【学习技巧】Six Keys to Quick Learning

鬼才

Six Keys to Quick Learning

A friend of mine was at a dinner party where two men knew were discussing The Right Stuff, a book about the Mercury space program. While Ted went on and on about the technical details he had picked up from the book, Dan hesitantly offered only a few comments. “Ted got so much more cut of the reading than I did,” Dan later said to my friend, “Is he much smarter than I am?”

My friend, an educator, was curious. She knew the two men had similar educational backgrounds and intelligence levels. She talked with each and discovered the answer: Ted just knew how to learn better than Dan did. Ted had made his brain more absorbent by using a few simple skills.

For years, experts had believed that an individual’s ability to learn was a fixed capacity. During the last two decades, however, leading psychologists and educators have come to think otherwise. There is increasing proof that human intelligence is expandable. With proper skills people can actually improve their learning ability.

Moreover, these skills are basic enough so that almost anyone can master them with practice. Here, gathered from the ideas of experts across the country, are some proven ways to increase your learning ability.

1. Look at the whole picture first. When reading new, unfamiliar material, do not plunge directly into it. You can increase your comprehension and retention if you scan the material first. Skim subtitles, photo captions and any available summaries. With reports or articles, read the first sentence of each paragraph; with books, glance at the table of contents and introduction. All this previewing will help keep in your mind what you then read.

2. Slow down and talk to yourself. While speed-reading may be fine for easy material, slower reading can be much more effective for absorbing complex, challenging works. Arthur Whimbey and Jack lockhead, co-authors of the high-school and college handbook Problem Solving and Comprehension, have isolated three basic differences in how good and bad learners study:

--Good learners vocalize, or voice the material, either silently or aloud. They slow down, listening to each word as they read.

--Good learners, when they do not understand, automatically reread until they do understand the material. Poor readers, by contrast, just keep going if they don’t get it the first time.

--Good learners become “actively involved” with new information. They think about what they read, challenge it, make it their own.

3. Practice memory-developing techniques. When I was eight and couldn’t spell “arithmetic”, a teacher taught me a sentence that has remained locked in my mind for decades: “A rat in Tom’s house may eat Tom’s ice cream.” The first letters of each word spell “arithmetic”.

All such memory developing techniques, called mnemonics, transform new information into more easily remembered words or phrases.

Mnemonics is can also woke with images. The trick is to invent visual clues that will make unfamiliar material mean something to you.

In study Spanish, for example, you might learn that the word for duck is pato. Pato sounds like the English word pot. To link the two, imagine a duck wadding about with a large pot over its head. You will have a clear image that reminds you that pot = pato = duck.

Once dismissed by researchers as a mere gimmick, mnemonics are now considered an effective means of increasing memory – doubling or even tripling the amount of new material that test subjects can retain. “A good memory is the key to all learning processes,” according to William G. Chase, professor of psychology at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, “And it is something we can all have with practice.”

Research shows that we have two kinds of memory：short-term. Short-term memory (STM) lasts for about 30 to 60 seconds. We call the operator for a phone number, dial the number and then forget it. Long-term memory (LTM), however, can last a lifetime. The secret to developing a good memory, says Francis S. Bellezza, author of Improve Your Memory Skill, is learning how to transfer useful information from STM to LTM and how to recall that information when needed.

Mnemonics can be the key that puts data into LTM and gets the information back out again. Remember, the mind and memory are like muscles – the more you use them, the stronger they get.

4. Organize facts into sets. In studies at Stanford University, students were asked to memorize 112 words. These included names of animals, items of clothing, types of transportation, and occupations. For one group, the words were divided into these four sets. For a second group, the words were listed at random. Those who studied the material in organized sets always did better than the others, and could remember two to three times more words.

“Trying to learn new information in one piece is difficult,” say Thomas R. Trabasso, professor of education and behavioral science at the University of Chicago. “By dividing new material into meaningful pieces, you make learning easier.”

For example, to remember the names of all 39 former U. S. Presidents in proper order, put the leaders into groups – those before the War 1812 until the Civil War, those from the Civil War to World War I, and those after World War I. By thus organizing difficult material into logical groups you create a permanent storage technique.

5. Focus your attention. The next tine you are faced with new material you need to learn, ask yourself: What do I want you learn from reading this, and how will I benefit from that knowledge? “By telling ourselves what the learning will do for us, we reduce our resistance to studying and become better learners,” says Russell W. Scalpone, a psychologist and manager at A. T. Kearney, Inc., an international management-consulting firm. Scalpone recommends four other ways of improving concentration:

-- Establish a time and a place for learning. Take the phone off the hook; close the door. By regulating your environment, you create the expectation that learning will occur.

-- Guard against distractions. Don’t be shy about hanging a “Do Not Disturb” sign on your door. You have a right to your time.

-- Try a variety of learning methods. Diagramming, note taking, outlining, even talking into a tape recorder are study techniques that can increase concentration. Use whatever study skills you are most comfortable with. Be creative.

-- Check your progress. Being busy is not always the same as being productive. Stop occasionally and ask yourself: Am I contributing right now to my learning goal? If the answer is yes, keep working. If no, ask yourself why. If you’re not making progress because of tension or tiredness, take a break – without feeling guilty. Regular breaks can improve learning process.

6. Discover your own learning style. Educators Rita Dunn and Ken Dunn tell the story of three children who each received a bicycle for Christmas. The bikes, purchased in pieces, had to be put together by parents. Tim’s father read the directions carefully before he set to work. Mary’s father laid out the pieces on the floor and handed the directions to Mary’s mother. “Read this to me,” he said, as he examined the pieces. George’s mother began fitting pieces together, glancing at the directions only when uncertain. By day’s end, all three bikes were put together, each from a different approach.

“Although they didn’t realize it,” says Rita Dunn, professor of education at St. John’s University in New York City, “the parents had worked according to their own learning styles.”

“Our approaches to unfamiliar material are as unique and specialized as we are, and a key to learning is recognizing – and using – the style that suits us best,” says Ken Dunn, professor of education at Queens Colleges in New York City.

Learning styles can vary greatly. The Dunns have developed a Productivity Environment Preference Survey, which identifies 21 items that affect the way we learn. These factors include noise level, lighting, amount of supervision required, even the time of day.

What’s your style? Try some self-analysis. What, for example, is your approach to putting together something which is in pieces? Do you concentrate better in the morning or in the evening? In a noisy environment or a quiet one? Make a list of all the pluses and minuses you can identify. Then use this list to create the learning environment best for you.

Whichever style works for you, the good news is that you can expand your learning capacity. And this can make your life fuller and more productive.

鬼才

这是一篇介绍学习方法的文章。为了养成大家好的用英语思维的习惯，希望本文不要出现中文译文。一篇译文也许会毁了一篇原作。切记，在学习英语过程中，不要用中文去思维和理解。学习外语的最好办法就是忘却母语！

草原星空

鬼才 发表于 2011-11-3 14:18

                               
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这是一篇介绍学习方法的文章。为了养成大家好的用英语思维的习惯，希望本文不要出现中文译文。一篇译文也许 ...

非常感谢鬼才老师的良苦用心！可是对于一点基础也没有的会员连这个帖子也看不懂啊

鬼才

Memory

It is difficult to imagine what life would be like without memory. The meanings of thousand of everyday perceptions, the bases for the decisions we make, and the roots of our habits and skills are to be found in our past experiences, which are brought into the present by memory.

Memory can be defined as the capacity to keep information available for later use. It includes not only “remembering” things like arithmetic or historical facts, but also involves any change in the way an animal typically behaves. Memory is involved when a rat gives up eating grain because it has sniffed something suspicious in the grain pile. Memory is also involved when a six-year-old child learns to swing a baseball bat.

The use of words is the basis of the advanced problem-solving intelligence of human being. A large part of a person’s memory is in terms of words and combinations of words. But while language greatly expands the number and kind of things a person can remember, it also requires a huge memory capacity. It may well be this capacity that distinguishes humans, setting them apart from other animals.

Memory means the ability to keep what we have learnt in our minds so that we can call it up again for use later on. What we remember in this way may be words, figures, dates, poetry, events in our own lives, and even skilled action such as playing the piano or riding a bicycle.

The amount that is remembered differs a good deal with different persons. Try calling out sets of figures, like telephone numbers, to a friend – 2764, then 35018, and so on – and see how many he can repeat after hearing them once only. A child of 5 should be able to repeat four figures, a child of 6 to 7 five figures and grown-ups can usually repeat as many as seven or eight. If you try them with something that has a meaning, like a poem or a hymn, they will probably remember much more. This is because the words join up into sentences and, as we hear them, they make connections within the brain, like linking up telephone wires.

Therefore, if you find it hard to remember something, it will help you if you think of possible connections or links. For instance, Mr Adam’s telephone number is 2810, and you may remember it by thinking of Adam and Eve and apple – “Two ate one o”. It is sometimes thought that people can improve the power of memory by daily practice, much as they strengthen their muscles by exercises with dumb-bells. This is quite wrong, but anyone can discover how to make the best use of what memory he has, no matter how poor it is.

Just as human beings have five different senses, so it may be said that they have five different kinds of memory. Some people find it easiest to remember things by picturing them in their mind’s eye, and making, as it were, a mental photograph. Others have good memories for sounds: tunes, rhymes and jingles, such as “Thirty days have September, April, June and November” tend to go on ringing in their ears. Others again find it best to say things silently to themselves in actual words.

However weak your memory may be, you can make up for it by attending closely to what you want to remember, and repeating it over and over again. Then rest for a minute or two before taking up the next piece of work. Spread the repetitions out: it is better to spend a quarter of an hour on four different days than to keep working at it for one whole hour all at once. This is because people’s memories fade most quickly at the beginning, so that nearly half of what has been learnt is forgotten during the first 12hours. Yet nothing that has been learnt is ever completely forgotten. It is always lurking somewhere in the mind; and, even if you cannot recall it just when you want to, it will often pop up again of itself when you are not worrying any more about it.