Learning Techniques
Let’s understand what are the basic ways you can learn
Reading:
You see, this is the most basic form. You learn something by reading it a few times.
Reading it loudly:
This also is a known basic form. You learn something by reading it loudly for a few times.
Listening:
This is also a very known form of learning. You need to let someone speak it, or speak it yourself and record yourself speaking. Then you listen to what you have recorded a few times.
Writing by hand:
Writing what you are learning is one of the strongest basic methods to learn something new.
Mixing up the basic techniques
When you are learning something new, mixing up two of the basic techniques can result in a better grasp of the material you try to learn.
It should be noted that some people think of memorising when they talk about learning.
While other groups of people refer to understanding the material as learning.
To some point, learning involve both memorising and understanding.
When you learn , you are diving into a new unfamiliar topic.
On general note, when you facing an unfamiliar topic, your brain has a lot of things to grasp.
When facing a new topic, your brain will start picking up the most basic information. At this stage you will most likely feel confused, most likely you don’t understand what you are learning.
The fist stage of learning, where you only grasping the basic info of the topic is usually done by reading/ hearing the learned material.
When you keep reading and rereading the material, your brain will be able to grasp new / different parts of the material you are trying to learn by each repetition.
In theory, more repeat by the same basic technique, would equal better learning. But in practice, if you just keep rereading, you will reach a point where you will no longer be learning.
Mixing the basic learning techniques, can improve your learning quality.
Learning by mixing different basic techniques, such as using reading with writing, or reading and listening, or listening and writing can boost your engagement while learning.
The reasoning behind this, is that each different basic technique can be either passive or active method.
– Reading: passive
– Reading and speaking: Passive to some point active
– Listening: passive
– Writing: active
Mixing active and passive, or two different passive basic techniques can result in more quality learning as well as better satisfaction.
Learning Involves Both Memorizing and Understanding
Learning as said before is associated with both memorising and understanding.
You might be able to understand a topic faster than someone else depending on the complexity of the field and your familiarity with that niche.
This is also true in regards to memorising. The ability to memorize can be different from one person to another.
So from here, comes the theory that people can have different learning abilities.
I would also argue that your ability to understand might be related to your working memory capacity. In general it has been found that the working memory of a person can hold between 5 to 9 pieces of information in a single time.
The working memory is used for you to pick up the information at the time you first face it. After you understand and grasp the information, your long term memory would be the hero of the story.
The long term memory capacity is big, but for information to go from working memory / short term memory, to long term memory, it requires most of the time repetition over prolonged period of time.
Memorization Techniques
There are other ways that can be used to improve long term memory holding of the information such as:
Memory palace
A technique where you link what you are trying to memorise with different parts of the place you know. For example linking the specific information that there are 118 elements in the periodic table, with the physical chair you have in your room. So whenever you see the chair, you remember that information.
Bizarre Weird Link Technique
The idea of this method is to try imagining what you are learning with a bizarre feature. Let’s take the fact that some materials slow light down such as water. You can imagine a photon with a young smiley face speeding in normal medium, and slower in water by imagining the same young smiley face as an old less smiley face. It really depends on what you want to retain as memory, and how well you can imagine weird funny forms of what you want to memorize.
Learning for STEM subjects
Applying the rule to solve practical problems is the straightforward method to learn any STEM subject.
* Understand the rule, theory: Usually there would be some kind of specific theory, rule, that you can use to solve a problem.
* Apply the rule: Get a practical problem where you can use the rule, and learn how you can apply the rule.
* Solve Problems: Solve practical problems by applying the rule/theory. Repeat as much as possible to get used to how to solve it. This is usually the equivalent of repetition. However the repetition in this case, the theory application involves usually more steps, sometimes so many complex steps, so it is not like just reading and rereading the same thing. By practicing more you will be able to discover all different cases regarding how you can solve those problems.
More learning techniques:
Flashcard method:
Write the question on one side of a card, and the answer on the opposite side. Once you have all your questions written, mix them randomly. Start by reading the answer, give yourself some time to remember if the answer doesn’t come up. Then see the answer. It’s ok to be wrong, and it’s ok to forget. Just continue repeating this, until you are confident that you can answer all questions correctly.
Join clubs and groups related to what you are learning
This method works well when you are trying to learn something completely new to you, in the opposite spectrum of life you are now. Let’s say you are working in the law field, but you want to learn how to make a robot. Joining a group or a club that can accelerate your learning. When you are involved with other people that are trying to learn and practice the same thing as you, you feel more engaged. The more you enjoy learning what you are learning, the faster you learn, and the higher the quality of learning you will be able to obtain. Since we humans are inherently social creatures, we enjoy activities more when it involves other humans.
Take notes before and after the lecture:
Go through the presentation slides, or the learning material for the lecture before it happens. This involves reading the learning material a few times, and writing down the essential information you can extract.
While you attend the lecture, you should be able to understand the lecture better, and it would be easier for you to ask questions to address any lack of understanding from your preliminary learning.
After you attend the lecture, on the same day, you should go through the lecture content one more time, write down more about the important information related to it.
This method makes it easier for you to remember and understand what you learn from your lectures.