Saturday 1 May 2010

Can We Improve Our Ability To Learn? (2)

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Can We Improve Our Ability To Learn? (2)
It Would Be Good To Figure Out Your Particular Learning Style !

When learning new material, it is crucial to use your strengths. For example, most people learn things that they hear more efficiently than things than they see. Yet this is not true for everybody, and it is useful to learn your own strengths and weaknesses. Indeed, there are some students who learn best if they are allowed to touch and play with objects that are related to a lecture, this may be why laboratory classes are so often popular with students.

It would be good to figure out your particular learning style so that you can better utilize your strengths. If you learn best by seeing, make sure that you draw out new ideas or that you find good illustrations for concepts that you find difficult.



It is also helpful to involve as many sensory modalities as possible when learning new information. An oral presentation supplemented with visual material will be understood and remembered better than oral presentation alone. A lecture that is well illustrated engages two modalities of sensory input, whereas a lecture alone engages only the ears. This strategy is consistent with the idea that words and pictures a processed in different way by the brain and that engaging both processes makes it more likely that the material will be remembered.



In the past, children were often taught to read by listening to a teacher say the sound that each letter makes so that these sounds could be learned and combined. Now, children may be given plastic letters and encouraged to play with them as they hear the sounds. Memory can be augmented if use motor skills concurrently; this is perhaps why reading is enhanced by note taking. The process of distilling knowledge into a few simple sentences and the act of writing out those sentences can improve comprehension and retention of new ideas.

"THE EVOLVING BRAIN", The known and Unknown, R. Grant Steen, 2007, pages 134 - 135

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