CC BY
18
Zhou Liping УДК 811.111:378
ON IMPROVING STUDENTS' MEMORY IN ENGLISH LEARNING
1. Introduction
It is known that cultivation of students' memory in English learning is also the process of their competence improvement. Students play positive roles in various learning activities. Their excellent memory comes from daily practice. Therefore, teachers can cultivate and improve students' memory in English learning according to the principle of memorization and students' psychological characteristics. The American famous speaker, Dyer, made successful achievements which are related to his exceptional good memory. That is to say, excellent memory leads to accumulation of knowledge, human being's process of cognitions, even the innovation of knowledge and social civilization. Actually in daily teaching, some teachers might not attach enough attention in training students' abilities of how to memorize words and texts efficiently. It is necessary for teachers to study the topic-- memory cultivation, so as to improve their teaching efficiency.
2. The significance of cultivating memory in English learning
Nowadays English teachers face many teaching problems. The first is how to instruct students to memorize materials as much as they could. This is not only for English teaching and learning but also for other development of students themselves as well.
2.1. The demand for English teaching. As we know, English teaching procedure is a process of students' memorization for words, texts and regulations. In teaching, teachers should prepare and lecture various types of new materials. Finally these materials will be changed into students' knowledge. The best way of transformations is to encourage students to memorize contents as much as possible. As a result, students can master more knowledge and the teaching efficiency will be higher.
2.2. The demand for the full development of students themselves. Our educational system emphasizes that students should be developed in morality, intelligence and physiques. This has been played an important role in students' characteristics forming. If students have a good memorial habit, it will take ben-
efit for their study as well as their future developments.
3. Implementation of six teaching methods
After the explanation of the significance of cultivating memory, we will discuss the issue of how teachers perform proper methods to train students memorial abilities. In the following sections, six teaching and learning methods in improving students' memorial skills in their English learning will be implemented and discussed.
3.1. The method of reciting. In English teaching, students are required to recite a plenty of words, texts and principles. Sometimes these materials are rather dull and complex. In general, to recite by rote doesn't take good effect though the materials come from pattern drills, texts and a certain background. If teachers process and induce them properly, students can deal with some questions skillfully, only by reciting some key points and sentences.
In daily teaching, teachers can give students some homework to recite, combining with some other exercises. For instance, when finishing Unit One " College Life" ( Experiencing English 1 ), the passages have been made as their reciting materials. Meanwhile an essay with the topic of " My Life at ECJTU" can be assigned to students. Students will write the essay according to the model passages they have recited. In this way, they can do very well in both reciting and writing. Even for some students, who have comparatively lower skill, can conduct much better jobs, which will brings them self-confidence in learning. Karl Marks began to learn Russian in his fifties and master it owing to his wonderful recitation. It has been an important teaching method to encourage students to recite a lot.
3.2. The method of understanding. According to V. B. Belyayer (1998:272), memorial procedure refers to a complicated psychological process. It includes two respects: memorizing and understanding. Students feel exhausted with materials memorized by mechanical memory. "Soon learnt, soon forgotten". On the contrary, intelligent memory plays an active part in our memorization. In case at the beginning, teachers find out internal relations among materials,
СИСТЕМНЫМ АНАЛИЗ И МЕЖДИСЦИПЛИНАРНЫМ ПОДХОД В ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯХ
guide students to memorize with comparison and understanding, they will get much better result.
This method is fit for grammar teaching. Compare with the following two sentences:
(1) I used to swim in the sea.
(2) I am used to swimming in the sea.
Sentence (1) expresses a discontinued habit or a
past situation which is contrast with the present. "used" is followed by the full infinitive. Sentence (2) means "After I have swum in the sea for a while, I never worried about my safety". "used" can also be an adjective meaning "accustomed". It is then preceded by be, become or get in any tense and followed by the preposition "to + noun / pronoun or gerund".
3.3. The method of repeating. It is impossible for some students to keep the materials for a long time in their mind by memorizing once. The efficient way to do this is to memorize again, to review. H. Ebbinghaus, German psychologist, analyzed that memorial process is accompanied with the beginning of forgetting. At first, the memorized information is forgotten very fast, gradually, the forgetting speed slows down, finally almost all are forgotten if not being reviewed in time. To avoid forgetting, repeating and reviewing are necessary.
For some students, no new words and expressions can confuse them. They have marvelous knacks: words and expressions are written on a pocket notebook. In spare time, before meals, or sleep, even in toilet, recitation and review are undertaken. Being teachers, such knacks should be taught to the students and unimaginable results may obtain. The method of repeating has been one of the most important traditional way of memory.
3.4. The method of associating. As for a certain topic, teachers should encourage students to associate freely. The method not only trains students' imagination but also helps them expand the vocabulary. Seeing the following figures:
Carelessness (n. negative) careful (adj.) ^ carefulness (n.)
Careless (adj. negative) ^ care (v.)
Carelessly (adv. negative) carefully (adv)
Using prefixes and suffixes, students can learn all forms of "care". There are some words like fear, power, hope, etc. that teachers can instruct students to do the following examples:
Example 1: good-bad, high-low, thick-thin, etc.
Example 2: long-length-lengthen, strong-strength-strengthen,
deep-depth-deepen, etc.
After induction, deduction and comparison, students could understand and memorize these words well. With the help of a series of reasonable methods,
students can make more progress in memory cultivation.
3.5. The method of amusing. There are some materials quite complicated and incomprehensible in teaching. Although having utilized all kinds of methods, students may pay more but get less. Suppose teachers prepare teaching materials as a game, adding amusement to it, the teaching might reach an unexpected result, as Chinese saying "Kill two birds with one stone."
After each unit teaching, teachers might sort out the mistakes in students' homework together and can arrange a "correcting mistakes" class with amusement. For example, all students stand up and ask a certain question. The one who answers "right" might continue and the "wrong" sit down. The last to sit down win the game. Such activity will make the class interesting and let the class performing in amusing atmosphere. Students are able to remember the points in a funny way.
Similarly, teachers can supply some other activities as English rhymed formulas or memory methods as well as English songs, tongue twisters, poetries, etc. Here is a rhymed formula to help students memorize the principle of changing cardinal numbers into ordinal numbers:
"eight cuts T (eight-eighth) nine cuts E (nine-ninth) F replaces V and E (five-fifth) Y changes into I E (twenty-twentieth) TH never forget me ( Ordinal number is ended by "th")
3.6. The method of applying. Students memorize materials in order to apply them lately. This reflects the function of language communication. By means of application, students can check out the completion, accuracy and practicality of their knowledge.
For this purpose, teachers can require students to finish their homework by themselves, to think carefully and to summarize passages frequently. Each passage needs a short summary, each unit for a long summary, every semi-term a simple summary, every term a specific summary. Monthly a short essay or oral practice may be assigned for students, by which they can discuss and develop their creation and organization. For example, when the passage "Voluntary Works" being finished, we can give students oral practice with the topic of " how to be a helpful volunteer?". Students can describe it fluently with environmental knowledge according to the text. When the passage "On Learning Strategies" (Experiencing English 1) being completed, an essay about "Design some of your own learning strategies" can be given to students. Consulting with the words, expressions and
ИРКУТСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ ПУТЕЙ СООБЩЕНИЯ
sentences in the text, students can write and memorize the essay and the passage at the same time.
In addition, teachers can also make students write English letters, resumes birthday or new year cards to apply and practice what they've learned. If they lack some knowledge in a certain area, they are able to renew and input them immediately through application. This forms a good circle of input and output of knowledge. Application is the source of memory.
4. Conclusion
Generally, this paper has discussed the issue of students' memorial cultivation during their English learning, and has put forward six teaching methods for improving students' memorial competence. The discussion has expounded the memorial principle and students' psychological characteristics. Combining the two aspects, the implementation of the methods are explained in detail.
It is not easy to train students memory in teaching and learning. Firstly, the teaching subjects and students have predominated their own peculiarity. Secondly, each teacher has different experiences, teaching methods and requirements which will affect their
Fu Qin-cui, Liu Zi-ying, Fu Ke-jia
teaching efficiency. Even for these factors, teachers have still many methods to stimulate this kind of quality. In teaching, teachers should lay stress on these training methods and encourage students to form a good habit of memorization, and then also try best to use various means to make class actively. With perceptible influence of the new teaching method, our educational system will be more and more perfect and efficient.
REFERENCES
1. An Action Research on Helping Students of Special Majors Becoming Autonomous Learners through Formative Assessment, Journal of Irkutsk State Transport, University, N0.2(18), 2008
2. Research on Teaching Assessment System for Foreign Teachers in Colleges, Journal of East China Jiaotong University, Vol.24 No.6, Dec., 2007
3. Research on Credit-Transfer System—Important Factor of Education Globalization, Jiangxi Provincial Education Research Project, Dec. 2005
y^K 004.45
RESEARCH OF IEC60870-5-104 PROTOCOL AND DESIGN OF COMMUNICATION SOFTWARE BASED ON FINITE STATE MACHINES
1. INTRODUCTION
IEC 60870-5-101 is an international communication protocol standard for the telecontrol of electric power transmission systems, which is being widely adopted in many countries throughout the world. The standard specifies the use of permanent directly connected links between telecontrol stations, such as conventional PSTN modem and leased-line. There is now a growing desire to use the 60870-5 Standards to communicate between telecontrol stations via Internet services. A companion standard called IEC 60870-5-104[1] (thereinafter referred to as the 104 protocol) has been published by the IEC for this purpose.
Presently, people make a deep study of the application of the 104 protocol and have obtained a cer-
tain success. But on the software design, there is not a relatively universal design pattern. This paper puts forward a kind of design method used for the realization of the 104 protocol based on Finite State Machines (FSM). In this method, the 104 protocol is modeled via the FSM theory. In addition an object-oriented FSM implementation framework is produced. And then a tool is presented that automates the configuration of the framework. The tool effectively enables developers to create FSMs from a specification.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, the IEC 60870-5-104 protocol is introduced. In Section 3, the idea of analyzing with FSM is discussed. In Section 4, the design and im-
