Interleaving is a learning technique which involves mixing together different topics or forms of practice, in order to facilitate learning. For example, a student who is using interleaving while going over practice questions for an exam might continuously switch between different types of questions that deal with different aspects of the material. Interleaving, which …
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When going over study material, there is an important distinction between two approaches, known as knowledge-telling and knowledge-building, that we can use in our own learning or promote in those that we teach: Knowledge-telling is an approach to learning and teaching that involves relatively shallow engagement with the study material, which consists primarily of …
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Whether you’re studying for a college course, practicing a new language, or trying to improve at your favorite sport, there are three factors that determine how successful your learning process will be. These factors are your natural abilities, the amount of effort that you put into learning, and how optimized your learning process is. …
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The protégé effect is a psychological phenomenon where teaching, pretending to teach, or preparing to teach information to others helps a person learn that information. For example, a student who is studying for an exam could benefit from the protégé effect and improve their understanding of the relevant material, by teaching that material to their peers. …
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A common question people ask is whether you should write notes by hand or type them up on a computer. In short, studies generally show that writing notes by hand allows you to remember the material better than typing it. However, when it comes to actually choosing which method you should use, the answer …
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Mental practice (which is sometimes referred to as motor imagery) is the act of visualizing certain actions in your head, in order to help you prepare for when you have to perform them in reality. For example, in order to learn how to perform certain moves in your favorite sport, you can rehearse these …
When you learn a new language, it’s important to get a lot of exposure to it. One of the best ways to do this is by watching movies and TV shows in your target language. In general, it’s better for you to watch foreign-language videos with subtitles, rather than without them. However, this gives rise …
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The stages of learning model is a psychological framework which explains how people become more competent when learning a skill. According to this model, as people learn a skill, they advance up a hierarchy of competence, which includes four main levels of competence: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. Each of …
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Expanding your vocabulary is an important but difficult aspect of learning a new language. One way to make it easier is to use color-coding techniques, which can facilitate the vocabulary acquisition process. In the following article, you will learn why color-coding improves your memorization abilities, and see how you can implement it in your …
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