Научно-исследовательский проект на английском языке How to maintain memory

Memory is a key point in studying. We spend English lessons trying to memorize words, phrases and grammar rules. And learning something at school or at home we hope that information will be stored for days, months and even years. However we see that not everything that was learnt by heart can be remembered. For instance we have learnt ten foreign words but in some days remember only seven of them. So why do we forget the information we have been so eager to remember? And how can we improve our memory?
In this issue
content1
introduction: we will report on the purposes of the work and prove the actuality of the theme;2
theoretical part: we will discuss how memory occurs - the process of storing and retrieving information;3
we will also take a look at some of the ways to maintain one’s memory and describe the one we have chosen; 4
practical part: we will present an original online vocabulary, which contains a schedule of repeating the material to improve its memorizing; 5
we will describe the experiment7
we will have a look on how the foreign vocabulary is stored in memory and how to maintain the information under the circumstances of occasional use8
analyses: we will show the results of our research and make the conclusions; 8
summary: we will observe the result and formulate the key points; 9
bibliography10
appendix11
So, let's get started.

Memory is one of the most interesting topics you can ever hope to study in any field. Our everyday life would be close to impossible without memory. Our very survival depends on our ability to remember who we are, who others are, our past experiences and etc. Its importance can't be understated.
It goes without saying that proper memory is absolutely necessary for students. Every school day they are bombed with gigabytes of information and are expected to store, analyze, remember and use it. And many school teachers understand their difficulties in remembering all the material as each student has unique capacities in memorizing. So how to help students digest so much information and prolong memory? This is the actual question to discuss in this work.
The hypothesis of this issue is the following: learnt information should be maintained in memory to be stored for a long period of time. Our proposal is psychologically motivated. It is based on the regular repeating the material according to organized sequence. We hope that on a long time scale it will lead to stable memory and provide the appropriate knowledge of foreign words.
The main purpose of this issue is to prove that there is a special technique to improve one’s memory. We will hold an experiment in the 7th form and check if the technique gives results. The new words will be divided into several groups and each group will be repeated within the intervals of a quarter of an hour, an hour, two hours, a day, three days, a week, a fortnight and a month. Our main task is to develop online vocabulary with a schedule of repetitions for this experiment. Every student will be asked to use the online programme at home and in a month and a half the knowledge of the words will be checked and analyzed. If the results are succeeded and the memories are correct then we put our proposal into practice and will use the same programme in the 8th form working over new vocabulary.
Surely to be aware of how to save the knowledge in memory we should know more about the theme.
Memory can be defined as the storage of learnt information for retrieval and future use.
There are two different types of memory. Short-term memory is used for information you need to know for the immediate future. It provides storage for a small amount of information in an active, available state for a short period of time (from ten to fifteen seconds, or sometimes up to a minute).
For example, in order to understand a complex sentence, the beginning of it needs to be held in mind while the rest part is read. Another common example is simultaneous translation. The interpreter must store information in one language while orally translating it into another.
Short-term memory has a limited capacity of items to remember. George Miller in 1956 suggested that the number of objects an average human can hold in short-term memory is between five and nine (sometimes referred to as Miller’s Law and his “magical number” – seven plus/minus two). This is disputed as he worked with college students who were trained to remember. Modern estimates are typically lower, of just four or five items.
However the information from short-term memory disappears quickly unless we make a conscious effort to retain it, and short-term memory steps toward the next stage, long-term memory. It stores information over a long period of time. Despite our everyday impression of forgetting, there is some debate as to whether we actually ever “forget” anything at all, or whether it just becomes difficult to access or retrieve certain items from memory. Nowadays it is supposed that long-term memory can store an unlimited amount of information.
The transfer of information to long-term memory can be improved by mental repetition (our experiment will deal with), by associating information with other previously acquired knowledge (the technique that is called “mnemonic”) or by motivating information (relating to a subject of strong interest, such information is more likely to be retained in long-term memory).
In this section we will have an experiment on improving long-term memory through the process of consolidation involving “rehearsals” – regular repeating the new words according to the calendar. We consider this technique to be optimal for getting the appropriate result. Our experiment will prove or disapprove it.
To help our participants organize “the rehearsals” we should develop a special web addition containing all learning vocabulary. It will show a user which group of the words should be repeated. If “the rehearsal” is done, a tick should be put to note that the words are worked over for one period of time. Our addition is available for mobile phones, too. It makes our research easier and more available. There will be another group of students who will escape taking part in the experiment or will not be able to come up to the ending of the experiment because of certain circumstances. Those students will learn the same words as the participants but in a traditional way. The results of the two groups will be compared. The whole time of the experiment is a month and a half. The experiment considers the demands of the school programme by Biboletova M.Z., Trubaneva N.N. for the text book “Enjoy English 7” and contains the vocabulary from its units. We also expect our web-site to be filled in further more looking forward the 8th form for those students who will find our work interesting and helpful.

As we have mentioned earlier our main task is to develop online programme to help and motivate our participants. It surely has to be easy to use, modern and educational. That is our criteria for technical part of the research. In this section we will describe how we have created a web-site.
Creating a web site may appear complex and difficult, but it is essentially simpler than it may seem. The first step includes locating in the Internet. The domain is the address to which we invite our students to work at home. We discussed the name of our site a lot and came to the conclusion that it had to be short, simple and bright. The final variant is “voconline.tk”. Registering generally costs money, that’s why the important thing for us was the free domain.
The site was built step by step according to the demands of the experiment. Firstly, an addition for navigation for our site has to be developed. It describes its future functions, structure and etc. At this stage the site is not visible in the Internet, it is just a framework for a future addition. It took the most time.
Secondly, we designed the image of the web site making it up-to-date. We realized that it would be easier for our participants to use the addition on their phones. That’s why from the very first page we made it suitable for different gadgets.
And at last we developed the content of it. That is the words to learn and a calendar to use. A user can see the list of all the words for the experiment with transcriptions and translating. With the help of a calendar one can check which part of words should be repeated and when. Having worked over one group a tick is to be put down in the calendar. The methods of repeating have been taught in class. We also tried to make the site attractive for our participants as we wanted them to come back over and over again. For this reason we added a page for having a rest. It is a primitive game (also original) but as we see now very popular with teenagers. Moreover, we added a list of Irregular verbs to our site. They are difficult to remember and often needed for work. Many school children find learning the table of Irregular Verbs the most difficult task. Even having learnt them once no one can be sure he remembers properly all of them. This page invites a user to try his luck. For the response it gives five verbs randomly for repeating. The idea is simple but effective. On having tried it once everyone makes the second and the third attempt.
Our web site requires constant implementation of new content. It keeps it alive. If a web site sits out in cyberspace without change, it will eventually fall off and become almost non-existent in the endless land of cyberspace. Visitors will stop coming to see old information. New content encourages students to continue work. They can see clearly the number of learnt words and check their memories. And we are going to continue our work.
Teachers’ words
The technical part was impossible to be completed without the student of the 7th form Vladimir Larin. While the teachers were preparing for the experiment, it was he who developed the application. His great interest in Information Technologies and surprising awareness in the theme allowed optimizing work and motivating classmates. We consider his application suitable not only for the experiment but also for students’ self-checking. It is a “language portfolio” of the group. It is a good resource for saving learnt vocabulary. It is a perfect way for repeating the material at any time and at any place a student wants, for example, as a task for summer.
As we have already mentioned our experiment is psychologically motivated. Memory has been studied since the 19th century. Its mechanisms were described, different classifications were given. But there are some questions which are still being argued about. Richard Chatom Atkinson in Stanford University suggested some methods to prolong keeping information in memory. We found “method of maintenance rehearsals” interesting and appropriate for learning foreign vocabulary. We took his ideas into consideration and held the experiment.
We invited the students of the 7th form to join our work. Sixteen pupils agreed to work. All the others refused. They were afraid of additional homework and tried to escape obligation. So, they formed two groups which started learning words by heart. The first one repeated the material with the help of web site and the second one worked traditionally. They put new words down in the dictionaries and tried to memorize them (appendix 1).
Our “rehearsals” took place according to the calendar. The periods of time were decided to be the following: a quarter of an hour, an hour, two hours, a day, three days, a week, a fortnight and a month. Every week we checked students’ memories (subtotals), but the total check was made at the end of the experiment. We are going to make two more checks. The words will be practiced before April holidays and at the end of school year.
All the students memorized new words at the lesson. The first “rehearsal” took place at the lesson, too. After the lesson the students of the second group met the words only during subtotals. The students of the first group continued “rehearsals”. The second one was done after the following lesson. Then the students visited the site at home. The main requirement for them was to visit the site every day.
Subtotals were held in the form of oral test. The students were asked to translate words from Russian into English. During the subtotals we saw that when learnt words were asked in a short period of time their remembering was better and easier. Students remember all the words they have learnt the previous day. But three days occurred to be too long for good recognition. Approximately thirty per cent of information was forgotten. The results of advanced students were better, but they also had lost a word or two. We also noticed that in a fortnight many students of both groups had difficulties in recognition. . Poor students had almost complete forgetting (appendix 2).
The total was held after all the “rehearsals” had been taken. The students of the second group agreed to be recorded. The participants and guests can watch their total on our site.
The results of the second group were very poor. The students had difficulties in recognition. Advanced students could remember only forty per cent of learnt information. It seemed to them that they had never learnt some of the words. Some students laughed all the time and couldn’t remember a word. They were surprised to know how their memory worked.
But the result of the group under the experiment was better. Even backward students remembered some of the information. They could memorize forty per cent of the words. The most motivated backward students showed more than fifty per cent. One of them gave eighty per cent of right answers. He explained his good result having worked with the site more often than the others. Advanced students remembered more than ninety five per cent of words (appendix 3). All the students pointed out that enforcing the requirements of the experiment was not difficult or burdensome. They considered our work useful as they could understand how their memory worked and what to do to achieve perfect results in studying.
All the results considered we shall now return to the main idea mentioned at the onset of this paper. Studying foreign language one should not only learn a lot of information, but also maintain it in memory. And we should always find ways to do it not to lose what have been memorized. We expected regular repeating to lead to stable memory. Our experiment proved the hypothesis.
The main finding we managed to achieve considers the difference between storing information in native language and in foreign language. Forgetting foreign items happens sooner as we practice English occasionally. That’s why the periods between repetitions should be shortened.
We tried to put “rehearsals” into system having developed web site. It encouraged students to work regularly. They could obtain better results. We are sure that this experience helped students improve memory. It allowed them to answer two main questions: how to train memory and why to maintain it.
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Group 1
Toropin AlexeyKiryakov Il’yaMedvedeva AnastasiyaKopteva KseniyaSteklyannikova AndjelikaRogovskaya KseniyaGerasimova Anna
Popov Ivan
Istratova PolinaShaped’ko AndjelikaAnisimova AnastasiyaStorozhkova Kristina
Kochkan Maria
Firlina Angelina
Lesnikov BogdanMarkin AndreyGroup 2
Volkov EgorNovikov VladislavShakirov NikolayVoznesenskaya Tatyana
Napaskin AndreyFyodorov Alexander
Trofimov PavelKochnov ArtemZaripov Ivan
Titov Vladimir
Aristova AnastasiyaAppendix 2
The results of subtotals
Words
Surnames forbid perhaps common quiet waste punish mirror offer piece fault mood laugh during expect attend
Toropin+ + + + + + Kiryakov+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Medvedeva+ + + + + + + Kopteva+ + + + + + + Steklyannikova + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Rogovskaya+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Gerasimova+ + + + + + + + + +
Popov + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Istratova + + + + + + + + Shaped’ko + + + + + + + + + Anisimova + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Storozhkova + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Kochkan + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Firlina + + + + + + +
Lesnikov + + + + + + + + + Markin + + + + + + + + + + + +
Words
Surnames proposal recognize article pocket drop heart support continue protect dangerous
Toropin+ + + Kiryakov+ + + + + + + + +
Medvedeva+ + + + Kopteva+ + + + Steklyannikova + + + + + + + + +
Rogovskaya+ + + + + + + +
Gerasimova+ + + Popov + + + + + + + + + +
Istratova + + + +
Shaped’ko + + + +
Anisimova + + + + + + + + + +
Storozhkova + + + + + + + +
Kochkan + + + + + + + + +
Firlina + + +
Lesnikov + + + + +
Markin + + + + + + +
Appendix 3
The results of a total check
Words
Surnames forbid perhaps common quiet waste punish mirror offer piece fault mood laugh during expect attend proposal recognize article pocket drop heart support continue protect dangerous
Toropin+ + + + + + + + + Kiryakov+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Medvedeva+ + + + + + + + + + + + Kopteva+ + + + + + + + + + Steklyannikova + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Rogovskaya+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Gerasimova+ + + + + + + + Popov + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Istratova + + + + + + + + + + + +
Shaped’ko + + + + + + + + + + +
Anisimova + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Storozhkova + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Kochkan + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Firlina + + + + + + + + +
Lesnikov + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Markin + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +