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Memory and emotion

  Tags: Memory | Motivation
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
10 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
Teango
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Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 1 of 10
04 December 2010 at 3:31am | IP Logged 
When's the last time a line of dialogue in your target language, or a scene in a foreign film, made you laugh out loud? Perhaps you recently returned home, grinning from ear to ear, because you were able to share a few more lines over Skype, or even felt really comfortable chatting away with a native speaker out and about that day?

Whilst working for a research centre in psycholinguistics a few years back, I got the opportunity to chat with a lot of world experts in memory and learning, and every time I asked them what the most important factor was in establishing new memories and reinforcing old ones in language learning, I received the same reply: emotion.

Although there are, of course, many good exceptions (e.g. Assimil, Búntus Cainte, Princeton Russian), I think a lot of materials out there are still pretty dry in this respect, and could do with livening up. Hence I'm all for humorous and colourful dialogues followed at a later stage by contentious discussions or emotive subjects (e.g. I started on "Quiero ser" with my Spanish tutor, and I still strongly recall most of the vocabulary).

What postive experiences can you recall where emotion has helped you to learn and remember in your language studies? And do you know of any other lively fun courses out there that you would personally recommend in this respect?

Edited by Teango on 04 December 2010 at 3:53am

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Astrophel
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 Message 2 of 10
04 December 2010 at 8:33am | IP Logged 
Wheelock's Latin uses short, funny couplets and moving emotional passages taken from ancient Roman
authors. You are completely right; the interesting material made learning EASY.
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Cainntear
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linguafrankly.blogsp
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 Message 3 of 10
04 December 2010 at 1:45pm | IP Logged 
I think that this is related to a common misunderstanding with the term "meaningful" in teaching.

Many language teachers consider "my aunt's pen is on the table" to be a "meaningful" sentence because the sentence has a clear meaning, and the words have a clear meaning.

English is unusual in having one word "meaning" where many languages have two -- eg Spanish "significar" ("to mean" in the sense of dictionary definitions etc) and "querer decir" (lit. "want to say", compare with English "what are you trying to say?").

I think "meaningful" really is the second. If I want to say something, it's because it means something to me. If it's meaningful to you, if you'd want to say it, then it will provoke an emotional response.

Humour's only one way of provoking an emotional response, and it reduces reusability of materials (jokes are rarely funny the third time round).

Simple things can be emotionally meaningful too -- "I want it, but I don't have it". Think about it -- it has no unambiguous, independent meaning (because we don't know what "it" is), but we understand the sentiment: the sentence is completely charged with very personal emotion and connotation.
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M. Medialis
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 Message 4 of 10
05 December 2010 at 1:18am | IP Logged 
I have strong positive emotional memories of when I started to play the computer adventure game "The Secret of Monkey Island". This was 9 years ago, so I was 14, and my command of English was nothing more than the basic knowledge you get from schoold.

I had such a fun time playing it because of the hilarious dialogue. So I continued to look up words endlessly in order to understand every joke and pun in the game. As soon as there was a word I didn't understand I happily looked it up. This was effortless studying,- I didn't care about the language in itself, I just had fun.

This made me progress quite a lot, so I just continued to play the other games (having a great time), and I would say that those game playing hours is the main reason why I was able to progress into the understanding I have now.

Those old Lucasarts adventure games also have a very special atmosphere. It was not only the humour that made it so fun to play, I became a part of the story, living the swashbuckling pirate life!


Ahh, now the memories came back..I really need to find some good adventure games in my target languages!! :)

Edited by M. Medialis on 05 December 2010 at 1:19am

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leosmith
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 Message 5 of 10
05 December 2010 at 2:11am | IP Logged 
Teango wrote:
What postive experiences can you recall where emotion has helped you to learn and remember in
your language studies? And do you know of any other lively fun courses out there that you would personally
recommend in this respect?

Well, I know this is a family forum, so without going into the details, sex really motivates me. I would love to see
some language learning material that exploits the strongest(arguably) basic instinct/emotions we have. Watching
foreign title adult videos, although fun for an old horn dog like me, doesn't help me learn much. On the other hand,
I have some ideas...

(anyway, this is an excellent topic Teango, and I mean no offense)
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The Real CZ
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 Message 6 of 10
05 December 2010 at 2:59am | IP Logged 
I agree leosmith. I think I've only learned 3-4 words of Japanese from adult videos (but how could I not. The same 3-4 words are in every video.)
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Teango
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 Message 7 of 10
05 December 2010 at 3:13am | IP Logged 
M. Medialis wrote:
I have strong positive emotional memories of when I started to play the computer adventure game "The Secret of Monkey Island".

I love all the Monkey Islands! I think I must have played every Sierra and Lucasarts adventure game I could lay my hands on years ago. I also hear that they finally relaunched some more Monkey Island antics on the Wii and XBox not so long ago. I really miss the great sense of humour in these games (*nostalgic sigh*) - it all seems a little bit too serious these days. I'd have loved to learn another language like this.

"So you want to be a pirate, eh? You look more like a flooring inspector.” :D

Edited by Teango on 05 December 2010 at 3:32am

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Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5315 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 8 of 10
05 December 2010 at 3:28am | IP Logged 
@leosmith, The Real CZ
Wasn't there a scene in the 80s movie "Splash", where John Candy (accompanied by Tom Hanks and disguised as a Swedish scientist), manages to get by security by repeating some funny words he picked up in an adult film? :)


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