Language note


In English, important information can be placed at the beginning or at the end of a sentence. There are two types of important information. The first part of the sentence contains the topic and the second part contains some kind of information or comment about the topic. Usually the comment is the more syntactically complicated part of the sentence.


Once a piece of text or a piece of conversation (i.e., a piece of discourse) has gone beyond the first sentence, a ‘given’/‘new’ principle operates. Information which is ‘given’, in other words that has already been mentioned, goes at the beginning of the sentence. Normally speaking, information which is new goes at the end of the sentence. So in the second sentence of a piece of discourse, an aspect of the comment from the previous sentence may become the topic. Thus the topic of the second sentence, if it has already been mentioned in the previous sentence is also ‘given’. Of course, the given information may not be referred to with exactly the same words in the second sentence. Other ways to refer to the given information include reference words (it, he, she, this, that, these, those, etc.) or vocabulary items with similar meaning.


Information structure is covered in the Skills bank in the Course Book unit.


Transcript≤2.4 Part 4


Now … er … let’s see … oh dear, I see we’re running short of time … but perhaps I should just say something about forgetting. There are several theories about why people forget events. Amongst them are: faulty encoding, displacement, brain damage, lack of use and repression. Let’s look at each of these in turn.


Faulty encoding means that certain information


may not be available because it hasn’t been recorded correctly in the first place. This could happen when there is physical damage to the senses – to hearing or sight, for example. Now, from what we’ve looked at so far, it’s easy to see that deficiencies of this kind will generally affect short-term memory.


Another reason why information may not be


available is if it has been replaced by new information. This particularly applies to short-term memory. Right … turning to long-term memory. In some cases, information may not be transferred from short-term to long-term memory as a result of damage to the hippocampus. As you’ll remember, this is the part of the brain that recycles information and converts it into long-term memory.


116


I’d like to mention one more important theory,


which claims that when information isn’t retrieved and recycled regularly, it deteriorates or decays. An example of this would be forgetting the name of your teacher in primary school. If you moved away from where you went to school and didn’t see your teacher for a long time, you probably wouldn’t hear or mention her name very often, if at all. Gradually, because the information isn’t being recycled frequently, the neural network that makes it available weakens and breaks down, and the memory is lost.


Moving on now … let’s look at another


explanation for forgetting … and that is repression. Memories are often repressed in situations where people have traumatic experiences. By that, I mean when they have had terrible accidents, or they have been victims of violence or when they have seen, or done something dreadful. In these cases, the brain blocks the memory of the event by keeping it in the unconscious. More recent research suggests, though, that highly emotional events may be more difficult to remember just after they happen, but easier to recall in the long term.


Now … oh dear, I was going to give more


examples of repression, but … ah … I see that time is moving on. So instead, I’m going to …


Exercise G


Set for pairwork discussion. Feed back with the whole class. Note that the lecture has not yet finished. The last part will be heard in Lesson 3.


Answers Model answers: The lecturer is running out of time.


The lecturer has not had time to give more examples of repression.


Closure Ask students to group these events according to whether they think they are most likely to be stored in short-term or long-term memory. Allow discussion.


1 how to ride a bicycle 2 the name of a new acquaintance 3 your best friend’s address 4 the plot of a film you saw recently 5 your phone number 6 how to get to your house 7 how to get to a place in a new town 8 your birthday 9 the pin code for your cash card


10 the name of your best friend in primary school


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