Zhumadilova B.K., Ibragimova K.E.

L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Astana, Kazakhstan

Mnemonic Techniques in Teaching Vocabulary to Primary School Children

As the old proverb “Necessity is the mother of invention” says, the desire of communication was the main cause of language making. Currently, there are approximately 6500 languages in the world. Whereas some of them are spoken by billions, about 2000 languages have fewer than 1000 speakers. Even though, Chinese is considered to be the language mother tongue for majority of population, the title of “the most popular language” rightfully belongs to English. Software manuals and installation guides, information sheets of consumer electronics and entertainment devices usually are available in English first before being made available in other languages. That is why English is taught worldwide ahead of any other foreign language: to be able to communicate without boundaries and regardless first language and to become part of a global economy.

For countries where English is not the official language, it is the part of core curriculum beginning from early years of schooling. Although some people doubted the effectiveness of early foreign language teaching, the existence of common saying: ‘’children immersed in a language soak it up like a sponge” prove that there is a certain period for language learning. Caryn Antonini, the creator of Early Lingo (earlylingo.com), explains: "A child is born with the ability to learn any language in the world. The older the child gets, certain windows close in terms of language acquisition”. Another interesting opinion is given by Yani A.Peyton, a bilingual mother and the director of Fun with Foreign Language (funwithforeignlanguage.com): ‘‘The popularity of such shows as Dora the Explorer, which teaches Spanish and English, and Ni Hao Kai-lan, which teaches Mandarin-Chinese, suggests that parents want to be more proactive in jump-starting foreign language education for their children”.

Summing aforementioned, the most suitable age for learning a foreign language (English in this case) is the age of 4-10, that are students of primary school. However, we all know that kids do not have patience and endeavor, which are distinctive traits of adults. Though children acquire new information easily and faster, the teaching process itself creates much a bigger problem. As the number of students studying English grows, the new methods and techniques are being created.

Each new student opening the curtains of a new language requires individual approach, but considering the fact that secondary schools have classes of 20, sometimes even 30 students, it is difficult to have contact with each of them at the same time. Especially, the biggest difficulty can be seen in teaching vocabulary of a foreign language, when what is “learned”, can be easily forgotten soon. To overcome this problem we decided to make an attempt to use mnemonic technique at the lesson.

‘Mnemonic’ is derived from Ancient Greek meaning “of memory, relating to memory” helping in making memorization of new information an easier task. Back in 1967, it was proven that mnemonics increase recall from study by Professor Gerald R. Miller, the writer of the books “Deceptive Communication” and “Communication Inquiry”. He found that students who regularly used mnemonic devices increased test scores up to 77%. The thing that makes mnemonics effective and exciting is a great number of strategies and the ways of working them out which is limited only by imagination of the teacher. Below, we will discuss the most common and easy methods that any teacher can use in their classroom on a daily basis:

1. Music Strategy.

Can you think of any mathematical formula now? How many can you remember? How about song lyrics? Definitely, we all know more lyrics more than former mentioned, as well as catchy advertising jingles that can stuck in our head for the whole day. Songs and nursery rhymes as well as being entertaining, can also be very educative. They are easy obtainable, always have a natural language, and, the most important, contain new words, idioms and expressions that boots students` vocabulary. Children can download songs and listen to them everywhere they want and learn lyrics by heart, without even realizing that it is learning process. Besides, when a teacher allows to move along the songs and dance, ‘all in all’ - it is just fun.

The most popular songs are: “ABC” song to teach alphabet, “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” or “The Hokey Pokey” to introduce body parts, “Rainbow” song to teach colors, “Anything you can do” to teach comparative adjectives and module verb “can”.

2. Acronym Strategy.

This method reminds spy coding, where you have to read first letter of each word to find out special message. Slightly different than that, acronym technique suits best for a list of words using their first letter to make a new word. As in the next example: to teach the colors of rainbow acronym ROY G.BIV could be used. It looks like a person`s name and stands for: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Making acronyms for instructions is another great way to use acronyms: for questions reacted to a text RACE – Restate, Answer, Cite examples from text and Extend your answer. Last but not least, FANBOYS to show example of seven coordinating conjunctions in English: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So.

3. PEG System.

This interesting type of mnemonics is, probably, the most famous method of teaching numbers to children. Created by Henry Herdson, the PEG system helps for students to learn new words by making associations between two objects. When list of words that needs to be taught is rather big, teacher can try to make rhyme and turn it into nursery song. Here is an example: 1-sun, 2-shoe, 3-tree, 4-door, 5-hive, 6-sticks, 7-heaven, 8-gate, 9-vine, 10-hen.

4. Image Strategy.

There is no need to worry about whether the teacher has talent to draw or not. The sillier and more extraordinary the image is, the easier the process of remembering for students and recalling is going to be. In image mnemonics the information constructed in the form of a picture that enhances memory.

For example: digits can be taught according to their shapes – 0 is egg, 1 is a pencil, 2 is a duck or swan, 3 is an ear, 4 is a sail and many more. Another great example is to show the difference between Bactrian camel and Dromedary: teacher can print out and show on the board the pictures of these animals pointing that the back of Bactrian camel resembles the letter B, whereas Dromedary`s back is shaped like D.

To sum up, there are huge numbers of other mnemonic techniques that can be used in the classroom. The greatest aspect of mnemonics is its flexibility. Through imagery and good organization, large amount of information can be encompasses by these devices. Moreover, mnemonic techniques show to students that they are having control of the way they learn and remember, they feel engaged in learning process, change their opinion about traditional teaching methods and simply fills classroom with joy and fun, which are so important to young learners.

Used literature:

1. Sánchez, Aquilino & Manchón, Rosa M. (2007). Research on Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition and Learning: An Introduction.

2. Memory Psychology: Forgetting. Retrieved from: www.psychologistworld.com by 05.09.2016

3. Stansell, Jon Weatherford (2008). The Use of Music for Learning Languages: A Review of the Literature.

4. List of visual mnemonics: Visual Mnemonics. Retrieved from: en.wikipedia.org

5. Stanislawczyk, Irene & Yavener, Symond (1978). Creativity in the language classroom.