>>>>> "Sergio" == Sergio Navega <snavega at attglobal.net> writes:
Sergio> This is a bit late reaction to this message, but it
Sergio> touched on interesting points. Indeed the semantic content
Sergio> eases a lot the rote memorization of sequences of
Sergio> words. But we can memorize them even without this semantic
Sergio> content (although it is much harder).
I remember that when I was small, I could recite a complete Japanese
theme song even knowing no Japanese and nothing about the meanings of
the lyrics. The music may help memorization, but repetition also
helps a lot.
(FYI, Japanese TV cartoon/comic series are popular in Hong Kong. Most
of them have a theme song, which is played in their original Japanese
version before and after the show.)
Sergio> George Miller's "rule-of-thumb" says that one is able to
Sergio> store 7 plus/minus 2 digits of information at
Sergio> once. Although this rule has been devised in 1956, it is
Sergio> pretty applicable today. However, what Miller was
Sergio> referring to is the short-term memory, the one that we
Sergio> use, for instance, to store a temporary telephone
Sergio> number.
Exactly! All of us are able to remember our birthday, address,
telephone numbers (home, office, fax, cell phone), ATM card PINs,
computer account passwords, etc. without difficulties.
Sergio> Long-term memory does not suffer from this
Sergio> limitation and an american opera singer is able to "store"
Sergio> the whole text of an italian opera without having much
Sergio> semantic content to help. Obviously, he/she will have to
Sergio> invest more energy than an italian (and will certainly
Sergio> suffer with the accent).
--
Lee Sau Dan $(0,X)wAV(B(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
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