From personal experience trying to learn Japanese for the last 10 years I agree that the brain does not respond well when under stress, or when the brain perspectives the information to be too difficult (as stated by Dr Willis).
For example if I learn a new Japanese word that I know I can use regularly and will help me achieve a goal I will tend to remember it. But if I try to learn a new word that I have little interest in or I know I will rarely use I find it very hard to retain no matter how hard I try to force it into my head.
Also after trying may different methods to learn the language I can also understand that the different people learn in different ways. I tried many different ways to learn the language and I finally settled on a way that I have customized for myself. Additionally I will not learn unless I can find a way to enjoy the process, otherwise I am just wasting my time trying to rote force information into my head. This is similar to Dr Willis stating that students need to stimulated into caring about what they are learning so the information is retained.
It was interesting what was mentioned about visual learning and how the brain links what was visualized during the learning process and what was learnt. I have recently been using memrise which is a spaced repetition flashcard based system to memorize anything. Memrise uses the same visual ques to recall and retain information. The students are encouraged to create mems which are pictures created from Google image searches that related to the words that they are learning. The system also has social media links and forums for the students to share and discuss their progress with other users. Creating the visual mems also helps personalize the learning process as recommended by Dr Willis.
No comments:
Post a Comment