By Joyce
Del Rosario
When
learning anything new, be it a mathematical formula, language or musical
note, it can be tempting to simply try to memorize everything in the hopes that
you’ll be able to recall the information later on when you need it.
However,
although the brain does have a rather impressive ability to retain certain
information that is drilled into it over and over through memorization,
this certainly isn’t the most efficient way to learn.
Memorizing
takes up a lot of time and significant effort, and we often tend to forget things
simply because we don’t find them interesting, even if we did stay up all night
staring at flash cards and lists.
Luckily,
as it turns out, the brain learns more effortlessly when you make creative
connections between ideas. By making connections with things you already know
and understand, new ideas also become easier to understand, and thus learning
is accelerated.
There
are two main forms of learning; passive learning and active learning, and both
forms are equally important to a well-rounded learning experience.
Passive
learning happens when you aren’t consciously putting forth effort to learn
something. For example, you could be listening to Spanish music and
subconsciously cataloging certain words, or maybe while you read your favorite
blogs you are taking in information without really realizing it.
With
passive learning, you are enjoying the activity while also gaining exposure to
new information and developing a natural sense of what sounds or looks right.
Active
learning happens when you are consciously making an effort to learn by doing
things like reading or listening to words and then looking up the translation
or definition and attempting to use them in a meaningful way.
Following
are a number of different active learning techniques that can be a lot of fun
and involve absolutely no memorization.
Learning by visualizing: One way to solidify
a new idea or concept in your mind is to put it in a visual format. For
example, you may imagine a variable as a pencil or a function as a pencil
sharpener. Doing this helps you to recall the relationship later on, because
you’ve formed a new connection in your brain.
For
those who aren’t visual learners, this same technique can be applied using
other senses, such as imagining a certain smell, sound or taste along with a
new concept.
Learning through metaphors: Metaphors are great
because they connect something new that you are learning, with something you
are already familiar with, which helps you to recall the new information more
easily and quickly. Complex physical equations can be related to their real
life counterparts, and political ideas can be brought to a personal level when
related to your own social life.
It’s
kind of like creating a bridge, from the abstract to the commonplace or from
the unknown to the known.
Diagram learning: If metaphors aren’t
really your thing, you can manually establish the relationship between ideas by
creating diagrams. But even if you have created metaphors and visualized images
or sounds with certain concepts, creating a diagram can help you to explore
different ways of connecting ideas and prevent you from repeating the same
diagrams for different concepts.
For
example, if you’re studying literature, you can diagram ideas that are based on
a time, place or author, showing the similarities between different works.
Learning through simplifying: If all else fails,
the best way to learn new things is to make it simpler. If there is a concept
you are struggling with, try to imagine how you would attempt to explain the
idea to a kindergartner or child. By doing this, you are forced to think about
it in a different way, which can help to clear the fog and enable you to see
the concrete rather than the abstract.
About the Writer:
Joyce Del Rosario is
a career and education blogger and she is a part of the team behind Open
Colleges and InformED, one of Australia’s leading providers of Open
Learning and online and distance education.
