Memory problems..

[Noego]

Hello everyone,

I know someone who has a really hard time remembering things. Sometimes I wonder whether or not that person's brain was damaged in some way which somehow hampered her learning process. I'm really serious about this. Is it possible?

Is there such a thing as learning difficulties? Like if a kid is not stimulated enough when he's young, could that limit what they can learn at a later point? If that's the case, it would really make sense.

I'll give you an example:

That person always says: "I don't remember this words"

So I correct her and I say: "You mean you don't understand this word."

The thing is, sometimes a few minutes later she'll go back to saying: "I don't understand this words."

Without exaggerating I would say that I've corrected her on that at least 5 times.

She's not my student by the way.

Why is this happening? Any opinions? How can I help that person learning from her mistakes rather than repeating them hopelessly?

I don't understand. I don't think I'm any better than anyone else but if I make a mistake in a language once, I rarely repeat it twice. I am very motivated when it comes to learning languages. So it's beyond me how someone can repeat the same mistake 5 times in a row.

Does this mean that the person is not motivated to learn? Should I stop correcting her and let her learn by herself?

Could it be possible that she just doesn't want to learn and is unconsciously rejecting any any new information?

What is strange is that sometimes she's really surprising, she will learn something just like most people, really quickly.

Note that she isn't a kid anymore, she's in her twenties.

The same situation has happened with plenty of other words or expressions, especially about the pronunciation of some words. It's also not because she can't pronounce a certain sound, her pronunciation is fine, it's just her long term memory.

Any suggestion? I really want to help her but I do get really pissed off sometimes when I've had to repeat myself 5 times in a row. Who wouldn't?

[Tdol]

What's her first language? I had to get my Khmer teacher to tell me how to say 'war' in Khmer a number of times today because I couldn't fix it. As most words bear no resemblence to anything I know, I find it takes me a while to remember terms a lot of the time.

[Noego]

Chinese.

The thing is, it's not that she can't pronounce the words, she can do it.

She just keeps forgetting the correct pronunciation.

Maybe it's just really difficult for her. I don't know, it's hard for me understand.

[Tdol]

Sometimes there's a time lag and she'll start picking up on the differences later. In your example, she could be struggling with the singular/plural issue, which can take a while to sort out for speakers of languages that don't make the distinction.