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The Secret of Improvement | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Hashimi Senior Member Oman Joined 6244 days ago 362 posts - 529 votes  Speaks: Arabic (Written)* Studies: English, Japanese | Message 1 of 27 17 December 2011 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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".... At one point, not long after I started training, my memory stopped improving. No matter how much I practiced, I couldn’t memorize playing cards any faster than 1 every 10 seconds. I was stuck in a rut, and I couldn’t figure out why. “My card times have hit a plateau,” I lamented. “I would recommend you check out the literature on speed typing,” he replied. When people first learn to use a keyboard, they improve very quickly from sloppy single-finger pecking to careful two-handed typing, until eventually the fingers move effortlessly and the whole process becomes unconscious. At this point, most people’s typing skills stop progressing. They reach a plateau. If you think about it, it’s strange. We’ve always been told that practice makes perfect, and yet many people sit behind a keyboard for hours a day. So why don’t they just keeping getting better and better? In the 1960s, the psychologists Paul Fitts and Michael Posner tried to answer this question by describing the three stages of acquiring a new skill. During the first phase, known as the cognitive phase, we intellectualize the task and discover new strategies to accomplish it more proficiently. During the second, the associative phase, we concentrate less, making fewer major errors, and become more efficient. Finally we reach what Fitts and Posner called the autonomous phase, when we’re as good as we need to be at the task and we basically run on autopilot. Most of the time that’s a good thing. The less we have to focus on the repetitive tasks of everyday life, the more we can concentrate on the stuff that really matters. You can actually see this phase shift take place in f.M.R.I.’s of subjects as they learn new tasks: the parts of the brain involved in conscious reasoning become less active, and other parts of the brain take over. You could call it the O.K. plateau. Psychologists used to think that O.K. plateaus marked the upper bounds of innate ability. In his 1869 book “Hereditary Genius,” Sir Francis Galton argued that a person could improve at mental and physical activities until he hit a wall, which “he cannot by any education or exertion overpass.” In other words, the best we can do is simply the best we can do. But Ericsson and his colleagues have found over and over again that with the right kind of effort, that’s rarely the case. They believe that Galton’s wall often has much less to do with our innate limits than with what we consider an acceptable level of performance. They’ve found that top achievers typically follow the same general pattern. They develop strategies for keeping out of the autonomous stage by doing three things: focusing on their technique, staying goal-oriented and getting immediate feedback on their performance. Amateur musicians, for example, tend to spend their practice time playing music, whereas pros tend to work through tedious exercises or focus on difficult parts of pieces. Similarly, the best ice skaters spend more of their practice time trying jumps that they land less often, while lesser skaters work more on jumps they’ve already mastered. In other words, regular practice simply isn’t enough. For all of our griping over our failing memories — the misplaced keys, the forgotten name, the factoid stuck on the tip of the tongue — our biggest failing may be that we forget how rarely we forget. To improve, we have to be constantly pushing ourselves beyond where we think our limits lie and then pay attention to how and why we fail. That’s what I needed to do if I was going to improve my memory. With typing, it’s relatively easy to get past the O.K. plateau. Psychologists have discovered that the most efficient method is to force yourself to type 10 to 20 percent faster than your comfort pace and to allow yourself to make mistakes. Only by watching yourself mistype at that faster speed can you figure out the obstacles that are slowing you down and overcome them. Ericsson suggested that I try the same thing with cards. He told me to find a metronome and to try to memorize a card every time it clicked. Once I figured out my limits, he instructed me to set the metronome 10 to 20 percent faster and keep trying at the quicker pace until I stopped making mistakes. Whenever I came across a card that was particularly troublesome, I was supposed to make a note of it and see if I could figure out why it was giving me cognitive hiccups. The technique worked, and within a couple days I was off the O.K. plateau, and my card times began falling again at a steady clip. Before long, I was committing entire decks to memory in just a few minutes...." http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/20/magazine/mind- secrets.html 28 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6660 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 2 of 27 17 December 2011 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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If we want to improve, we need to step out of our comfort zone and we need to accept that we will feel uncomfortable emotions.
This rule applies to any skill. Don't fall into the fun trap. Edited by slucido on 17 December 2011 at 2:43pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5415 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 3 of 27 17 December 2011 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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In language learning this O.K. plateaus phenomenon is called fossilization. It means being stuck at a certain level where you can get by but you stop improving and your mistakes have become ingrained. The solution to this problem is exactly along the lines given above.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6688 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 27 17 December 2011 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have mostly seen the word fossilization used about specific isolated errors (for instance a certain sound which is said in the wrong, a tendency to drop a certain ending or to use a wrong case after a certain preposition). But I like the extended use of it - fossilization being the generalk tendency to get complacent at a certain level and then never get beyond that. And I also agree that the cure against this is to push your limits upwards when you have attain a certain level, for instance the level where you can communicate about simple day to day things which a tourist might need. The one little detail I would like to stress is that you shouldn't start out with a level that is absurdly high - set an attainable goal and then when you get nearer to that you can start pushing your expectations upwards.
Edited by Iversen on 17 December 2011 at 4:45pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6660 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 5 of 27 17 December 2011 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
On the whole I agree with you, but some people use the "Rambo method" and it works for them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5751 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 6 of 27 17 December 2011 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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That was an interesting read, but it made me wonder: How do people decide which skills to improve and which ones to let rest at an O.K. level? How do you prioritize, and how do you tackle fields of skills and knowledge as vast as an entire language?
Since I started learning languages there never was a day when I stopped my passive acquisition, but I easily let my active skills lie dormant for weeks or months; especially speaking. I do want to improve, but frankly speaking, I don't know where to start.
That seems to be a bit of an oversimplification. How do you define comfort zone? Who's your model - somebody who, uh, doesn't exactly suffer from an overabundance of intellectual curiosity, or maybe someone who does? What is an uncomfortable emotion to you? When you take the first example of the text Hashimi quoted, wouldn't you agree that it was most likely more frustrating for that person to practice so much without seeing improvement than later to change the approach and finally see improvement? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| allen Newbie United States Joined 5069 days ago 23 posts - 73 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Thai | Message 7 of 27 18 December 2011 at 7:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Stepping out of your comfort zone only has meaning when you know where you're going and
that the path to your goal lies there. So if you don't know how to improve then that needs to be addressed first. I think that compared to other endevours language learning is pretty unclear about how to improve, and that that's a big contributing factor to loss of motivation.
I tend to agree with this statement, but a lot of the common wisdom of language learning comes in the form of, just read more, just watch more movies, just make more conversation, with little direction. Part of the confusion is the idea of language acquisition, that our brains have some unconscious processes that are more efficient at learning languages than we are. And I think to some extent this is true, but it's not everything. Some people do lots and lots of media consumption and conversing but have apparently hit the "OK plateau". It does make it all fairly confusing in what ways we would be better off with a targeted approach and without. And then even if we accept that a targeted approach is the way to go, that road is full of controversy (either that or we just have no idea) over what actually works and how it works. As for prioritizing for me it isn't that hard. Just try using the language in all the ways you might use your own native language and see where you come up short. The harder part is understanding exactly what the problem is and coming up with a solution. Edited by allen on 18 December 2011 at 7:49am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6660 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 8 of 27 18 December 2011 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Bao, language is a means of communication.
1-Look for people and try to communicate something you need or like. 2-Communicate to them in challenging situations. The more real life situations, the better. 3-Assess your results. 4-Modify your approach if you need. What do you need to get better results? In the second step you will feel discomfort (fear, insecurity, shame, anxiety). This is unavoidable when there is something at stake. I might be your money or your proud or anything important to you. You will need to accept these feelings and overcome them. Edited by slucido on 18 December 2011 at 7:22pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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