Toffler - Fire together, wire together

Fire together, wire together

The marriage of languages and the science of memory offers insights into the role of forgetting in learning

An unintended consequence of furloughing many workers during the various UK lockdowns has been to make them time rich. Many have turned, or returned, to hobbies such as drawing, painting, reading, music making and – the favourite of the Enterprise risk office – learning languages.

For anyone who has not attempted a foreign language since school, today’s learning landscape looks quite different. Gone are the tables of verb conjugations, the boxes of CDs – or even cassettes – and the notion that you might be able to learn how to speak by spending time with a teacher with 30 or so other students in a classroom setting.

Instead, YouTube is alive with polyglots providing the top five things that those rarefied creatures do to learn languages quickly, effectively and permanently. Online platforms such as italki, for instance, link native language teachers with eager language learners at sometimes surprisingly affordable prices. The nonprofit platform Speechling enables wouldbe linguists to record themselves repeating sentences in their chosen languages and receive feedback within 24 hours. And the free flashcard app Anki gives students the ability to create memorable multi-media memory aids in any language – it’s also popular with medics, lawyers and perhaps some risk managers with exams to cram for.

The technologies are embedding new philosophies of learning as standard

Embedded

None of this should be surprising given the move to digital learning that most organisations have taken – IRM included. But what makes such programs compelling is their willingness to draw on the latest research in cognitive science to help people learn. The technologies are embedding new philosophies of learning as standard.

One of the main problems in language learning is moving knowledge from socalled short-term memory into long-term memory. This is particularly challenging in language learning because words do not operate on the same plane as facts. We can learn, for example, that osara is Japanese for plate or dish. But words for emotional and descriptive states are personal and often come with a rich array of associations. These need to be built up and nurtured in the foreign language if our vocabulary is to touch other people in a meaningful way.

Gabriel Wyner, author of Fluent forever, has explained that digital flashcard systems such as Anki aim to tackle this problem in two ways. First, they adopt the assumptions of recent memory studies that show longer-term memory depends on the creation of patterns of synapses in the brain that are glued and strengthened when they activate simultaneously. This draws on the pithy statement by the neuroscientist Donald Hebb: “Neurons that fire together wire together.”

But it is now also understood that for those patterns to cement they need significant downtime between bouts of activity. Each flashcard is presented in increasingly longer intervals called spaced repetition – ideally just before you are about to forget. Since the brain has to work harder to make the connection – osara/ dish – that effort is part of the way the information goes into long-term memory.

Richer

Second, the richer the card is in sound files, images and guessing games, the stronger and deeper our associations with that word will be – making our emotional connection with the language firmer and our ability to speak it meaningfully more likely. Traditional cramming – especially of bland verb tables – won’t cut it. The information is just too thin in associations, nor have learners given themselves that opportunity to almost forget, which is essential if long-term learning is to occur.

When the vaccines finally arrive, we should all be released from the new tyranny of such hobbies. The experience of this new learning, on the other hand, is something that will be worth remembering.