The account so far has indicated that under certain circumstances memorization facilitates L2 learning. In this regard the role of both off-line (Ding 2007; Dai and Ding 2010) and online (Ellis and Sinclair 1996) repetition and rehearsal seems able to make the learner focus on linguistic details, leading to the acquisition. It was also noted that memorization provides a
140
learner with a repertoire of authentic exemplars, bypassing the need to learn the rules to build a sentence from scratch. According to Wray (2004):
The key advantage of memorizing linguistic material is that you do not have to know why it has the form it has. You just need to remember it. You don’t need to make any choices, only use what you have learned (p. 262).
This apparent advantage of memorization notwithstanding, reproducing memorized material correctly is not all that simple. Memorizing a text is one thing, reproducing it reliably and using it correctly is quite another. In this section I will explore some of the research dealing with how reliably memorized text is reproduced and what it might mean for language learning and Quran memorization.
Ding (2007, see above) found a high level of accuracy in reproducing the memorized material. According to him, memorization practices at school inculcated in his learners a rigorous habit of rote-learning for strict verbatim recall with particular focus on prosodic and intonational features. The learners were so tuned in to memorization and imitation that they would watch English movies and would listen to English songs, mainly to recite and imitate lines from them, which they would then use in conversation for fluency. According to Ding, “when they speak English, lines from movies often naturally pop out, making others think of their English as natural and fluent” (p. 275). In words of one of Ding’s informants: “what had been memorized became our own language” (ibid). However, it is important to note that people may memorize and correctly reproduce text without understanding if correct
reproduction is rewarded on tests. While a person can be proficient in his/her use of language and can correctly reproduce what he/she has memorized, accuracy in reproducing pre-
memorized material can be a signal of lack of knowledge too (Wray and Pegg 2009).
Wray and Pegg (2009) investigated the impact of memorization on IELTS Academic Writing Task 2 exam performance. Scripts written by Chinese speakers with various band scores and from different IELTS test centres around the world were analysed. Wray and Pegg showed that the test takers with limited productive proficiency could in some cases get a really high score in an IELTS exam by using pre-memorized wordstrings, even though the topic of the essay wasn’t known in advance. They propose that in order to unravel the real learning and proficiency of a learner, the IELTS examiner needs to have a means of identifying
141
They also suggest that the IELTS marking system needs to be able to avoid rewarding accurate output that is so-generated. However, given that L1 speakers might also use
prefabricated wordstrings when composing written work, not rewarding apposite, nativelike output by L2 speakers even if it is believed to have been memorized, is paradoxical.
The above account suggests that just as accuracy indicates lack of knowledge, so inaccuracy can indicate that there is knowledge. Memorized material is not necessarily correctly
reproduced as learners and users, for a variety of reasons, may introduce errors in and deviate from what they have memorized. Wray and Fitzpatrick’s (2008) study offers an interesting perspective on deviations from memorized material. Their participants were non-native English speakers (Chinese and Japanese) of intermediate and advanced proficiency who memorized and practised native-like sentences for reproduction in pre-identified real life situations. Participants’ performance was analysed by deviations/changes (native- and non- native-like) they made from the model utterances. Deviations were categorized at
morphological, lexical, and phrasal levels. While native-like deviations were recognized as normal and indicative of native-like behaviour, non-native-like deviations were considered as mistakes.
The premise was that if someone knew what they wanted to say and had practised saying it, they should be able to just produce it perfectly. Wray and Fitzpatrick’s participants, however, couldn’t. Furthermore, the results indicated that the most proficient participants were not ones who performed best in reproducing the perfect recall.
Wray and Fitzpatrick interpret these results in light of what they call risk-taking which, according to them, “[consists] in not attending to the fine detail during memorization” (p. 142). Wray and Fitzpatrick reason that the proficient participants, on the basis of their receptive knowledge of the language, felt able to take risks in not fully attending to all the details of the materials, raising the chances of errors in recall.
Elaborating on the notion of risk-taking in memorization, Wray (2008) argues that faithful reproduction is a function of the amount of attention given to internalizing the linguistic details. Attention to form, in turn, can be a function of the extent of knowledge one thinks one has of a language. Learners may take risks by not giving the required attention to form in memorization in a calculated fashion, and the risk-taking depends on how much they know of the language (p. 254). Risk-taking might be a strategy used by a learner to lessen the
142
cognitive load of verbatim memorization. Wray claims that L2 learners, like native-speakers, attend to linguistic form on the basis of their ‘knowledge’ of the language. If a learner thinks himself/herself linguistically competent enough to restore an item should he/she forget it, he/she may not pay enough attention to internalizing it, and may instead depend on his/hers generic language skills to provide it. However, his/her lack of native-like vocabulary and syntactic knowledge will cause non-native deviations or errors.
The above account suggests that one can take risks with memorization when one knows the language to a certain level, and the more one knows the language the more one will feel tempted to take risks by not paying full attention to the details. Highly competent speakers can risk not memorizing fine details such as morphology, because they can reproduce them from their knowledge base. In contrast, someone who has little or no command of the language cannot rely on taking such risks, and must, instead, put extra time and effort into memorization. It follows that if one does not know the language at all, no risks dare be taken. In the context of the Quran memorization we can see that one way to measure the learners’ internalisation of the patterns might be to find out whether they deviate from the target form. If they have no knowledge, they are obliged to commit every bit of the Quran text to memory because if they happen to forget a word, they may not be able to reinstate it. If, in the course of such memorization, they do internalize patterns, then they might be at increasing risk of introducing errors. If familiarity with patterns does increase the risk of deviations, then we can ask whether memorizers who know Classical Arabic are more at risk of making errors than those who don’t. If they are, how do they avoid incorrect recall?One answer to this question comes from the interviews with the Quran memorizers described in chapter 5. According to the participants, almost all memorizers, whether they know the language or not, memorize every single word of the Quran text. As accurate recall is the most important requirement in their memorization, they engage in frequent rehearsal in order to make sure to not make an error of commission or omission. Those memorizers who know the language do not let their knowledge of the language interfere with their recall. In the final chapter we will return to this extreme emphasis on correct recall as a key for understanding Quran
memorizers’ capacity for learning the language.
As mentioned above, Wray (2008) considers risk-taking to be an index of proficiency (p. 255). A learner takes risk on his memorization on the basis of receptive knowledge of a
143
language which he may overestimate or confuse with his productive knowledge. The more a person takes risks, the more they may commit errors, if they have overestimated what they can reproduce. She suggests that this mismatch between receptive and productive knowledge may result in an impasse in learning. Learners are puzzled about why they keep making the mistake, since they know the form. The converse is also true. Making errors in this sense can be an indication of progress (e.g., due to overgeneralization), and can be explained in terms of learners’ attempts to discover the system and structure of the language. According to Corder (1967):
[Errors] provide to the researcher evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner, is employing in his discovery of the language. […Most importantly however] they are indispensable to the learner himself, because we can regard the making of errors as a device the learner uses in order to learn (p. 167).
This suggests that making errors can be very revealing in terms of learning the language. I will take up this issue in the final chapter in relation to the Quran memorizers’ learning or not learning the language patterns.
Wray (2004) reports an extreme language learning situation in which a Welsh beginner speaker, Margaret, with very little previous knowledge of the language was to present a cookery demonstration to a live audience on a television programme. For this, she had to learn the necessary language over an intensive learning period of four days. The language required for performing the task was introduced to her in three tutorials and she had to memorize and practise whole phrases and sentences provided to her by the tutor, to be fully prepared for the cookery demonstration. Given the very short period of time she had to prepare herself for the performance, she was not taught much vocabulary, nor were grammatical rules explained in detail, though she was given examples of patterns with minimal description of what was happening. Since she was to deliver in a language well beyond her abilities, she had to rely heavily on memorized material.
As noted earlier (see section 6.2.1), a characteristic of the Welsh language is the front mutation of words, that is, a change is made to the beginning of a word, on the basis of a phonological property of the preceding word or of the grammatical context. Margaret’s script
144
contained (a) mutations that were explicitly taught to her. For example, the tutor showed her the soft mutation of certain words after the phrase I am going to; (b) the mutated forms were not specifically taught but they were noticeable because their unmutated form had been encountered in the tutorials. Margaret’s script, therefore, contained both mutated and unmutated forms; (c) mutated forms with no mention of their being mutated. So, Margaret did not know if they were mutated (p. 263).
According to the results, Margaret used the correct mutated form where she had not encountered any other option. On the other hand, she erroneously used the incorrect base form for the correct mutated form where she had a choice of forms and didn’t know which one to use.
Margaret’s recall performance indicates that there is always a risk of getting the recall wrong if different choices are available to an individual, no matter how motivated he/she is to recall it accurately. This is a very important claim in relation to the present study. Although Quran memorizers like Margaret memorize for verbatim recall, unlike her, they succeed in
(re)producing the text verbatim without errors. The questions that pertain to the issue are: if both Margaret and the Quran memorizers memorize for recall without errors, what is it that causes errors in the recall of the former but not in that of the latter? Why do potential choices of form inherent in the text not trip the Quran memorizers up as they tripped Margaret up in Wray’s study? What might the Quran memorizers do to avoid the risk of putting themselves into a difficult and rather dangerous situation of mistaking one form for another? One answer to this would be the excessive rehearsal of the Quran text to the point that the memorizers are thoroughly familiar with and remember each and every occurrence of the form in different verses. Interviews with the Quran memorizers confirmed that memorizers are engaged in learning the text by drilling as they rehearse each and every verse multiple times, suggesting that the memorizers were aware of presence of a form in different verses. I will return to this in the final chapter in relation to risk-taking in memorization.