Massed Practice, Spaced Practice, and Language Learning

After listening to Dr. Robert Bjork's lecture, "How we learn vs. how we think we learn," I've been left thinking about language learning and how his strategies/approaches apply to learning a new language. As a language teacher, I am particularly interested in how I may teach my students about these better study practices and how I may implement them in my curriculum. 

One of the concepts he talks about in this lecture is that of massed practice vs. spaced practice. He explains that massed practice is what most of us think of as cramming the night before an exam. There are a number of factors as to why many people think that massed practice works - 1) we've been taught that studying something over and over again in a short period of time helps us commit it to memory and 2) we often see positive results on exam scores. However, the thing that most people do not seem to realize is that although we may be able to recall information on that exam, studying this way does not help us recall that same information later down the road. It's essentially, in one ear, out the other type of learning. 

Spaced practice refers to studying something but with breaks in between study sessions. When you take these breaks, there's a certain amount of forgetting that happens that is crucial to learning. While most of us may think of forgetting something as being negative, when learning, it produces a desirable difficulty of needing to recall and retrieve that information which helps solidify it in our memory. Bjork goes on to discuss studies that have been done that show that over time, those who space their practice, can recall information better and do better on tests. 

Most of the teaching that I have done over the years has been in intensive English programs. In these types of programs, learners study English around 5 hours a day 4-5 days a week. Since I work in a university, there are long breaks during the semesters and in between the semesters, and I've often thought of these breaks as being a negative interruption to their language learning progress. Meaning, it often feels like when they come back from the breaks, they kind of relapse for a bit since they often spend their breaks with friends and family who speak their first language. However, now I'm wondering if these breaks are advantageous because they allow for a certain amount of forgetting to occur, which makes it a little more difficult for them to recall what they have already learned about English - creating a sort of desirable difficulty. 

It's also made me think about how I can apply 'spacing practice' in my own classes. I have them complete low stakes quizzes (comprehension checks) while we're learning a new structure, but they don't often go back to retake those quizzes (they're online and they can take them as many times as they like). I think a way that I can get them to space their practice before the cumulative final is to retake these quizzes but also to provide low stakes cumulative quizzes throughout the semester, so that they are revisiting the information that we learn throughout the semester and not just cramming at the end before the exam.