The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

The human brain is a treasure house of memory. What the human brain has experienced, the problems it has thought about, the feelings and emotions it has experienced, and the actions it has practiced can all be the contents of human memory. For example, in English learning, words, phrases, sentences, and even the content of articles are all accomplished by memory. There is a process from "memory" to "memory", including memory, retention, cognition and memory. Many people only pay attention to the memory effect at that time in the process of learning English. Who knows, it takes some effort to learn and remember well. Simply paying attention to the memory effect at that time and ignoring the later maintenance and recognition will not achieve good results.

In information processing, memory is the process of encoding, storing and extracting input information. From the perspective of information processing, the first learning and reciting of English is only a process of coding input. Physiologically speaking, human memory ability is amazing. It can store 10 15 bits (bytes) of information, but only 10% of everyone's memory treasure house has been excavated, and there is still more memory space. This is because some people only pay attention to the effect of memory at that time, but ignore the bigger problem of memory-the firmness of memory, which involves the law of memory forgetting that is often said in psychology.

First, the interpretation of Ebbinghaus's memory law curve

There is a famous German psychologist named hermann ebbinghaus (1850- 1909). After his experimental report was published in 1885, memory research became one of the most studied fields in psychology, and Ebbinghaus was the first person to discover the law of memory forgetting.

As far as we know, memory retention is different in time, including short-term memory and long-term memory. And our usual memory process is like this:

The input information becomes short-term memory after learning in the process of people's attention, but if it is not reviewed in time, these remembered things will be forgotten, and after reviewing in time, these short-term memories will become long-term memories and stay in the brain for a long time. So, for us, what is forgetting? Forgetting means that we can't recognize or recall what we have already remembered, or that we can't recognize and recall something wrong. These are forgetfulness. Ebbinghaus took himself as the test object when he did this experiment, and he came to some conclusions about memory. He chose some meaningless syllables, that is, many letter combinations that can't spell words, such as asww, cfhhj, ijikmb, rfyjbc and so on. He got some data after self-testing.

Then, Ebbinghaus drew a curve according to these points, which is a very famous curve to reveal the law of forgetting: Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, in which the vertical axis represents the amount of knowledge remembered in learning, the horizontal axis represents time (days), and the curve represents the law of memory change.

This curve tells people that forgetting in learning is regular and the process of forgetting is unbalanced. It's not fixed to lose a few in one day and a few in the next day. The speed of forgetting in the initial stage of memory is very fast, and then it gradually slows down. Time is long, almost no longer forgotten. This is the development law of forgetting, that is, the principle of "fast first and then slow". Observing this forgetting curve, you will find that after one day, if you don't review quickly, you will only have 25% of your original knowledge. As time goes on, the speed of forgetting slows down and the number of forgetting times decreases. Someone did an experiment. Two groups of students learned a text. Group A reviewed soon after learning, while Group B did not review. After one day, group A retained 98% and group B retained 56%. After one week, group A retained 83% and group B retained 33%. The average forgetting rate of group B is higher than that of group A. ..

Second, different materials have different forgetting curves.

Moreover, Ebbinghaus also found that memorizing 12 meaningless syllables requires an average of 16.5 repetitions. In order to remember 36 meaningless chapters, it needs to be repeated 54 times; Reciting six poems with 480 syllables only needs to be repeated 8 times on average! This experiment tells us that all the knowledge we understand can be remembered quickly, comprehensively and firmly. Otherwise, rote learning will be thankless. So those meaningful materials are easier to remember, while those meaningless materials take more effort in memory and are not easy to recall later. Therefore, Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve is a kind of forgetting curve, and for meaningless syllables, Ebbinghaus' drawing forgetting curves of different materials is different from other materials, but basically the same.

Therefore, Ebbinghaus's experiment fully proves to us a truth: study should be diligent in reviewing, and the better the understanding effect of memory, the slower the speed of forgetting.

Thirdly, different people have different Ebbinghaus memory curves-personalized Ebbinghaus.

The Ebbinghaus memory curve above is a curve generated by Ebbinghaus after a lot of tests in the laboratory, and it is a group law with * * * *. This memory curve does not consider the individual's personality characteristics, but seeks a memory law at a balance point.

But the law of memory can be specific to each of us, because our different physiological characteristics and life experiences may lead to different memory habits, ways and characteristics. Law can only play a catalytic role in the transformation of the world by natural persons. If it conforms to everyone's memory characteristics, it is like sailing against the current, a thousand miles a day; If it goes against the characteristics of personal memory, the memory effect will be greatly reduced. Therefore, we should find our own Ebbinghaus memory curve according to everyone's different characteristics.

2. How to learn English

Make up one's mind and persevere

As a language skill, English learning can be mastered by anyone through a lot of training and practice. Generally speaking, the principle of English learning is to take the lead in listening and speaking and keep up with reading and writing. Li Yang's crazy English advocates that we should first establish confidence in learning English well, then imitate a lot in sentences, practice crazily and read aloud, and finally speak English freely. His method is very effective in improving my oral English. Professor Zhong Daolong began to learn English at the age of 45. A year later, he went abroad to study and became an interpreter, creating a reverse learning method of English, which is urgent, urgent and fast. He also suggested that learning English should follow the methods of listening, writing, speaking, remembering and thinking. His method emphasizes listening and writing down everything he hears. In particular, his learning spirit is the best. He used more than a dozen tape recorders to learn English. You can imagine how much English he listened to. The used ballpoint pen core is almost full of a can. You can imagine how much he wrote. In a year and a half, he accumulated about 3000 hours of spare-time English learning time, which means that he spends several hours learning English every day. If we do as he does, we will certainly learn English well. The most important thing is persistence. As long as you can make up your mind to learn English for at least one hour every day and beat yourself, you will certainly gain something.

Pay attention to methods and step by step.

Make up your mind and pay attention to your learning methods. Sometimes you will choose different learning methods according to your own situation and different learning purposes, but you must learn English step by step. We should master the basic knowledge, that is, correct pronunciation, basic vocabulary, basic sentence patterns and basic grammar.

(1) Please pass the voice pass. Pronounce each phonetic symbol correctly, pay attention to correcting problematic phonemes, especially those that are easily confused, master international phonetic symbols as soon as possible, and try to master some pronunciation rules as soon as possible, so that you can use them to spell words as soon as possible. Mastering pronunciation rules is very useful for memorizing and spelling words.

(2) Master a certain number of English words. It is difficult for learners to master English vocabulary. Learning words should be mastered from three aspects: form, sound and meaning, pay attention to the polysemy of words, the use of multiple words, and learn some knowledge of word formation to expand vocabulary. To learn words, we should learn in language materials, remember words vividly through sentences and reading articles in combination with phrases, and it is difficult to remember words by rote. Before reading and speaking, listen repeatedly. When listening, you should reflect the meaning and rhythm of words and sentences, and think about the spelling and sentence structure of words. And it should be organically combined with learning grammar rules.

(3) Master basic grammar. Grammar is also very important in English learning. It can help us master the basic rules of English. We should remember the dead grammatical rules through examples or language phenomena, and master the living rules through doing a lot of exercises. In short, learning English should be practiced by listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. We should pay attention not only to quantity, but also to quality, especially to master the basic knowledge accurately and skillfully. Only after a lot of practice can practice make perfect and use it freely.

Preview in advance and be targeted.