English as a Foreign Language for Students with Special Educational Needs –
Exceptional English for Exceptional Learners?
Convenors: Ewa Domagala-Zysk, Edit H. Kontra
12th ESSE Conference, 29. 08. 2014 - 02. 09. 2014 Kosice, Slovakia
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ABSTRACT 11
Enhancing memory processes and information organisation in teaching English vocabulary to
deaf and HOH students by the application of mnemonic devices.
Presenter: Marta Dick-Bursztyn, PhD, lecturer
Affiliation: Department of English Philology, University of Rzeszów, Poland
Introduction
The interest to know different techniques that facilitate humans’ ability to remember facts, dates,
names and/or places has existed for as long as 2000 years. Depending on the century and the
availability of technological improvements, mnemonic devices have enjoyed wider or smaller
popularity with people. For example, in days when printing was not available, a well trained
memory was not to be sneezed at, thus, the devices enhancing memory were very much in use.
However, with the introduction of various works of reference (e.g., encyclopaedias, almanacs, etc.)
and the internet, they have lost some of their day to day value.
In recent years the importance of mnemonic strategies in learning has been recognized. Through the
use of special mnemonic devices, such as imagery techniques, peg-word system or the loci method,
some spectacular results in recall performance may be obtained. Mnemonic techniques used in
foreign/second language learning can serve as both effective and entertaining techniques in teaching
vocabulary, for example. This presentation will focus on the discussion of the mnemonic techniques
that can help foreign language learners enhance their memory and/or memorisation processes and,
at the same time, provide teachers with more alternative and entertaining ideas on how to facilitate
these learners during the process of memorising various types of data.
In short, we will focus on addressing the question of how and what sort of mnemonic devices can
benefit learners and, among them, deaf and hard of hearing ones, learning English as a second
language. In particular, we will try to highlight how these strategies can improve their skills to
organise, remember and retrieve information. We will recommend some of the teaching activities
employing the strategies that will particularly please and aid this special group of ESL learners.
Context
Over the centuries people have developed a variety of memorisation techniques to remember large
quantities of information, known as mnemonic techniques. The term mnemonic is used to refer to
any memory technique, but more typically it is to be used when discussing strategies for
memorisation of unrelated facts, for example, vocabulary in a foreign language. Mnemonics are
techniques or devices, such as a rhyme or an image, that serve to enhance the storage and the recall
of information contained in memory and they can be either verbal or visual in nature.
Thus, learning vocabulary in a classroom can be enhanced through the use of, for example, visual
imagery. Studies presented in Hamilton (2011) indicate that the imageability of a word is a key
factor in determining its ease of acquisition. Visual imagery shows its particular usefulness for
students with deficits in verbal working memory (WM) when they possess a strong visuospatial
WM.
In the paper in which research on WM and STM (short-term memory) abilities of deaf individuals is
reviewed, Hamilton (2011:403) specifies the areas of deficiencies and strengths exhibited by deaf
learners. The areas of deficiency include sequential recall, processing speed, attention, and memory
load. Areas of strength include free recall, visuospatial recall, imagery, and dual encoding. The
author states that mnemonic strategies in which a verbal utterance, in this case the meaning of a
word or sign, is related to a visual image have been used with a lot of success for many years to
facilitate recall and learning. It is of crucial importance, however, to remember that this technique
is most effective when the image created is unique, funny, or bizarre. Deaf students are this special
group of learners who can benefit greatly from being provided an image along with a sign or signs
for vocabulary they are taught.
Another technique that can help these learners reduce some of the above-mentioned deficits is
chunking, which is thought to be useful in reducing memory load for deaf students as they learn
vocabulary that will be used during reading or writing, for example. It is done by taking advantage
of the single-sign ASL representation of such English phrases as look up, jump over, and get on.
When these printed phrases are recognized as individual chunks, sequential memory span has fewer
items to maintain, and memory load is therefore reduced.
Bearing these assumptions in mind, the mnemonics that will be discussed in my presentation
include: acronyms, sentence/acrostics, imagery, method of loci, peg-word system and chunking.
Below let me present two of these in more detail.
The method of loci can be helpful, in remembering a list of items (in the context of second language
learning, a list of vocabulary items, for example) or, in everyday life, a shopping list. It consists in
selecting a location you are thoroughly familiar with - typically rooms in your house - and then
imagining that you encounter objects from your lists in particular locations (the name of loci is the
Latin name for locations). According to the research conducted by Ross and Lawrence (1968) ( in
Lieberman 2012), students who memorised vocabulary lists by means of this method demonstrated
a long-term recall of the vocabulary in question. Similar observations were noted by other studies,
for example Massen and Plünnecke (2006).
In turn, the peg word system relies more on words rather than spatial locations to provide links
between the words which are to be memorised. First you have to become familiar with a set of key
words, which are then used to create a mental image connecting each target word with one of the
peg/key words, which have been committed to memory at an early stage. A study by Roediger
(1980), reported on by Lieberman (2012), showed that the method of loci as well as the peg-word
system produced significantly high scores.
Hamilton, H. (2011). Memory skills of deaf learners: implications and applications. American
Annals of the Deaf, Volume 156, Number 4, Fall 2011, pp. 402-423.
Massen, C., Plünnecke, B. (2006). The role of proactive interference in mnemonic techniques.
Memory, 14, 189-196.
Lieberman, D.A., (2012). Human Learning Memory. Cambridge University Press.