HOLA PART 2

I don't think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. 

 - Abraham Lincoln

When I was a kid I watched an old, old movie about an efficiency expert with a lot of children called Cheaper by the Dozen. This wasn’t the Steve Martin remake, but the original which would now be old, old, old, old. Like me. Anyway, the husband would run experiments to find out the most efficient way to do something. I found it fascinating especially that some people could even be resistant to doing something easier and faster even if they achieved the same result. Maybe it is the lazy in me talking, but I’ll always sign up for easier and faster.

Let’s look at exercise, say you wanted to build up strength. There is plenty of information available on how to optimize your training – weights to use, number of reps/sets, time to rest between sets, time to rest between workouts, amount of weight to use, what to eat before or after, etc. There are plans you can follow to make your workout as effective and efficient as possible.

Now look at learning. That information simply isn’t as common. I remember from a young age getting spelling lists of words to memorize, but no instruction in how to memorize them. So what is the best way to memorize a list? There are tidbits of info here and there but nothing like there is for strength training. Granted, learning is more complicated, but it’s also a larger part of most people’s lives.

Since I’m going to be doing multiple experiments to learn things, starting with Spanish, I’ve been researching some of the best methods or ideas to learn efficiently.  I’m still researching. I’m slow and there is a lot to look up and read. But I figured I would go ahead and start posting some of what I’m finding. 

Testing is better than studying.
American PsychologicalAssociation

Basically, they discovered that once you have learned something (got it right on a test) that testing, rather than studying, will help you remember the information better over time. In fact, subjects who dropped studying what they already got right, got just as many answers correct as those who continued to study those items as long as they continued to get tested on those items. And those who didn’t get tested on things they had previously gotten right, quickly forgot those things even though they continued to study them. So study what you don’t know, test on what you do. 

The longer you want to retain information, the longer the time between your study sessions should be.
Science Daily

"If you want to remember information for just a week, it is probably best if study sessions are spaced out over a day or two. On the other hand, if you want to remember information for a year, it is best for learning to be spaced out over about a month.

"Extrapolating from the results, he added, "it seems plausible that whenever the goal is for someone to remember information over a lifetime, it is probably best for them to be re-exposed to it over a number of years."

Of course, if we are testing instead of studying, I’ll assume those tests should be spaced out as well. I actually am most nervous about this one, as I intended to study the same thing day after day until I got it. But now I'm thinking I need to try spacing those lessons out and obviously, due to my time crunch, inserting other lessons. 

Memories can be activated and strengthened while sleeping.
Science Daily

"The critical difference is that our research shows that memory is strengthened for something you've already learned," Reber said. "Rather than learning something new in your sleep, we're talking about enhancing an existing memory by re-activating information recently acquired."
…
"If you were learning how to speak in a foreign language during the day, for example, and then tried to reactivate those memories during sleep, perhaps you might enhance your learning."

So after studying some new vocabulary words before bed, listening to them on tape while you sleep could help you remember them better in the morning. It’s important to note, there was another study on that site, where sleep seemed to only impact memory for those things that reached a “threshold acquisition level.” In other words, you need to know the information before sleep. 

Sleeping soon after learning something new helps memory.
Science Daily
 Originally, my plan was going to be to study my new Spanish words in the morning. Clearly that would have been a mistake. Now I’ll do new words in the evening. There was another study where a shot burst of moderate exercise after learning also helps. So if you can’t sleep, maybe a few minutes of exercise will help you out. I’d rather sleep. 

Generating answers improves performance over multiple choice.
I’m a great guesser so I try to avoid multiple choice anyway. But it’s good to know that fill in the blank tests will actually help you more in the long term. Yes they are harder, but you’ll thank yourself later. 

Mastery of a topic before moving on increases overall performance.
In other words, kind of knowing your current lesson isn’t good enough to move onto the next. Kind of what schools do to students.  So keep a good vocab list and don’t move on from any word you miss on a test.

Now I just need to take all of this and the things we already know about learning a foreign language and come up with a winning strategy. More on that later.