OLD SCIENTIST

摘要

Neither the Iron Curtain nor Czechoslovakia exist today, but back in 1966 New Scientist was reporting from one behind the other. Deep in the cold war we covered a story from the former eastern bloc state. It seemed students learned languages more rapidly when "taught" by recordings in their sleep. The phenomenon even had a name -hypnopaedia. We reported on 24 February the case of two Soviet students who had acquired passable English in only 14 nights. Not surprisingly, there were sceptics, especially when it emerged the lessons conducted during sleep simply repeated what the students had heard while awake. V. Fried, a Czechoslovak lecturer in English, thought that "the amount of tuition the students received while they were awake plus their homework" easily accounted for their fluency. Still, it might have made teachers feel happier about sending their students to sleep.