Passage 2: Chunking and Segmentation

Chunking is a cognitive process – occurring within the human brain – to organise information for storage in the short-term memory. It involves grouping several, small items of information into a single unit, or chunk. This allows us to remember more information, as there are fewer items to memorise.

The classic example of this, as used in much of the academic literature on the subject, is when memorising a number. For instance, the four-digit PIN code 1415 could be memorised as four separate chunks of information (1,4,1 and 5) but we are much more likely to group it into two chunks of information (14 and 15). This halves the number of chunks that we are required to memorise, even though the overall information is exactly the same.

The concept of chunking was first introduced by psychologist George Miller. Following experiments in 1956, he concluded that the short-term memory was capable of retaining between five and nine pieces of information at any one time. More recent studies have found that we can actually remember even fewer than this: between three and five pieces of information. This is very little; in fact, it is the same amount of information that a monkey can remember. According to Cambridge neuroscientist Daniel Bor, monkeys can retain around three or four pieces of information. So, why are we better at memorisation than monkeys are? The reason is that humans are much more skilled at chunking that information. While a monkey could only remember 'a bit of apple, a bit of banana, a bit of melon, and a bit of pineapple', a human could store all of these as one information chunk – a fruit salad.

Chunking is a particularly important concept in language learning, as it goes some way to explaining why listening is harder in a second language. This is particularly true during the early stages of learning, when the learner is likely to store chunks containing individual words rather than larger concepts. A novice language learner might hear the phrase 'the Empire State Building' and hear every word individually, resulting in four chunks of information; this would effectively fill up their entire short-term memory. A more advanced learner, or native speaker, would simply picture The Empire State Building, resulting in only one chunk of information. This leaves the language learner at a disadvantage as their memory is effectively more limited than that of a native speaker.

However, chunking is not the only mental process that makes listening difficult in a second language. A second process, called segmentation, is also at work. It determines how the brain understands spoken or written language. Second language learners are not accustomed to the segmentation rules in the new language so they may struggle to understand the overall sense of what is being said, even if they are familiar with all the individual words.

Segmentation involves breaking up long streams of speech into smaller, self-contained units of sense. For example, if we hear 'Iwenttotheempirestatebuildingyesterday', our brain can segment this into the phrase 'I went to the Empire State Building yesterday.' However, if we are unfamiliar with the segmentation rules of the language, the brain will struggle to segment the speech correctly. To improve their listening skills, language learners should become familiar with the segmentation rules of the new language. These rules are usually learnt unconsciously so the more listening experience you get, the more familiar you will become with the rules.

Segmentation and chunking processes work hand-in-hand to allow humans to understand spoken language. We use segmentation to turn speech into comprehensible units and then use chunking to store those units in our short-term memory. This process works because the memory is able to process concepts, not just individual words. The more experienced you become in a language, the more meaningful each chunk becomes; the result being that you will be able to store more information in your short-term memory.

Storing information in the short-term memory is vital, as it gives the listener enough time to comprehend what is being said. Psychologist Nelson Cowan explains that the short-term memory is used as part of a larger cognitive system which is named 'working memory'. Working memory incorporates the short-term memory along with other cognitive processing mechanisms. It acts as a type of buffer, allowing us time to assimilate information – store it in our long-term memory – before we forget it.

According to E Bruce Goldstein, the length of working memory is around ten to fifteen seconds. If we did not store spoken information in the working memory, listening would become even more difficult as we might have to rely on the echoic memory. Echoic memory is a sensory memory register which stores sound for a short period after we hear it. Even though it is the longest of the sensory memory registers, most of which hold information for under two seconds, echoic memory only lasts for three or four seconds. If you had to rely on your echoic memory for listening, you might forget what word a person had said by the time your long-term memory was able to recall what it meant.

Language learners can maximise their chunking and segmentation processes by altering their learning strategies. Increased listening practice, with a variety of different voices and accents, can improve our assimilation of the segmentation rules of the language. To aid chunking, it is more effective to learn whole phrases than to learn individual words alone.

Passage 3: Into the Unknown: The search for the Northwest Passage

A Prior to the 19th century, the Canadian Arctic region was largely unknown to Europeans, except for a relatively few whalers and fur hunters. However, for several centuries, explorers had sought to find a passage to the East via the ice-bound waterways of the north, to avoid the long and perilous journey via Cape Horn round the tip of South America and Africa's Cape of Good Hope. The route they sought, between the Atlantic and the North Pacific, was named the Northwest Passage.

B Following the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century, there were many out-of-work naval officers, looking to find employment in the expanding British Empire. One of these was the naval surgeon John Richardson, born in Dumfries, Scotland, in 1787, who became a Fellow of the London Royal College of Surgeons in 1807, following a medical apprenticeship in Edinburgh. The training of medical personnel at this time involved studying a great deal of natural history, particularly of plants and their medicinal properties, and Richardson became a keen naturalist. It was this combination of knowledge and skills which bought him to the attention of Lieutenant John Franklin, who had been commissioned to explore the Northwest Passage in 1819. Richardson enthusiastically took the opportunity to travel with him with the object of collecting geological, plant and animal specimens.

C At this time, the northern territories of Canada were dominated by two rival companies trading in animal furs and skins, who essentially governed this vast region. Staffed mainly by Scottish workers, but employing French voyageurs and Native American animal hunters, the violent trading war between these companies destabilised the whole of the region and the food stocks, which the expedition depended on, were simply unavailable. Nevertheless, Franklin’s men succeeded in covering well over 1,000 miles in the first year of their anticipated 2-year expedition. They reached the confluence of the Coppermine and Yellow Rivers in 1820, despite temperatures of 40 degrees below freezing, while in summer the men were plagued by hordes of mosquitoes and biting flies.

D It was the difficulty of obtaining food which made them seriously consider ending the expedition. Travelling several hundred miles over the waterlogged bog and tundra, the hungry and exhausted travellers were forced to feed on the only plentiful plants they could find - primitive lichens covering otherwise bare rocks. George Back, a member of Richardson’s crew, showed great courage and selflessness in assisting the men stranded at Fort Enterprise, when he volunteered, together with some voyageurs, to undertake a winter journey of 500 miles to reach the camp of the Native American Chief Akaitcho. The chief immediately sent out two sledges loaded with meat to the starving explorers at Fort Enterprise.

E Meanwhile, Richardson had agreed to stay behind with two sick members of the party, Hood and Hepburn, near the Coppermine River. The three emaciated men survived on insects and sheltered in a small tent, but continued to observe morning and evening religious prayers to maintain morale. Richardson was soon forced to make the most momentous decisions of his life when he encountered one of the Iroquois Indian guides, attached to the main party, who claimed to have lost his way. A number of incidents convinced Richardson that the well-armed guide intended to kill the weakened party of Europeans for food. One morning, one of the men, Hood, was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head. Richardson did not hesitate: he killed the guide in similar fashion.

F When Richardson and Hepburn later reached Fort Enterprise, they found the main party near to death from starvation and thoroughly demoralised, including their leader, Lieutenant Franklin. It was Richardson who then took charge, clearing out their filthy quarters and organising the sharing of what little sustenance they had, mainly consisting of old bones and scraps found outside. It was from this time that legends of making soup from old animal skins and leather moccasins emerged. Eventually, Chief Akaitcho’s Indians arrived with their stores of food. They treated the weak and starved party with the utmost care, restoring them sufficiently to start the journey to Fort Providence on the Great Slave Lake within a week. There they stayed for five months with the Hudson’s Bay Company, who looked after them very well. They were not able to return to England till the summer of 1822, having, by then, travelled some 5,500 miles by land and sea.

G Richardson later accompanied a second Franklin expedition in the years 1825-27, which was much better organised, enabling him to consolidate his collections and observations and forming the basis of the very first comprehensive study of the natural history of the Arctic. Following his knighthood in 1846, he led an unsuccessful search expedition to determine what had happened to John Franklin’s last Arctic expedition which had never returned and in which all died. It was not until the 1980s, when forensic science was applied to the buried corpses - perfectly intact in the ice - that it was found that they most probably died as a result of the latest technology of the time: tinned food. It was seen as the solution to maintaining the health and wellbeing of the expedition and thousands of tins were taken. Unfortunately, the lead used to seal the tins, which were of poor quality, contaminated the food inside and the explorers probably all died of lead poisoning.