英语词汇学习七种武器之三：有规划反复重现 （英语教学法原著选读76）

以下“导读”为武太白原创内容，英文原文节选、整理自上海外语教育出版社出版的《教学法丛书：词汇：描述、习得与教学》一书。

导读

上周我们读了《词汇学习七武器二：新旧词汇整合 （英语教学法原著选读75，译文、家长指南回归！）》，文中指出，新旧词汇整合是一种很好的词汇学习方法，我还在“家长指南”部分提出了若干建设性意见，供朋友们参考。

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下面这段文字主要讲了：

1、词汇的绝对量（掌握了多少词）当然很重要，但这些词是否熟悉、能否深入掌握，可能更重要；

2、艾宾浩斯遗忘曲线很重要，照此安排记忆是最好的；

3、有几个游戏，比如Scramble（打乱字母重新排序单词）、Bingo（宾果）、Password（密码）、Jeopardy（危险边缘，百度百科详细介绍请点击本文左下角“阅读原文”按钮）等。

家长指南

如何让词汇“有规划反复重现”？其实最简单的办法就是让孩子大量听、大量读，这样的反复重现是最有效的。当然这么说可能很多朋友会说了，你这不等于没说吗，我知道要多听，但具体怎么操办，请告诉我！那么我的建议是：

1、在兴趣度差不多的情况下，主要是根据生词率来决定如何听、读一篇文章。一般来说生词率超过3%的文章，就必须反复读，不然不会有多大收获，尤其是如果这些生词主要都是动词、形容词；如果这些生词集中在并列的名词当中，那也还好，可以认为是难度稍微降低了一些；只要生词率不超过2%，哪怕生词都是关键词，那么简单查一下就可以过去了，这种文章就可以只看一遍。大量听读，主要就是听、读这种不超过现有英语学习水平的文章内容。

2、如果兴趣度不同，那么当然是先看有兴趣的，没兴趣的暂时放一放。

3、艾宾浩斯遗忘曲线要用好，详情请参见最后的译文。

原文 

Thesis Title: Current Trends in Vocabulary Teaching

Author: Anita J. Sokmen

Provide a number of encounters with a word

According to Richards (1976), knowing a word means knowing how often it occurs, the company it keeps, its appropriateness in different situations, its syntactic behavior, its underlying form and derivations, its word associations, and its semantic features. It is highly unlikely that an L2 student will be able to grasp even one meaning sense of a word in one encounter, let alone all of the degrees of knowledge inherent in learning a word (see Nagy, 1.4). But as the student meets the word through a variety of activities and in different contexts, a more accurate understanding of its meaning and use will develop. Various studies create a range of 5-16 encounters with a word in order for a student to truly acquire it (Nation, 1990: 43-5). Therefore, an important aspect of this gradual learning is that the instructor consciously cue reactivation of the vocabulary.

Re-encountering the new word has another significant reward. According to theories of human memory (Baddeley):

...the act of successfully recalling an item increases the chance that that item will be remembered. This is not simply because it acts as another learning trial, since recalling the item leads to better retention than presenting it again; it appears that the retrieval route to that item is in some way strengthened by being successfully used. (op. cit.: 156)

When a word is recalled, the learner subconsciously evaluates it and decides how it is different from others s/he could have chosen. He continues to change his interpretation until he reaches the range of meanings that a native speaker has (Beheydt, 1987). Every time this assessment process takes place, retention is enhanced.

In addition, if the encounters with a word are arranged in increasingly longer intervals, e.g. at the end of the class session, then 24 hours later, and then a week later, there is a greater likelihood of long-term storage than if the word had been presented at regular intervals. According to this concept of graduated interval recall, the length of the word, its frequency, and whether it is a cognate for the learner will affect the number of recalls necessary; however, instructors can generally rely on the 'ideal' schedule (Pimsleur, 1967). Therefore, the teacher needs to provide initial encoding of new words and then subsequent retrieval experiences. A number of common games can be employed in classrooms to recycle vocabulary, e.g. Scrabble, Bingo, Concentration, Password, Jeopardy. As they provide yet another encounter with the target words, they have the advantage of being fun, competitive, and consequently, memorable.

根据理查兹（1976），“懂得一个词”指的是了解其出现频率、共生词汇、其在不同情景下的适切性、句法特点、构成规律及派生词、词语联系、语义特点等。二语学习者不太可能在仅仅一次接触后就掌握一个单词的哪怕一种意思，更不要说掌握学会一个词所内含的诸多层次的知识了（参见纳吉，1.4）。但是随着学生通过各种各样的活动、在不同的语境下接触到这个词，会形成对其意思与用法的更准确理解。综合各种研究，学习者真正习得一个词所需的接触次数就在5-16次（纳辛，1990：43-5）。因而，这种渐进式学习的重要一方面就是教师要有意识地对词汇的重新激活进行提示。

重新接触到新词还有另一个重要的好处。根据人类记忆理论（巴德利）：

……成功回想起某一项目的行为能够增大其被记住的几率。这不仅仅是因为回想是又一次学习的考验——回想起该项能够比再次呈现它更好地使其留存，而且是因为获取该项的路径由于得到成功使用而无形中增强了。（同上：156）

当一个词被回想起来，学习者会下意识地对其加以评估，判定该词与其他本可能选择的词之间有何不同。他们会持续改变对词义的阐释，直到接近本族语者所具备的意义范畴为止（比黑特，1987）。这样的评估过程每发生一次，词语的留存就被加强一次。

另外，如果与一个词的多次接触能够安排在渐次变长的时间框架内，比如一节课结尾时、24小时后、一周后，那么就更有可能达成长期存储，比定期复现要好。根据这种时间长度层级递进的回想安排，单词长度、是否常用、对学习者来说有没有同根词，这些因素都影响到达成长期存储所必需的回想次数；然而，老师们通常可以利用“理想的”时间进度（品斯勒，1967）。所以，老师需要提供新词的最初编码，然后是复现的机会。多种常见的游戏能够用来增进课堂中的词汇复现，比如Scrabble、Bingo、Password、Jeopardy等。因为这些游戏提供了目标单词的额外接触，它们的好处是有趣、有竞争，因而，也更容易记住。