Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answ
For questions 1-4, mark
Y(for YES) if the statement agrees with the information given in the passage;
N (for NO) if the statement contradicts the information given in the passage;
NG (for NOT GIVRN) if the information is not given in the passage.
For questions 5-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.
Using Mnemonics in Vocabulary Tests
An Indian man, Mahaveer Jain, spent 10 months memorizing every word of the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary's 1,500 pages including the sequence and page number of each entry. The man's teacher, Roy Chowdhury, claims that most people can improve their memories through specific techniques. High school students only need to learn a fraction of the amount memorized by Jain, so a similar technique should also improve their test scores.
Class Vocabulary Requirements
The Japanese Ministry of Education Lower & Upper Secondary School Course of Study for Foreign Languages gives a recommendation for a vocabulary of up to 900 words for Junior High School students, and up to 1,800 words for Senior High School students.
Senior High School teachers are recommended to teach vocabulary "suitable for the achievement of the objectives" of the given course of study. Students participating in reading or writing courses may be asked to learn words in excess of the recommendation in order to satisfy the needs of the course. Therefore, vocabulary taught for specific objectives may not be re-encountered again once the objectives of the current study are achieved. Such demands of new lexical input leads to very little recycling from lesson to lesson.
Vocabulary Testing
If the Japanese Ministry's vocabulary quotas are averaged out over 3 years, students would need to learn 8 and 16 new words for junior and senior high schools respectively in every week of tuition. The standard way to satisfy this requirement is via regular class tests. Vocabulary lists are expected to be learnt up to 1 week after being received and are often derived from unstructured lists. The majority of tests are based only on student knowledge and recall which is ineffective for assessing actual English ability and future needs.
Students are explicitly told the test words in advance and know when they will be tested. Consequently, even weaker students are able to cram most of the words into short term memory up until the exam starts. Students may be seen cramming as the lesson begins and formal greetings are conducted. Is this really effective for students and teachers? Are the students going to remember enough of these words when they get to university entrance exams?
Work by Ebbinghaus highlighted that nonsense syllables were lost from memory in his "forgetting curve" study. The majority of the "words" were lost within a short time and after 1 week only 25% remained. For many low-level students, English learning involves many nonsense words and syllables, so would their memory degrade in the same way? And if so, can study techniques, like mnemonics, aid in learning and reducing the memory degradation?
Mnemonics
Mnemonics in foreign language acquisition appears to have fallen out of favour with current interests in research. The use of mnemonics (memory improvement techniques) in language learning received some interest in research over 20 years ago but it is not a modem art. One technique taken from its originators is known as the Roman Room whilst the word "Mnemonic" itself derives from the ancient Greek mnemonikos and is related to the Goddess of
A.Y
B.N
C.NG