| Home |
 |
Chapter 6 |
|
Theory into Practice |
|
Ch. 6, p. 189
Reducing Retroactive Inhibition
There are two ways to help reduce retroactive inhibition for students. The first is by not teaching similar and confusing concepts too closely in time. The second is to use different methods to teach similar concepts. The first way to reduce retroactive inhibition implies that one of several confusing or similar concepts should be taught thoroughly before the next is introduced. For example, students should be completely able to recognize the letter b before the letter d is introduced. If these letters are introduced at close to the same time, learning of one may inhibit learning of the other. When the new letter is introduced, the teacher must carefully point out the differences between b and d, and students must practice discriminating between the two until they can unerringly say which is which. As another example, consider the following lists of Spanish and English word pairs:
| A | B |
| llevar – to carry | perro – dog |
| llorar – to cry | gato – cat |
| llamar – to call | caballo – horse |
List B is much easier to learn. The similarities among the Spanish words in list A (they are all verbs, start with ll, end with ar, and have the same number of letters and syllables) make them very difficult to tell apart. The English words in list A are also somewhat difficult to discriminate among, because all are verbs that start with a c. In contrast, the words in list B are easy to discriminate from one another. Because of the problem of retroactive inhibition, presenting all the word pairs in list A in the same lesson would be a poor instructional strategy. Students would be likely to confuse the three Spanish words because of their similar spellings. Rather students should be completely familiar with one word pair before the next is introduced.
Another way to reduce retroactive inhibition is to use different methods to teach similar concepts or to vary other aspects of instruction for each concept. For example, in social studies a teacher might teach about Spain by using lectures and discussion, about France by using group projects, and about Italy by using films. This would help students avoid confusing information about one country with information about others.
Most things that are forgotten were never firmly learned in the first place. The best way to ensure long-term retention of material taught in school is to make certain that students have mastered the essential features of the material. This means assessing students’ understanding frequently and reteaching it if it turns out that students have not achieved adequate levels of understanding.
|