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  • How To Choose The Best Materials For Learning Something New: A Guide

    How To Choose The Best Materials For Learning Something New: A Guide

    Introduction:

    When you start learning something, you have a big problem. Not only you know nothing about the topic, but you don´t even know anything about the sources for learning. 

    How to choose the best sources for learning?

    When it comes to learning something new, one of the most important decisions you need to make is what material to use. There are many different materials out there, and it can be difficult to decide which is the best for you.

    1: Books

    2: Videos

    3: Articles

    4: Audio Files

    5: Online Courses

    6: Social Media

    7: Personal Tutors

    The best material for learning something new depends on your learning style and preferences. There are many different materials out there, so you should experiment until you find the one that works best for you.

    Anyway I would say that books are better for something that is purely mental, as are articles or audio files. If it is something having to do with computers or the internet you can use videos or online courses. If you want to learn a sport or something that depends heavily on the use of your body you should search a personal tutor, not one only but in real life. 

    love to learn pencil signage on wall near walking man

    How to find the best in each category

    The best way is to ask a friend that knows a lot about the subject that you are trying to learn. If you don’t know anyone that can help you, you can search on the internet for reviews of different learning materials or even better for a list of the best resources to learn about a topic. 

    Ok so let´s say that you want to choose books, which are the most traditional way to learn something. 

    How to choose the best books on a topic?

    There is no foolproof answer, but here are five general tips to help you choose the best books on a topic:

    1. Look for books that are well-reviewed.

    2. Look for books that are written by experts in the field.

    3. Look for books that are up-to-date.

    4. Look for books that are comprehensive.

    5. Look for books that are easy to  understand

    How to decide if a book is worth reading?

    There are a few things to consider when deciding if a book is worth reading. One, is the book interesting? Two, is the book well written? And three, is the book relevant to your interests? If the answer to all these questions is yes, then the book is most likely worth reading. However, if the answer to any of these questions is no, then the book may not be worth your time.

    Conclusion: 

    Choosing the best path for learning is not easy at all, but doing it right will pay off. You will save a lot of time and pain in the long run. So take your time. 

     

  • How To Remember Everything You Learn: The Secret To A Perfect Memory

    How To Remember Everything You Learn: The Secret To A Perfect Memory

    Introduction: You want to know how to remember everything you learn. We all want a perfect memory.Something that we can rely on to remember everything we learn. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. But, there are ways to improve your memory and make it easier for you to remember everything.

    How To Remember Everything You Learn in 5 steps

    Step 1: Pay Attention

    The first step to improving your attention span is to be aware of when you are losing focus. Once you have identified the moments when your attention starts to wander, you can work on strategies to bring it back to the task at hand. One way to do this is to break up large tasks into smaller, more manageable parts. This will make it easier for you to focus on one thing at a time and avoid getting overwhelmed. You can also try focusing on your breath or another physical sensation to help keep you in the moment. 

    No matter what strategy you choose, be sure to have a clear goal and be willing to put in the work. Also, be sure to have a solid plan and be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your success won’t come overnight.

    Step 2: Organize Material

    Once you have collected your material, you need to organize it. This may involve creating an outline, making a list of ideas, or clustering related material. The goal is to make sure that you can find what you need when you need it and that your ideas are easy to follow.

    Step 3: Repeat and Practice

    It is important to practice the steps of the process so that you can become comfortable and proficient with them. This will help you to be able to complete the process quickly and easily when it is time to do it for real. Practicing also helps to ensure that you will remember the steps in case you need to do the process again in the future.

    Step 4: Associate Material With Other Material

    Once you have identified the main points and supporting material for your essay, you will need to start organizing your material. One way to do this is to associate each paragraph with other material in your essay. This will help you to see how your points connect to each other.

    brown wooden blocks on white surface

    Step 5: Use Memory Aids

    There are different ways to remember information, like writing things down, using acronyms or mnemonic devices, or using apps and tools. The best way to remember is to find what works best for you and use it regularly.

    Conclusion: You can improve your memory by following these simple steps. It will take some time and effort, but it will be worth it in the end.

  • Why kids may learn better than adults

    Why kids may learn better than adults

    A new study found that youngsters learn better than adults because they explore more than adults.
    According to the study, when people try something new and have a negative experience, they are less inclined to try it again.
    “That may appear to be the most fundamental type of intelligence—even rats avoid a path that leads to a shock,” said Dr. Alison Gopnik, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, one of the study’s co-authors.
    “We will never learn that the world is more complicated than that,” she said, if adults reject new ideas immediately after experiencing a negative outcome.

    woman, kid, rain
    Photo by sasint on Pixabay

    According to the study, youngsters have a strong curiosity and drive to explore, which helps them to learn so many new things in such a short period of time.
    She collaborated with NYU cognitive scientist Emily Liquin on a study to examine if young children’s drive to explore more than adults affects the way they learn.
    They gave 64 young children (ages four and five) and 87 adults a game in which they placed different blocks on a machine with one rule: if the machine lights up, they receive a prize consisting of a star, but if it doesn’t, they lose twice as much.
    The goal of the game was to discover that all of the blocks worked except those with white spots (in other words, the ones with black spots were fine).
    The majority of the youngsters correctly identified the rule, although more than 70% of adults did not, but it came at a cost: The children were given fewer stars.
    She refers to it as a “learning trap” experiment, and it demonstrates that adults tend to leap to conclusions too fast, whereas children are more willing to research and absorb more information before making a judgment.
    According to the article, the study has a significant limitation in that it only compared four to seven-year-olds to adults in the United States. Because cultural differences may also influence how children learn, further research is needed to generalize it to a larger population and situation.
    “We adults are frequently so quick to exploit that we don’t explore, so afraid of losing stars that we miss out on learning something new,” Gopnik explains.
    “Children, on the other hand, are natural explorers willing to give up stars for the sake of knowledge. Both ways of thinking are necessary for life, but we adults could learn a thing or two from those insatiably curious kids “She went on.

  • spaced repetition

    spaced repetition

     

    what is spaced repetition?

    There is no skill more important that learning how to learn. That´s why you need to do it in the best way possible. 

    One of the best proven ways to learn something is through spaced repetition. 

    But what is spaced repetition?

    Spaced repetition means that if you have an information that you want to remember (for instance a poem) instead of using all your studying hours in the first day, you distribute those hours over a period of time. Instead of dedicating 4 hours the first day, you can dedicate one hour the first day, another two days later, another one week later, and one more in two weeks. 

    So it basically means studying a particular information in split sessions. 

    ​​

    why does spaced repetition works?

    Your brain is not  a computer

    You have probably heard that our brain is like a computer. Well, sorry… it is not. Memory does not work like a computer. You don´t store information in a place and retrieve it at will. 

    A “memory” doesn’t exist in any one place in the brain, but is an emergent feature of many different parts of the brain firing in a certain way. When we learn something, it isn’t stored in a single location, but is instantly scattered across many different regions of the brain.

    Neurons that fire together stick together has been said. Memories that are used stay. Memories that are not used fade away. 

    The forgetting curve

    In the end of the XIX century, a psychologist named Hermann Ebbinghaus systematically studied  memory by memorizing lists of nonsensical syllables and then recording how many times he studied each list, the time intervals between his study sessions, and how much he was able to remember. 

    The forgetting curve shows how the ability to remember information decays with time. 

    But that decay is not unstappable. You can prevent it by reviewing the information. That is precisely what spaced repetition tries to accomplish. 

    how to implement spaced repetition without software?

    We will see later how you can implement spaced repetition with software. But you can make it work in the offline work too. 

    One way to do it is the Leitner system. 

    You set a number of stages. Each stage is represented by a box. 

    ​Every card starts out in Box 1. When you get it right, you sent it to the next box. If you get a card wrong, it goes all the way back to Box 1 – no matter where it was. This is the way to be sure that you study the most challenging things. 
    The last box is the end. Cards that arrive there are considered learned. 
    ​

    how to implement spaced repetition with software?

    The most popular app for spaced repetition is Anki. Anki is free unless you use an iphone. In that case it costs 24.99. 

    Anki lets you create virtual cards with information. You can review them and every time you do it, decide whether you have answered correctly ( in which case it will be reviewed in a longer time) or you have not ( shortening the time tll the next review )

    Not only that, you can also add images and links to the cards to make them more easy to remember. 

    You can download Anki here: https://apps.ankiweb.net/

    Studies showing that spaced repetition works

    There are many studies showing that spaced repetition works. 

    Herbert J. Spitzer began investigating the influence of content and test spacing on recall and retention in 1939. Although his findings were promising, they were not addressed by others for more than a generation.

    Jumping ahead to 1989, in the Educational Psychology Survey, Frank N. Dempster presented a review of the scholarly literature. He examined almost 100 research. The weight of data showed that spaced repetition is a “highly effective way of enhancing learning [in] a range of situations and across many materials and procedures,” he said.

    1991: Spaced repetition works well with students of all ages.
    A study team at Villanova University in the United States conducted a two-part spaced learning experiment.​

    Part I focused on young children (preschoolers, first graders, and third graders). They discovered that when the “spacing between repeats grew,” so did recollection. The impact, however, was unrelated to age. The spacing between repeats was more important than age.

    This team used college students in Part II of their study to conduct a spaced learning experiment. The outcomes were the same.

    What was their conclusion? “Spaced-repetition effects in recognition are created by fundamental memory processes that are active at a very young age and undergo little development.” In layperson’s terms, spaced repetition (or dispersed practice) improves recollection for people of all ages.

    Moving forward to 2016, distributed practice can help your business save money.​
    Organizations, according to researcher Sean Kang (Dartmouth University, USA), should leverage on spaced repetition.

    According to Kang, spaced practice “may be a cost-effective method.” This is because more material is kept in the same length of time. As a consequence, learners spend less time relearning forgotten content, allowing them to devote more time to other productive learning tasks.

    Distributed practice, in general, “improves the efficacy (effectiveness) and efficiency of learning.”

    2017: Age and aim dependent effects of spaced repetition
    While dispersed practice works for everyone, the outcomes vary depending on the age of the person and the job being taught.

    Christopher D. Smith and Damian Scarf (University of Otago, New Zealand) discovered that spaced repetition is more efficient for teaching skills than language to adults. Having stated that, this instructional method enhances learning generalization for all ages.

    Brain Boost with Spaced Repetition

    2019: Discovering the Reasons Why Spaced Repetition Works
    A team of researchers from Beijing Normal University in China analyzed scalp EEG data to gain a picture of the biological foundation for spaced repetition’s efficacy.

    The researchers used spatiotemporal pattern similarity to evaluate the scalp EEG data (STPS). Spatiotemporal data analysis examines information in a specific place (spatio) during a certain time period (temporal). Large amounts of data may be examined in this way to uncover patterns using powerful computing units.

    According to the findings, “greater item-specific STPS in the right frontal electrodes at 543–727 ms following stimulus initiation was linked with improved memory performance.” More crucially, under the spaced-learning condition, this STPS was greater than under the massed-learning condition.

    In layman’s terms, electrical activity occurs in the brain during learning. The right frontal region of the brain showed substantial activity 543–727 milliseconds after the learning period began, according to this study. This exercise improved content retention, and spaced repetition raised the intensity of this activity.

    Data illustrating how successful spaced repetition may be by 2020
    The University of Leicester in the United Kingdom wants to look at the quantitative impact of dispersed practice.​

    They created a one-of-a-kind online application. The software may tailor a physics study material repetition timetable for each learner. Students may choose between a spaced repetition timetable and a massed repetition timetable, or they could choose not to use the app at all.

    Here are the outcomes:

    Students who chose space repetition had an adjusted mean exam score of 70%.
    Those who favoured massed usage scored 64 percent on the adjusted mean exam.
    Students who did not utilize the app at all had a 61 percent adjusted mean exam score.
    According to the findings of the study, students who studied using spaced repetition performed the highest on tests.

    Overall…
    Spaced repetition (or dispersed practice) is a tried-and-true teaching technique backed up by more than 80 years of study.

    Distributed practice is a cost-effective alternative to massed practice since it enhances student retention in the same amount of study time.

    It is appropriate for students of all ages. It is more suited to skill training than language acquisition for adults.

    As researchers dig more into this instrument, they discover that it stimulates neurological (brain) activity, which improves learning.

  • Elaborative interrogation

    Elaborative interrogation

    Kids are constantly inquisitive about why things are the way they are, and they appear to be learning. Is this a viable strategy?

    This is referred to as elaborative interrogation.

    Detailed interrogation

    Elaborate questioning is a technique for improving memory. After reading or listening to the material, the learner produces questions. Then he attempts to come up with solutions that define the cause-and-effect relationship between the subject (sky) and predicate (blue). This engages students in an active learning process.

    The typical suspects are the main questions asked. why? who? when? what? and in what way?

    “Why do a tree’s leaves fall throughout the winter?” for example. or “What causes the leaves to fall throughout the winter?” The elaboration approach employed here assists in explaining the link that exists in the supplied information between the subject (leaves) and the predicate (fall during winter). As a result, the clarifying link seen is primarily based on recollection. However, it is unclear what specific prior information is necessary. Some researchers place a premium on topic expertise, while others place a premium on understanding the abstract aspects of the data.

    question mark, important, sign @ Pixabay

    Is elaborative interrogation effective?

    In a well-known 2013 research comparing the effectiveness of various study strategies, elaborative questioning was shown to be effective, although commonly used tactics such as highlighting and rereading fared better. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266

    What makes elaborative interrogation effective?

    Elaborative interrogation works by building a link between the new information used to generate questions and the old knowledge used to generate replies.

    As you link new information to old, your mental structure becomes more solidified, making it more difficult to forget.

    Elaborative inquiry vs. self-explanation

    Self-explanation is another approach that has been frequently employed. Is self-explanation preferable to in-depth interrogation?

    One research (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) looked at the efficiency of two learning methods for remembering scientific facts: self-explanation and elaborative questioning. University students (N = 55) were given three options for learning knowledge about the cardiovascular system. Participants in the self-explanation task were asked to describe what the information meant to them and how they connected to their past knowledge. Participants in the in-depth interrogation explained “why” the facts made sense. Finally, the control group merely read out loud the information. On measures of cued recall and recognition, self-explanation individuals outperformed elaborative interrogation and repetition control participants considerably. Repeated interrogation was no more effective than detailed interrogation.

    Despite the fact that this study contradicts elaborative interrogation, it may also be taken to mean that it is the explanation, not the query, that causes learning to stick.

  • The secrets of learning a new language | Lýdia Machová – YouTube

    We bring you one video from youtube that can be very interesting for those who want to learn languages.

    I love learning foreign languages. In fact, I love it so much that I like to learn a new language every two years, currently working on my eighth one. When people find that out about me, they always ask me, “How do you do that? What’s your secret?” And to be honest, for many years, my answer would be, “I don’t know. I simply love learning languages.” But people were never happy with that answer. They wanted to know why they are spending years trying to learn even one language, never achieving fluency, and here I come, learning one language after another. They wanted to know the secret of polyglots, people who speak a lot of languages. And that made me wonder, too, how do actually other polyglots do it? What do we have in common? And what is it that enables us to learn languages so much faster than other people? I decided to meet other people like me and find that out.

    The best place to meet a lot of polyglots is an event where hundreds of language lovers meet in one place to practice their languages. There are several such polyglot events organized all around the world, and so I decided to go there and ask polyglots about the methods that they use. And so I met Benny from Ireland, who told me that his method is to start speaking from day one. He learns a few phrases from a travel phrasebook and goes to meet native speakers and starts having conversations with them right away. He doesn’t mind making even 200 mistakes a day, because that’s how he learns, based on the feedback. And the best thing is, he doesn’t even need to travel a lot today, because you can easily have conversations with native speakers from the comfort of your living room, using websites. I also met Lucas from Brazil who had a really interesting method to learn Russian. He simply added a hundred random Russian speakers on Skype as friends, and then he opened a chat window with one of them

    and wrote “Hi” in Russian. And the person replied, “Hi, how are you?” Lucas copied this and put it into a text window with another person, and the person replied, “I’m fine, thank you, and how are you?” Lucas copied this back to the first person, and in this way, he had two strangers have a conversation with each other without knowing about it. (Laughter) And soon he would start typing himself, because he had so many of these conversations that he figured out how the Russian conversation usually starts. What an ingenious method, right? And then I met polyglots who always start by imitating sounds of the language, and others who always learn the 500 most frequent words of the language, and yet others who always start by reading about the grammar. If I asked a hundred different polyglots, I heard a hundred different approaches to learning languages. Everybody seems to have a unique way they learn a language, and yet we all come to the same result of speaking several languages fluently.

    And as I was listening to these polyglots telling me about their methods, it suddenly dawned on me: the one thing we all have in common is that we simply found ways to enjoy the language-learning process. All of these polyglots were talking about language learning as if it was great fun. You should have seen their faces when they were showing me their colorful grammar charts and their carefully handmade flash cards, and their statistics about learning vocabulary using apps, or even how they love to cook based on recipes in a foreign language. All of them use different methods, but they always make sure it’s something that they personally enjoy. I realized that this is actually how I learn languages myself. When I was learning Spanish, I was bored with the text in the textbook. I mean, who wants to read about Jose asking about the directions to the train station. Right? I wanted to read “Harry Potter” instead, because that was my favorite book as a child, and I have read it many times.

    So I got the Spanish translation of “Harry Potter” and started reading, and sure enough, I didn’t understand almost anything at the beginning, but I kept on reading because I loved the book, and by the end of the book, I was able to follow it almost without any problems. And the same thing happened when I was learning German. I decided to watch “Friends,” my favorite sitcom, in German, and again, at the beginning it was all just gibberish. I didn’t know where one word finished and another one started, but I kept on watching every day because it’s “Friends.” I can watch it in any language. I love it so much. And after the second or third season, seriously, the dialogue started to make sense. I only realized this after meeting other polyglots. We are no geniuses and we have no shortcut to learning languages. We simply found ways how to enjoy the process, how to turn language learning from a boring school subject into a pleasant activity which you don’t mind doing every day. If you don’t like writing words down on paper, you can always type them in an app. If you don’t like listening to boring textbook material,

    find interesting content on YouTube or in podcasts for any language. If you’re a more introverted person and you can’t imagine speaking to native speakers right away, you can apply the method of self-talk. You can talk to yourself in the comfort of your room, describing your plans for the weekend, how your day has been, or even take a random picture from your phone and describe the picture to your imaginary friend. This is how polyglots learn languages, and the best news is, it’s available to anyone who is willing to take the learning into their own hands. So meeting other polyglots helped me realize that it is really crucial to find enjoyment in the process of learning languages, but also that joy in itself is not enough. If you want to achieve fluency in a foreign language, you’ll also need to apply three more principles. First of all, you’ll need effective methods. If you try to memorize a list of words for a test tomorrow, the words will be stored in your short-term memory

    and you’ll forget them after a few days. If you, however, want to keep words long term, you need to revise them in the course of a few days repeatedly using the so-called space repetition. You can use apps which are based on this system such as Anki or Memrise, or you can write lists of word in a notebook using the Goldlist method, which is also very popular with many polyglots. If you’re not sure which methods are effective and what is available out there, just check out polyglots’ YouTube channels and websites and get inspiration from them. If it works for them, it will most probably work for you too. The third principle to follow is to create a system in your learning. We’re all very busy and no one really has time to learn a language today. But we can create that time if we just plan a bit ahead. Can you wake up 15 minutes earlier than you normally do? That would be the perfect time to revise some vocabulary. Can you listen to a podcast on your way to work while driving? Well, that would be great to get some listening experience.

    There are so many things we can do without even planning that extra time, such as listening to podcasts on our way to work or doing our household chores. The important thing is to create a plan in the learning. “I will practice speaking every Tuesday and Thursday with a friend for 20 minutes. I will listen to a YouTube video while having breakfast.” If you create a system in your learning, you don’t need to find that extra time, because it will become a part of your everyday life. And finally, if you want to learn a language fluently, you need also a bit of patience. It’s not possible to learn a language within two months, but it’s definitely possible to make a visible improvement in two months, if you learn in small chunks every day in a way that you enjoy. And there is nothing that motivates us more than our own success. I vividly remember the moment when I understood the first joke in German when watching “Friends.” I was so happy and motivated that I just kept on watching that day two more episodes,

    and as I kept watching, I had more and more of those moments of understanding, these little victories, and step by step, I got to a level where I could use the language freely and fluently to express anything. This is a wonderful feeling. I can’t get enough of that feeling, and that’s why I learn a language every two years. So this is the whole polyglot secret. Find effective methods which you can use systematically over the period of some time in a way which you enjoy, and this is how polyglots learn languages within months, not years. Now, some of you may be thinking, “That’s all very nice to enjoy language learning, but isn’t the real secret that you polyglots are just super talented and most of us aren’t?” Well, there’s one thing I haven’t told you about Benny and Lucas. Benny had 11 years of Irish Gaelic and five years of German at school. He couldn’t speak them at all when graduating. Up to the age of 21, he thought he didn’t have the language gene

    and he could not speak another language. Then he started to look for his way of learning languages, which was speaking to native speakers and getting feedback from them, and today Benny can easily have a conversation in 10 languages. Lucas tried to learn English at school for 10 years. He was one of the worst students in class. His friends even made fun of him and gave him a Russian textbook as a joke because they thought he would never learn that language, or any language. And then Lucas started to experiment with methods, looking for his own way to learn, for example, by having Skype chat conversations with strangers. And after just 10 years, Lucas is able to speak 11 languages fluently. Does that sound like a miracle? Well, I see such miracles every single day. As a language mentor, I help people learn languages by themselves, and I see this every day. People struggle with language learning for five, 10, even 20 years,
    and then they suddenly take their learning into their own hands, start using materials which they enjoy, more effective methods, or they start tracking their learning so that they can appreciate their own progress, and that’s when suddenly they magically find the language talent that they were missing all their lives. So if you’ve also tried to learn a language and you gave up, thinking it’s too difficult or you don’t have the language talent, give it another try. Maybe you’re also just one enjoyable method away from learning that language fluently. Maybe you’re just one method away from becoming a polyglot. Thank you. (Applause)

    So what can we take from here?

    First, the most important thing when learning languages is enjoyment.

    And you will need:

    • to set a time for learning languages
    • to use a method to learn
    • and to use a system for remembering the words.

  • The world

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  • States of the United States

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  • The states of the United states

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  • Learning, but how

    During all our lifes we struggle to learn.

    Sometimes we do it because we are forced to, like in the school.

    Sometimes we do it out of necessity, like when your car does not start and you have to learn how to make it work.

    Some other times we do it because we want to.

    But we do not dedicate enough time to learn how to learn. And that is maybe the most important thing we need to learn in our life.

    That is what we want to do in this web: Show you how to learn, and how to make it as efficient as possible.

    Come with us. Learning is our passion.