What sorts of errors do the informants consider common?

I was interested to know if memorizers make mistakes while recalling the text and what kind of mistake that might be. Information on the nature of mistakes would inform us on how the

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Quran has been memorized and what the memorizers can do to avoid or correct them. It would also tell us about the nature of their memory. In the words of two participants:

Memorizers are prone to committing mistakes in recalling similar verses, occurring in different parts of the Quran or when the only difference in verses is that of a word, or a phrase. It is not always easy to remember these small details, and there is a possibility that the memorizers might get confused at those places. To guard against it, it is important to

intensively rehearse such verses (SM02).

There are verses or phrases which occur several times at different places in the Quran. Their repeated occurrence across the Quran makes it difficult to remember which verse occurs where. Memorizers need to pay special attention to such verses and need to note what comes before and after a verse that is repeated in different parts of the Quran. Sometimes parts of verses occur in different order. Such verses need to be rehearsed more often as compared to others so that they get entrenched in the mind (SM01).

It is clear from what the participants said that they sometimes have problems with sequential memory. Similar or same verses appearing in different places cause confusion, leading to errors in recall.

To see if Quran memorizers make other kinds of mistakes in recitation, I asked them about different types of mistakes they tend to make. For example, I asked them if memorizers confuse semantically related words, such as ‘man’ with ‘woman’, and ‘morning’ with ‘evening’, etc. They said No to this. According to two memorizers:

We do not know the meaning, so there is no chance of confusing words with similar or related meanings. We are only concerned with reproducing the right word in the right order (SM01).

It is only when one knows the meaning of the words that there is risk of confusion on the basis of meaning. For example, once during a rehearsal one of my friends who also knew Arabic got confused between two words (both meaning boat). He was actually reciting the Quranic word but the other word was also coming to his mind, so he asked me to look it up in

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the Quran to make sure he was saying the right word. He has since then rehearsed it so much that he doesn’t confuse it with the other word (SM02).

This suggests that the memorizers’ recall is essentially sequential or serial in nature and may be more like recalling codes or patterns such as triangle, triangle, square, circle, etc.

With regards to making phonological errors, especially errors in recalling similar-sounding words, they had a consensus on not making such errors. Here is a representative view:

One can have problems with phonologically similar words when learning the Quran for the first time because a beginner might find it difficult to differentiate between similar-sounding or closely similar words. But a person who has learnt and already completed memorization does not have such difficulty because he has rehearsed it so often that he knows the sound of every word. An experienced memorizer might sometimes confuse phonologically similar words but that is because he is not attentive or focussed during recitation (SMP2). The above excerpts from conversations with participants show that memorizers may be vulnerable to mistakes in sequential recall. They sometimes muddle up similar or identical verses from different parts of the Quran.

Important to this study is the finding that memorizers don’t make semantic errors. According to the informants, they do not confuse or muddle up semantically related words.As the ‘boat’ example illustrates, if one does know the meaning, it creates the risk of semantic errors (see chapter 8). But with these memorizers, it has been proposed that they might use other hooks leading to different sorts of errors. For example, they may forget where on the page the text is, or where on their ‘journey’ they are. It was suggested in chapter 4 that the Quran text might not be stored in semantic LTM due to the fact that the memorizers don’t know the meaning of the text. As short term memory is limited in nature and could not accommodate a long text, it was, therefore, proposed that the text might be stored in episodic LTM with hooks other than text meaning. Memorizers’ views on not making mistakes along semantic lines only provide limited evidence on the Quran text being in episodic LTM. We have to wait for results of the grammaticality judgement task (chapter 7) to see if this is really the case. In chapter 4 it was also noted that information can be transferred to semantic LTM provided a semantic hook is available. Can and will the Quran memorizers transfer the text to

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semantic LTM? An answer to this question will make an important part of our discussion in the final chapter.