Here I explain what brought me to the conclusion that simple straight forward repetition drilling is far from the best way of memorising and suggest some alternatives. It is generally accepted that, when memorising information, it is first stored in the short term or working memory and from there it can be passed on to long term memory. Repetition is thought to keep information in the working memory for a longer time and help the transfer of information to the long term memory. The way repeating takes place is much more important however than how often repeating takes place.

Regarding the functioning of memory, it is good to point out that what is normally referred to as memorising actually is not as much about storing things in the memory but rather about gaining reliable access to what is in the memory. The word remembering does not even clearly differentiate between storing in, keeping in or retrieving from memory although the focus seems to be on the latter two. For this reason it might be interesting to talk about long term remembering and short term remembering instead of long term memory and short term memory.

The word memorizing covers both putting into memory and being able to retrieving from memory as according to the dictionary definitions "to commit to memory ; learn so as to remember" ; ... commit to memory; learn by heart [Dictionaries consulted, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition, 2016 ; Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 ; Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, 2010 via https://www.thefreedictionary.com retrieved 2018-03-20]

Why avoid classical repetition

There are several reasons why I avoid overt classical repetition when teaching. These are the most important ones.

• Repetition is boring and demotivating for most people.
• Learning by classical repetition never really worked for me.
• Working as a teacher of English and Dutch as new languages, I noticed that the much used repetition, the overt classical repetition drilling, is rather ineffective. Actually, the more I observed and analysed it, the clearer it became to me how low its efficiency is.

My experience as a dyslectic learner of English

At school, secondary education, I had to study English vocabulary from a book with tables of translations of words and expressions. How? Repeating, repeating, repeating. We had to go through this idioms book three times.

It didn't take long before I found out that this way of learning vocabulary wasn't effective for me. Each time I had studied the lists set as homework and when being tested the following day, it was as if in my head, I had a big pan with a soup of Dutch words and another with English words that belonged together. However, I didn't know which Dutch word went with which English word.

While noticing that my efforts to learn idioms through repetition drills had very little effect, it surprised me that, struggling through the idioms book the second and third time, I had learned words and expressions I didn't know before. More than that, I knew that I hadn't learned them when trying as best as I could to learn them from the idioms book. In some cases I knew because they were expressions that weren't in the book. In other cases, doing the drills from the idioms book a second or third time, I came across words of which I then knew the meaning but at the same time was sure that, when I tried to memorise them from the book the previous time, they were among the words in the soups of English and Dutch words which I couldn't sort out.

Once I was talking about this with one of my teachers. I wanted to know how it was possible that I had improved my vocabulary so much while normal studying of idioms from the book didn't seem to work for me. He told me that it is possible to learn vocabulary from context and that I apparently acquired my vocabulary like that.

Teaching experience

At one of the language schools where I worked, we were told that, when learners made grammar or pronunciation mistakes, they would have to keep trying to produce the correct form, until being able able to do so. Once they could, it was mandatory for teachers to prompt learners, with finger snapping, to repeat three times. After that, learners had to use the correct form in the context where the error had occurred. If they weren't able to do that, they had to go through the procedure of trying, repeating three times, with finger snapping, trying in the context, again. If they still couldn't do it, this procedure was repeated until they could.

Having to use this procedure, I noticed that, after pupils managed to produce the correct form, they easily repeated it three times, or more. It looked like "they'd got it", that "they knew it". However, when they had to repeat it at a later moment, they'd make exactly the same mistake. A later moment could be, when going back to the context where they had made the mistake, right after they were successful in the drilling procedure, could be two minutes later or ten minutes later.

Observing pupils practising and repeating like that made me think that all of it happened very automatic and mechanical, that nothing was really processed by the mind. The procedure didn't seem help those pupils much in being able to use the practised form in the longer run. When learners were trying to use the practised form in the context where the error had occurred, often it was as if nothing had been learned. More even, in cases where learners would go through the cycle of practising, repeating, trying in context, making the error, practising, repeating, trying in context, for several times, I could not notice any progress. Raising the quantity of repetitions did not change much, if anything at all. There didn't seem to be any process of gradually improving until reaching a good level of performance. To the contrary, it was rather like the learners, at a certain moment, just could snap out of repeating the error and perform correctly, as a sudden abrupt change.

These observations gave me the impression that there was no cognitive process involved in the repetition drilling and that this might be the very reason why the learned correct form was not stored in the long term memory. Apparently, classical repeating is not enough to make the bridge between short and long term memory. There is a need to somehow break out of the mechanical, automatic repetition and link practising to active cognitive processes. That's why I started to work with repetition at intervals increasing from a fraction of a second to a few seconds.

Alternatives for overt classical repetition drilling

The above mentioned ideas and experiences brought me to develop the following alternatives for overt classical repetition drilling. They all attempt to make learners cognitively more active, to establish a strong relation between what needs to be learned and context as well as relating it to situations and subjects which are important or interesting to the learners.

Cognitively active vocabulary learning

How does one teach vocabulary and idioms if one is convinced that repeating is not very helpful. A rather obvious part of the solution is helping pupils to learn in a way that they are cognitively more active. One way I try to achieve this is discussing subjects and finding texts which are interesting to them. The texts should have new and difficult vocabulary. By reading and talking about things that matter to the pupil in a normal way, it is probable that vocabulary which is important for the pupil comes up.

When pupils comes across a new or difficult word, it is important to help them to discover its meaning as actively as possible. The pupils should receive just enough help to make the next step in finding the meaning. Apart from raising the efficiency of vocabulary learning, this almost automatically leads to the teaching and learning of techniques for discovering meanings of new words.

When pupils need to talk about something for which they don't know the word, the thing to do is, having them explain what it is they need to say but of which they don't now the word. They can explain for instance verbally, by drawing pictures, with mimics, using gestures. This activity of, in the target language, explaining what it is onedoesn't know the word for, is an important skill to learn and practice. It is the only thing one can do when when one depends on ones own capacity of communicating in a language, situations when there will be no teacher or other person whom one can ask to help by giving a translation. Pupils explaining what it is that they don't know the word for makes them cognitively very active. They will be working hard on a description, a definition of the thing for which they need to know the word. This causes that, when the word is given to them, they very efficiently store it in their memory, with a high probability of being able to recall it later, when necessary.

Vocabulary explanations

When my pupils come across vocabulary which is so difficult for them that, not even with my help, they can find out its meaning or when I think certain vocabulary is likely to cause them problems later, than I explain this vocabulary with rather a lot of detail. At a certain moment I started worrying if these extensive explanations were not a matter of me having difficulty to come up with and concentrate on a short precise explanation. While I don't dare to negate this, I did come to the conclusion that these extensive explanations actually are beneficial to my pupils. These extensive explanations make it much easier for my pupils to later remember words and idioms they learned like this. Normally I make note of at least the most important expressions explained like this, which I later present as a simple word list.

Simple lists of discussed vocabulary

A type of repetition I do use is, presenting vocabulary that was a problem, in the form of simple lists. As said before, of problematic vocabulary, I give explanations and make notes to later present this vocabulary to my pupils as a simple list. Normally, it is just a one column list with a lot of space to the right. Pupils can use this space to make notes, drawings or whatever they think is useful. When working with these lists, pupils are asked to read the words and expressions and try to remember their meanings. If necessary, I give hints to help them remember. I make sure to help as little as possible so they have to work as much as possible. Here are some examples of the hints I give.

• We talked about it last class.
• I explained it to you two weeks ago.
• This came up when we were reading the text ... .
• We saw this when we were discussing ... .

Actually, I didn't expect explaining vocabulary like this and reviewing with these simple word lists would be that efficient It just seemed a rather obvious thing to do.

As a matter of fact, the reason I started working with these word lists is my dyslexia. It is common for private one to one language teachers to write vocabulary problems on a piece of paper and hand it to the pupil at the end of class. The risk of these notes having spelling mistakes, in my case being considerable, I didn't think this would be a very good thing to do for me. This and reducing paper consumption, even though I do use the back of unusable printed paper, actually were the reasons I started with making notes to provide the word lists.

Using these simple word lists, I noticed however that my pupils seemed to need less repetition than I expected to learn the discussed vocabulary. Very often they remembered the meaning of the words on the list, which I had explained previously, the first time they saw them back on these lists. Often without any help. Sometimes with minimal hints like the ones above. Not often did they need that I really explained the vocabulary again. Seeing this I came to the conclusion that, although one could argue that I do not give short precise definitions or explanations, that my explanations are broad, overlapping, maybe even prolix, these explanations together with the word lists do help my pupils to efficiently learn the vocabulary we come across.

Implicit repetition

One reason to consider vocabulary or grammar forms important is the fact that they are used often, which is also why they'll reoccur often. They will automatically return during the course of the conversations and the activities. Repetitions will occur implicit to the normal class activities.

In cases where something which I consider important is not likely to reoccur within a reasonable time, I tend to repeat it a bit later, when the context permits it, trying to keep it or make it seem implicit to the context.

There are of course situations which are very important although they do not happen often like visiting a doctor having too explain something to a customs officer. Vocabulary appropriate for such situations, therefore is important to. To help learners to prepare for such situations including learning appropriate vocabulary, I have designed Roleplay-Simulations. A learner assuming different roles of the Roleplay-Simulations successively and exploring the presented problem situations, relevant vocabulary will be repeated in the process.

Increasing Interval Repetition; fraction of second - seconds

To do something about the above mentioned problem of old fashioned simple repetition no being efficient, an obvious thing for a neurbiologist to start with would be finding out what happens when information goes from the working memory to the long term memory. But, if neurobiologists at universities with labs to their disposition could not do this, how could I, working as an independent language teacher?

What I could do during classes was, try to find the moment at which transfer from working memory to long term memory takes place. Changing the intervals between repetitions, seemed to be a way to discover this. For this reason, after helping my pupils to produce a good pronunciation or structure, I ask them to repeat it at increasing intervals, starting at almost no time between repetitions, gradually increasing to an interval of a few seconds.

In this case, of course, one can hardly hide the repeating. In an attempt to still get away as far as possible from classical repetition, and to make the repetitions less boring, each time I ask my pupils to repeat, I change the intonation and phrases with which I ask them to repeat once more. I may include a rather begging intonation. With I also change the intonation and phrases with which I ask pupils to repeat once more. I may include a rather begging intonation. With these adaptations to repetition procedures it took my pupils less time to be able to perform well when returning to the context where the error originally occurred.

Repeating at increasing intervals not only improves learning efficiency in comparison to classical repetition drilling. Continuing to learn with increasing interval repetition my pupils became ever more efficient in learning to reliably reproduce the correct pronunciation or structure, needing ever less repetition to do so. It seems that, over time, it became ever easier for them to put the things they learned in their long term memory.

Back to Context Repeat

Despite the effectiveness of practicing with increasing intervals between repetitions, I felt something more was needed to further reduce the automatic, mechanic aspect of the repetition practice. Next step to attempt to increase learning efficiency still further was trying to make practising through repetition overlap with the moment when pupils return to the activity in which they were cognitively more active. In an attempt to achieve this, I wait for them to return to the context were the error occurred, which could be the reading or the discussion and just after they do, I ask them to repeat the practised structure. This indeed did further increased learning efficiency.

Directly storing in long term memory

Continuing to use the above mentioned techniques of Increasing Interval Repetition and Back to Context Repeat the ease with which my pupils memorised newly learned things continued improving. They became more and more efficient in storing in and retrieving from their long term memory what they were learning, needing ever less repetition to do so. It was as if they were learning to directly activate the mechanism of having access to the long term memory, depending ever less on repetition. Some of them even came to the point that they could have access to the long term memory for storing an retrieving of what they were learning, without repeating even once. They practised until mastering the correct form and just stored it in the long term memory.

The cognitively active vocabulary learning procedure described above, also appears to make it easier for learners to long term memorise the vocabulary which is being worked on. It gives learners easier access to the long term memory for storing an retrieving.

It is good to repeat here that, what is normally referred to as memorising actually is not as much about storing things in the memory but more about gaining more reliably access to what is stored in the memory. Just think of the possibilities. If new information or a new capacity would not be stored in the memory the first time, the second time it appears, for the mind, would be a new first time. However, one can't deny it is possible for information or new capacities to be stored bit by bit as they reoccur. Then again, fact that someone can acquire the capacity of storing new information or capacities and gaining reliable access to newly stored information or capacities with little or no repetition, seems easier to explain from the idea that memorising is actually a matter of gaining access to stored information rather than storing information.

Possible use with memory disorders

It is tempting to think that the here described long term memorising procedures can lead to completely bypassing short term memorising, using or creating alternative neural mechanisms or pathways. If that were so it could be worth while to see if or to which extent, the here described learning procedures are helpful for people with different kinds of memory problems.

Malfunctioning of short term memory is said to be part of the problem of disorders like Alzheimer's as well as of dyslexia. Despite physiological and morphological causes, it might be possible to help people with disorders like Alzheimer's to learn getting access to the long term memory by learning to bypass short term memorising and use alternative neural mechanisms and structures. Depending on the disorder, the processes causing it might even be slowed down.