Say you wanted to learn to play tennis. Would hitting the ball a hundred times from the same angle be the best way to learn it? You will probably say 'no' to this question. But say you wanted to learn only to hit the ball from a certain angle in the best way possible. Would the same strategy be the way to go? It would seem so, right? What better to learn something than do the same thing over and over again? Well, apparently, there is something better, and it is exactly what we do in TPRS...
We all know that repetition is crucial in learning a skill like playing an instrument or understanding and speaking a language. And we may even be inclined to think that it is the repetition itself that makes us acquire the skill. Just keep on going and you will learn it in the end, right? What's more: you can see that it works. You clearly notice that after having hit the ball from the same angle a hundred times, you have become better at hitting the ball, so what's my point? Well, the point is, that your friend, who has been hitting a ball a hundred times, like you, invites you to do a competition to see who hits the ball more times. And she wins! Unlike you, she has been hitting the ball from different angles in a random order. Why would that make her better? Or is it just a coincidence? It is not a coincidence. This same phenomenon has been shown in many research experiments, as it has in daily life.
An experiment by Shtyrov trying to identify the number of repetitions needed for our brain to 'acquire' a non-sense word by letting people hear the word over and over again and measuring the brain's response showed that after 160 repetitions in 14 minutes, the response of the brain had become much less pronounced. This meant, according to the researchers, that the word had been acquired. It also meant that the brain was paying less attention to the word. Not only because the sound of the word had become more familiar, but also because the word was presented in the same way over and over again. "The brain craves novelty", is one of Carol Gaab´s favourite sayings, and it is true. The brain focuses most of its attention to new things, and pays a more slumber-like attention to things that are already familiar to us. So after hitting the ball in the same way for the umpteenth time, or hearing the same word in the same context again and again, the brain will simply stop paying much attention, and no more learning takes place.
Now, what happens when you practice a skill in many different ways instead? First of all, your brain remains alert, because every ball comes from another angle and is therefor seen by the brain as something new. And because it is alert and focused on the new information, the brain keeps learning how to adapt your reactions to changing circumstances.
What does all this talk about hitting a ball have to do with TPRS (or language acquistion through comprehensible input)? I think it has everything to do with TPRS. It is in my opinion one of the great strengths of TPRS that we not only deliver huge amounts of repetitive, comprehensible and compelling input, but that we constantly change the context and phrase structures of these repetitions. In circling, we randomly throw affirmative sentences, negations, subordinate phrases and questions at our students. We use the same structures or words in many different stories and conversations. Thus, we allow the brains of our students to remain alert and to adapt its reactions to the ever changing circumstances of real life conversations. This is what makes our students fast in understanding language, and agile when they are ready to produce language.
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by Kirstin Plante
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Sources
Carey, B.: How we learn. Random House, 2015.Carpenter, S.K.: Spacing and Interleaving of Study and Practice. Iowa State University, 2014.
Taylor, K. and D. Rohrer: The effects of interleaved practice. University of South Florida, 2010.
Shtyrov, Y, Nikulin,V.N. and Pulvermüller, F.: Rapid Cortical Plasticity Underlying Novel Word Learning. The journal of neuroscience, December 15, 2012.
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