybe if I wasn’t trying so hard, my brain could take them in on a less conscious level. Hence, doing something rote like jigsaw puzzle while listening might open your ability to hear sounds such as these. Just an idea.
Larry –
Thanks for the thought provoking article.
I don’t know if this is new to you, but I learned a few things with this article.
First, drill and kill is only so effective because no progress was shown with only 20 min a day. Those with 40 min a day showed progress. So drill and kill needs LOTS of time to be effective.
Second, 40 min a day of drill and kill is the same as 20 min of drill and kill quickly followed by 20 min of exposure to a task without conscience practice of the task. However, if there is too much time between the drill and kill and the “resting” with exposure, no progress again.
So, same amount of time, just different intention during the time period.
How could this work in an ESL classroom? Well, it seems this is only applicable to listening, so it would have to be a listening exercise. Perhaps, I am speculating here, students practice pronunciation of difficult words for 20 min. Then, they simply listen to that pronunciation for 20 min, maybe even do something else at the same time. I think this study is saying that this mix would be as effective as practicing pronunciation for 40 min.
But I could be wrong!
I hope this helped, whether new to you or not.
I suspect this is a reference to the new study I, also, read about the other day — except I read it described in a different context. What was discovered that surprised the observers was that by studying the material again in mixed environments with background noise or unrelated sensory input (an example would be at a café), learners retained knowledge markedly better than if they simply reviewed again in the quiet type of environment we would normally recommend.
Thanks to everyone for helping clarify the possibilities. All the comments offer intriguing interpretations.
Larry