Text 1. Everything you thought you knew about learning is wrong

Garth Sundem

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/01/everything-about-learning/all/1?utm_source= feedburner)

kilfreud.comkilfreud.comwoosterglobalhistory.org

PRE-READING

Activity 1. Look at the title above and predict what the article may be about.

 

Unfortunately, learning through book doesn't make the learning strategies list. Taking notes during class? Topic-focused study? A consistent learning environment? All are exactly opposite of the best strategies for learning.

 

Robert Bjork, the director of the UCLA Learning and Forgetting Lab, a distinguished professor of psychology, is a renowned expert on keeping things in your brain from leaking out. It turns out that everything I thought I knew about learning is wrong. First, he told me, think about how you attack a pile of study material. “People tend to try to learn in blocks,” Bjork said. “Mastering one thing before moving on to the next.” Instead of doing that Bjork recommends interleaving. The strategy suggest that instead of spending an hour working on your tennis serve, you mix in a range of skills like backhands, volleys, overhead smashes, and footwork.

Instead of making an appreciable leap forward with your serving ability after a session of focused practice, interleaving forces you to make nearly imperceptible steps forward with many skills. But over time, the sum of these small steps is much greater than the sum of the leaps you would have taken if you’d spent the same amount of time mastering each skill in its turn. Alternate learning European capitals, and programming in Java.

 

Bjork also recommends varying your study location. The spacing effect, which was first described by Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885 — will also help. “If you study and then you wait, tests show that the longer you wait, the more you will have forgotten,” Bjork said. But here’s the cool part: If you study, wait, and then study again, the longer the wait, the more you’ll have learned after this second study session. Bjork explains it this way: “What we retrieve becomes more retrievable in the future. Provided the retrieval succeeds, the more difficult and involved the retrieval, the more beneficial it is. You should space your study sessions so that the information you learned in the first session remains just barely retrievable. Then, the more you have to work to pull it from your mind, the more this second study session will reinforce your learning. If you study again too soon, it’s too easy.

Along these lines, Bjork also recommends taking notes just after class, rather than during — forcing yourself to recall a lecture’s information is more effective than simply copying it from a blackboard. You have to work for it. The more you work, the more you learn, and the more you learn, the more awesome you can become.

 

“Forget about forgetting,” said Bjork. “People tend to think that learning is building up something in your memory and that forgetting is losing the things you built. But in some respects the opposite is true.” See, once you learn something, you never actually forget it. And while we count forgetting as the sworn enemy of learning, in some ways that’s wrong, too. The two live in a kind of symbiosis in which forgetting actually aids recall. “Because humans have unlimited storage capacity, having total recall would be a mess,” said Bjork. What you thought were sworn enemies are more like distant collaborators.

 

VOCABULARY FOCUS

Activity 2. Arrange the words in Columns I and II into pairs of synonyms or antonyms:

 

I	II
1. beneficial 2. recall 3. renowned 4. study in blocks 5. awesome 6. appreciable 7. imperceptible 8. alternate	A. considerable B. harmful C. famous D. noticeable E. interleave F. impressive G. retrieve H. take turns

Activity 3. Do the crossword using words from the text:

Across 2) remember, call back4) compatible with, not self-contradictory coherent and uniform7) done, happening or following in turns8) a relationship of mutual benefit or dependence9) having a widespread, esp good, reputation; famous Down 1) noticeable3) insert something alternately and regularly between the parts of sth else5) enemy, an extreme enemy who is determined to remain such6) to bring back again; revive or restore7) remarkable, outstanding

 

GRAMMAR FOCUS

Activity 4. Insert the prepositions in, out, on, for, through (some are used more than once):

1) learn _____ book 2) strategies _____ learning 3) it turns _____ that 4) an expert _____ sth 5) to leak _____ 6) to learn _____ blocks 7) _____ its turn 8) ____ some respects

Activity 5. Make up sentences using the construction “ the more…the more ”:

1) wait – forget; 2) work – learn; 3) learn – awesome 4) difficult and involved – beneficial; 5) work to pull – reinforce learning; 6) forget – learn 7) recall – learn

 

WHILE-READING

Activity 6. Mark the sentences as True, False or Not Given:

1. Robert Biork is a world famous linguist. __

2. Robert Biork has been studying the issue from his University years. __

3. Many people believe in learning the material in blocks. __

4. You should always learn in different places. __

5. You should study non-stop, make a small break and then recall the information. __

6. It is useless to take notes in class. __

7. Forgetting helps you to learn. __

8. The article describes the best practices of learning. __

9. If you follow Biork’s advice, you’ll learn the material twice quicker. __

10. The author of the article supports Biork’s point of view. __

 

POST-READING

Activity 7. Make a list of traditional beliefs which prove to be wrong according to Bjork(learning in blocks, etc.). What arguments does he use to disprove them?

Activity 8. Make up not less than 5 sentences using the following structure:

… reinforces learning because …

Activity 9. Speak about the article’s implications for you as a learner.