The Study On The Directed Forgetting In English Vocabulary Learning For Children

Directed forgetting is a new experimental paradigm for use in the study of memory and is an effective way about thinking control research. It underlines the intention and directivity of forgetting, and it refers that participates are told to forget intentionally the to-be-forgotten materials with the consciousness. The word method and list method are used in the paradigm of directed forgetting. At present, two main theoretical explanations include that one is based on encoding and the other extracting. In recent years, the study of directed forgetting has applied to many areas. However, the exploration of its applied value is still to be developed. Therefore this study explored the application of the field of directed forgetting in teaching, based on the paradigm of directed forgetting.To explore the mechanism of directed forgetting effect between the word method and list method, subjects from Grades 5 participated in explicit memory tests (free recall, recognition) and implicit memory test (word-stem completion) by English vocabularies in multifactors experimental design. In addition, the selective rehearsal strategy and retrieval inhibition strategy were implemented, and the study conclusions were as follows:1. Directed forgetting effect occurred in both the explicit and implicit tests in the word method.2. In the word method, the subjects not only repeated the remembering items intentionally but also inhibited the forgetful items, in other words, selective rehearsal and retrieval inhibition played a key role in the directed forgetting effect. So we thought the mechanism of directed forgetting should be selective rehearsal and retrieval inhibition in the word method.3. Directed forgetting effect only occurred in the free recall test and word-stem completion test, but the recognition test did not appear the effect.4. In the list method, retrieval inhibition played an important role in the directed forgetting effect. In other words, retrieval inhibition should be the mechanism of directed forgetting in the list method.5. To explore the applied value, we compared experimental calss with control class. The results demonstrated that the experimental classes had significantly higher scores than the control class. So selective rehearsal strategy and retrieval inhibition strategy could effectively improve the memory of English vocabulary for children. Meanwhile, the experimental class 2 had significantly higher score than the experimental class 1. As a result, it was more effective to improve remembering English vocabularies by the selective rehearsal strategy.