moscow, feb. 17, reuter - a qualified success was reported here today for a soviet science town's language learning while you sleep, experiment, but great optimism was expressed for the future.
Scenes of Dubna, small new town 130 kilometres north of Moscow, where Soviet bloc countries cooperate in nuclear research for peaceful purposes at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. This is where Dr. Bruno Pontecorvo works. The entire town is centred around the Institute.
Shot of streets named after French atomic scientist Frederic Joloit-Curie and other famous nuclear scientists.
Professor Leonid Bliznichenko (with spectacles, speaks about five minutes). He comes from Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, lives in Kiev, and is originator of system of teaching English and other subjects while people sleep.
(1) Vladimir Zuzhar, scientific worker of the USSR Academy of Sciences, who deals with the physiological aspects of the experiment.
(2) Yuri Maximov, young man, Zuzhar's assistant.
(3) Irine Pushkin, lady psychologist, who checked reactions of those subjected to experiment.
(Zuzhar's statement will be interrupted by radio announcer reading English lesson (21st lesson in series, out of total of 36 lessons). Scene will show people asleep in bed while absorbing lesson. Two of those in beds are young engineers working at nuclear institute. The first girl seen on film is secondary school teacher, the other girl a laboratory assistant).
Background: moscow, feb. 17, reuter - a qualified success was reported here today for a soviet science town's language learning while you sleep, experiment, but great optimism was expressed for the future.
the experiment, conducted over the past six weeks in dubna, home of the soviet union's world-famous atomic research centre, came to an end at breakfast time this morning.
some 2,000 people, including workers, students, schoolchildren and scientists living in the town, took part, and although some dropped out during the course, those who remained to the end declared themselves delighted with the results.
language chosen for the experiment, conducted by linguistics specialists from the ukrainian academy of sciences with the cooperation of moscow radio, was english.
each participant had to be in bed by 10:30 p.m. each night, reading the programme of the five minutes lesson he was about to hear while the radio played light music.
the lesson,--containing 20-30 words and expressions -- began at 10.45 and was repeated several times, with the students repeating the words after the reader.
at 11.00 they are expected to go to sleep, but the radio continued to repeat the lesson constantly until midnight although more quietly than previously.
at 6.15 a.m., with the students till sleeping, the lesson was repeated again until 6.35. at 7 a.m. the radio rang a bell, waking them up.
at 7.30m during breakfast, a new lesson was broadcast, using the words and phrases of the night-time lesson, with the addition of grammatical rules.
during the whole period, which began on december 21 last year, there were 36 sessions, and the students were given about 1,000 words and expressions and taught how to use them.
although many of the students know not a word of english at the beginning, many were carrying on a conversation confidently towards the end, according to the directors of the scheme.
one of the directing linguistic dr. vladimir zuzhar, told the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda that 135 students had already been examined to see if any psychological harm had been caused by the hypnotic study method, but it was clear that there was none.
but, he added, this first experiment showed that the study programme has to be better planned, certain purely psychological factors were not taken into account this time.
many students found that they were forgetting words they had learned at the start after a few lessons, and dr. zukhar said this was because no revision lesson was included.