Memorisation

As an international examiner for the last 20 years, and a teacher for the last 30, I have been extremely fortunate to travel the world, to all manner of places.  I have seen asados on fire off the shores of the Parana, downed scotch in a Nanning drinking den, eaten pizza with Godsons in Corleone. 

What is peculiar is that so many of my candidates, no matter where they are from, tend to display the same sort of problems when using English, from A1 to C1.  Even in In multi-national classes it is possible to find these ‘usual suspects’ .  They tend (grammatically) to be problems with determiners, quantifiers, subject-verb agreement, prepositional collocation and adverbs. 

Phonology is also affected by the length of the vowel, speed (too fast), rhythm,  word and sentence stress (English is a stress-timed language, as opposed to many other languages that tend to be syllable-timed), assimilation, consonant clusters, tone and intonation.

A major problem in preparing for exams is the tendency for candidates to memorise everything they want to say.  This is inadvisable, because language competency is about spontaneous and interactive performance; there is a perlocutionary force behind everything we say. Conversation can and should go in any direction that those involved in the discourse allow it to go, just like in real life.  If you memorise whole tracts of text you are liable to lose your way or forget what you had planned so carefully.  You may also be unable to cope with unanticipated questions.

The following is a direct transcription of a memorised response by a candidate at A2 level.  When asked to describe a member of his family, he responded thus:

“My mother?..  She tall .. and short.  She have two black eyes, a big mouth and a nose in the middle of her face” .

So, memorisation of long tracts of text should not have a place in the English language classroom and certainly not in exams.  The best preparation is to anticipate the examiner’s questions and comments.  ‘Listen and respond’ is my mantra, as most examiner questions will be open (who,what,where,how,when,why) and leading (if you did this, what would happen?). 

That said,  it can be useful to learn lexical sets or stems that can be used to express  particular functions (Casino).  They can be used to practise fluency, accuracy and lexical range (all part of the spoken assessment criteria for International English exams).  They can also be developed to fit many subject areas that come up in exams, and in lessons.  These can help students develop through teacher-monitored pair and group work. 

Once the structures are learnt , the candidate should vary them by substituting and inventing appropriate nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.  Both accurately and interactively.  This is the basis of language learning: the ability to understand and interact with another speaker of the target language, to varying degrees of competency.  So, next time you have a conversation class, realise that you are practising the key skill of interaction and the further skills of listening and fluency.

What are your experiences of memorisation in the classroom?  Are there any interesting, amusing or strange expressions that you have experienced?  Let us know.  We publish the best comments in our blogs.