When I was 12 years-old, my French teacher explained to us the difference between the meanings and spellings of three words: le cours (lesson), la cour (courtyard, playground, court of justice) and le court (court - for tennis or royalty). French speakers will know that these three words are pronounced identically in most circumstances.
Now, I think that the teacher's explanation helped me remember to this day the different meanings of the words. But the explanation may just as well have left me confused in the long run because of what cognitive psychologists call interference. In other words, if we learn more than one item at the same time, and those items are very similar in sound, interference between the items will make it harder to recall them correctly. Indeed, some psychologists such as Robert Bjork claim that when we forget things in long-term memory, it is not so much due to decay or fading, but rather interference between competing information.
Similarly, some research has suggested that if we learn words with similar meanings at the same time, there is a risk that interference will make it harder for us to retrieve them. This is why teachers are sometimes encouraged to avoid teaching vocabulary through topic or themed lists, tempting though the practice might seem. For example, if you learn the words for strawberry and raspberry at the same time, you might forget them because the two berries are similar in appearance. If the words looked or sounded the same the problem would be worse. I have blogged about this research here, by the way.
Interference is clearly a thing and it can lead not just to poor retrieval and forgetting, but to errors in speech and writing which affect meaning. If you have conducted French speaking tests with weaker students you will have heard them mix up the present and perfect tenses. So instead of saying 'j'ai joué' or 'je joue', students say 'je joué' (a sort of combination of the two). This is not always a trivial error, since it creates ambiguous meaning unless accompanied by a clear time marker such as yesterday or usually. It seems that a number of factors might be in play in this case. First, the phonological similarity between 'je' and 'j'ai'. Second, the frequency of the sound 'é' in French, notably its use in infinitives as well as the perfect tense. Thirdly, perhaps a teachers very insistence on the contrast of the two forms has led to interference, hence confusion and poor retrieval from memory.
Should we, therefore, avoid putting together forms which are similar in meaning and/or sound? Should we avoid drawing students' attention to the contrast?
There is no clear answer to this and, in the end, it may come down to issues such as how clearly the initial contrast is explained, the nature of the similarity causing interference (e.g. is it very close or quite close), the influence of the first (or other) language - how salient is the contrast?), how well the point is reinforced over time or the attentiveness and aptitude of the student. Some students just may remember and be able to recall interfering forms better than others.
I think it's the latter point which may be the most crucial. My feeling in the classroom is that I would point out confusions with higher-attaining classes, but avoid them with weaker groups. I had bigger fish to fry with the weaker classes. An exception to this would have been that issue of verb tense I described above. I don't know about you, but it seemed to me that if you explain and repeatedly reinforce the relatively clear distinction in sound and meaning between, say, 'je visite' and 'j'ai visité' students are less likely to mix them up in an oral exam.
While on the topic of interference, a question came up following a presentation I gave yesterday to ISMLA teachers at their International Schools event. It's a question you must have pondered too. How wise is it to show students incorrect language and ask them to correct it? Is there a risk that exposure to the incorrect form will lead it to become fossilised in memory?
This is clearly an interference question too. The answer I usually give to that question is roughly as follows:
Psychologists tell us that the brain reacts strongly when we encounter things which are unexpected. If, in a lab experiment, the same new information is repeated over and over, the brain gets used to it and 'switches off'. If a new piece of information is then presented, we perk up and pay more attention. Similarly, if we are used to correct forms of language, then suddenly encounter something incorrect and unexpected, we, as it were, prick up our ears and focus our attention more. Focusing attention is good for learning. As French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene has explained, we react strongly to the unexpected, so surprise is an aid to learning and memory.
What about that risk of fossilisation though? What if we recall the wrong version rather than the right one?
Well, I would suggest that we only present examples of incorrect language once we have practised lots of examples of the correct forms. Once a solid memory of the correct word, chunk or grammatical structure is established, THEN do exercises which present incorrect forms. Only then will the incorrect form come as a surprise and reinforce learning. The risk of the incorrect form being stored should be lower.
I haven't come across research on that specific issue, and I guess it would be a tricky one to study.
You could, of course, just avoid doing error-spotting activities to minimise any risk of fossilisation, but there is enough research around learning in general and the usefulness of feedback in language learning to suggest that error identification may be useful. Students often enjoy spotting mistakes and Dehaene and others may be right in their analysis of why.
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