"Don't forget ...!" 

This might be the most frequently used sentence of teachers. Because we don't want our students to forget what we told them in our class. Because, yes, these cell phones make them forget everything so quickly! And then you need to repeat everything in the next lesson. Ew! 

Or ... DO we want our students to forget?

Human beings, with or without cell phone, forget quickly. That's biological. And yes, the more distractions (cell phones...) the quicker we forget.

A study conducted at the end of the 19th century (without cell phones ...) by Hermann Ebbinghaus shows how fast humans forget information; after 1 hour the accuracy of remembering information was just over 40%. After 2 days it has decreased to about 30% and after 5 days just over 20%.

That's not great news for teachers; you work so hard and despite all your efforts, your students just forget a lot very quickly. 

But ... this research also showed that when we forget something and it's being presented to us again, the learning process is easier and leads to greater retention. Forgetting doesn't undo learning, it creates the chance to reinforce learning! 

So, tell your students to please forget the information from this lesson, than you will have a great excuse for fun retrieval activities and your students will learn better!

(Would you like to know more about learning and forgetting and our brain? Please read Memory, what every language teacher should know by Steve Smith and Gianfranco Conti)