Reading comprehension, working memory problems and the Internet?
The other day I read a great book on how our brain functions when being exposed to the Internet for longer periods, each day. I recognized problems children have at school and we, as teachers (and those children), cope with these problems every lesson. The main problem being reading comprehension difficulties, ranging from struggling to learn to read to not understanding what has been read. I was wondering why is that so?
First of all we have to explain the difference between working memory and short term memory. Sometimes people put equal between the two of them but there is a difference. Short term memory is used in situations like remembering a phone number/ object/ color/ location etc. Working memory then adds on a content such as what to say when the pone call is answered or which road to take to get to that location. So working memory manipulates with short term memory facts.
Now there is also a long term memory. It represents everything we hold in our memory and can recall at some point.
Working memory is sort of a gateway to long term memory. It can deal with limited amount of new content (foreign language teachers are familiar with it through the number of keywords they introduce per lesson) which it then put into connection with the facts we hold in our long term memory. That way we build new connections, make them meaningful and sort of update the things we already had in our long term memory. We learn. Our knowledge base expands. Our skills develop.
What happens when we spend, each day, longer periods of time on the Internet? Longer periods meaning two hours for instance. Our brain gets used to the speed of the information on the Internet. We read superficially, only the words needed to get the key information. We click a lot and use many links which distract us from deeper understanding of the content. Our attention weakens and our ability to concentrate decreases. We read information on the Internet in the 'F' shape, meaning we read the title, then some words in the beginning of each line, the middle text sentence and after that again only the line beginners. This was proven to be the most successful way to find the key message of the text on the Internet. The results are obvious- lack of the concentration and interest for deeper understanding and researching of the content and only necessary reading done. Our brain gets used to fast movements and exchange of the materials but leaves us with no connections established between the content and our long term memory. Our working memory is in trouble as our concentration doesn't allow us to open the gateway towards our long term memory. Sadly, we are left empty..but amused.
But..I would not like to finish the post being so negative or pessimistic. Internet and computers are more and more grown into our everyday. There is no way we can escape or forbid or change that. There is, however, a way to help our children with working attention or reading problems. More and more scientists and therapists are dealing with this issue and publishing materials on the Internet (of course :-) so why not expand the topic in the next post? Why not make a list of activities that will help the ESL teacher to practice working memory while teaching a new content?
First of all we have to explain the difference between working memory and short term memory. Sometimes people put equal between the two of them but there is a difference. Short term memory is used in situations like remembering a phone number/ object/ color/ location etc. Working memory then adds on a content such as what to say when the pone call is answered or which road to take to get to that location. So working memory manipulates with short term memory facts.
Now there is also a long term memory. It represents everything we hold in our memory and can recall at some point.
Working memory is sort of a gateway to long term memory. It can deal with limited amount of new content (foreign language teachers are familiar with it through the number of keywords they introduce per lesson) which it then put into connection with the facts we hold in our long term memory. That way we build new connections, make them meaningful and sort of update the things we already had in our long term memory. We learn. Our knowledge base expands. Our skills develop.
What happens when we spend, each day, longer periods of time on the Internet? Longer periods meaning two hours for instance. Our brain gets used to the speed of the information on the Internet. We read superficially, only the words needed to get the key information. We click a lot and use many links which distract us from deeper understanding of the content. Our attention weakens and our ability to concentrate decreases. We read information on the Internet in the 'F' shape, meaning we read the title, then some words in the beginning of each line, the middle text sentence and after that again only the line beginners. This was proven to be the most successful way to find the key message of the text on the Internet. The results are obvious- lack of the concentration and interest for deeper understanding and researching of the content and only necessary reading done. Our brain gets used to fast movements and exchange of the materials but leaves us with no connections established between the content and our long term memory. Our working memory is in trouble as our concentration doesn't allow us to open the gateway towards our long term memory. Sadly, we are left empty..but amused.
But..I would not like to finish the post being so negative or pessimistic. Internet and computers are more and more grown into our everyday. There is no way we can escape or forbid or change that. There is, however, a way to help our children with working attention or reading problems. More and more scientists and therapists are dealing with this issue and publishing materials on the Internet (of course :-) so why not expand the topic in the next post? Why not make a list of activities that will help the ESL teacher to practice working memory while teaching a new content?
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