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I keep up fairly well with research in the field of psychology and learning in particular, so much of this information was not entirely new and surprising to me, but Benedict Carey does a great job of pulling a lot of different research together and presenting it a practical way. This is more a guide to what is known than a self-help book, but it will definitely be of use both to teachers and students who want to understand how to study more effectively.
A couple of take-aways--half-forgetting and then re-learning, especially by trying to remember, make the thing you are trying to learn really stick. So as a teacher, when I start class on Monday and ask students to recall what it was we were working on last Friday, that is not just review--that is learning. It would be best, I suppose, if instead of asking the whole class and letting one or two students do the hard work, I had everyone try their best to write down what the remember about passive voice or the subjunctive.
That brings up another great point that he makes--that testing, quizzing, and self-testing are highly effective ways not of evaluating but of actually learning. This helps to overcome what he calls the Fluency Illusion, and what I have long called the "smile-and-nod" level of understanding. IN other words, when the teacher is doing math problems on the board and you are watching, you understand--you smile and nod and think, ok, yeah, sure, I get it. It is only when the tables are turned and the teacher says, Ok, now you try it, that the gaps in understanding are revealed.
So if you are studying for a test on state capitals, let's say, and you see Georgia: Atlanta, you think right, sure. But it's not until someone says Georgia and you can say Atlanta that you actually know it.Read more ›
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Benedict Carey's "How We Learn" is focused on the process of enhancing and exercising our memories in order to achieve positive results in memorization. He goes in depth in helping his readers enhance their memories through several techniques, in order to register, store and retrieve information. Most of us are not aware that our brains are capable of so much, but Benedict Carey makes the process look easy. Some of his techniques range from beginners techniques, to more advanced. I pretty much have the beginners techniques down pact; I would like to divulge into the more advanced techniques, as enhancing my memory has become a number one priority in my life.
Repetition, according to Benedict, is a vital part in helping us to enhance the memory. We must train our brains, in a way, so that certain things we may forget become more and more routine to us. For example, I sometimes forget to lock all the doors in my house before going to sleep. If I am aware of this and practice locking the doors each and every night, soon enough it will become routine to me and I'll no longer forget to do it.
I read this book, in conjunction with Greg Frosts book, "Maximizing Brain Control : Unleash The Genius In You", and I'm starting to feel more confident and knowledgeable in learning about the human brain and how to store and retrieve information. Both are excellent resources and combined, can truly work wonders for you if you take them serious and truly want to enhance your brain capacity.
Good Habits is a key technique both books teach.Read more ›
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There's plenty of information here to work with. How to be a better learner seems to be a big trend in recent books. In the past couple of months I've read Fluent Forever (about language learning) and A Mind For Numbers (about being a good student, particularly in math and science) and they've all been released at the same time. They're also all, I'm very happy to say, strongly grounded in real research, rather than just making up some interesting-sounding notions about what might work (I have certainly seen books that did that...)
I would have to say that someone who wants to be a great student ASAP is probably better off reading A Mind For Numbers first. That book takes you by the hand and leads you through the ideas about what you need to DO a lot more specifically. It makes very frequent references to research, but it's plainly written with the intention of being a guide for people who are taking and really need to hone in on exactly what to do NOW, because there are tests coming up. It leads you through the material by the hand, pretty much, asking you questions and reminding you to stop and think about what you've read. It also has a (free) online MOOC through Coursera to go with it that covers/reinforces the same material.
Fluent Forever, in its effort to teach people how to learn languages, makes use of some of the same research, but shapes it to its topic. It offers a sort of general idea of how you should proceed, but the emphasis is on giving you a basic plan and just enough understanding of the research so that you can make good decisions about how to move forward with it.
I feel like How We Learn is a little farther down the spectrum in that same direction.Read more ›
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This item: How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens
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