Study Smarter, Not Harder: Tips From ‘Make It Stick'

Make it stick.

We want to make words, vocabulary, structures in the

language stick in our brains.

That's the goal.

And I recently read a book called Make It Stick by Peter C.

Brown, where he discusses the effective strategies that

enable us to make things stick.

Now, many of the things he talks about are things that I have in fact talked

about previously in my videos, and that is rather than blocked learning, deliberately

trying to learn something, reading it over and over again, you know, underlining

it, highlighting it, trying to sort of force it into our brains, we are better

off If we space our learning activities, study it now, study it two days later,

study it a week later, interleave it with other subject matter, or as I do in my

language learning I will cover some of the same material using different sources,

different starter books, learning the same material from different angles.

Or, if I want to become familiar with a period in history, I'm far better

off to read a variety of different books on that particular period of

history, rather than trying to somehow ace or master one particular book.

And he also refers to active retrieval.

When we read another book on a particular subject, we are in fact connecting

the information we come across in that book with information that we acquired

earlier, and which we may not always be able to retrieve, but seeing similar

information in a different setting, in a different book, in a different context,

helps us then to solidify our knowledge of this material you know, a lot of

what is in his book kind of relates to this Bloom's Pyramid of different ways

that we interact with knowledge where we analyze, or we evaluate, or we compare.

In other words, we have to interact with the information that we're acquiring.

We can't just try to plug it into our brains.

In Peter Brown's book, he talks about the importance of testing.

Testing is a form of forcing us to retrieve what we have learned.

If we can retrieve what we have learned, and if we can space that retrieval

activity, we're going to learn it better.

If we try harder...

To learn it, to understand it, to analyze it, we're going to learn it better.

In other words, the richer our engagement with that information,

the better we're going to learn.

So, we need to space our activities, we need to interact with the

material in a meaningful way, we shouldn't try to block learn things.

He also talks about the sort of desirable level of difficulty.

It shouldn't be too easy, in his opinion.

Because, again, if we are...

Engaging with material in a way that forces us to think about it, then that's

a richer, higher level of interaction, which is going to make it easier.

Then to retain that material in our long term memory.

Neurons that fire together, wire together.

Connecting this bit of information with some other bit of information, it's

more likely to create a synapse that we're going to be able to go back to.

Now, how does all of this relate to language learning?

As I was listening, or because I was listening to the audio book, it struck

me that a lot of the things that Peter Brown talks about in Make It Stick

is exactly what we do if we have a, basically an input- based approach

to language learning, or at least an approach which involves engaging with the

language rather than trying to instruct ourselves on how the language works

through some analysis of the grammar.

If I am covering essentially the same range of vocabulary and language structure

in a variety of different language contexts, then I am testing myself on

my ability to understand what I hear.

If I then try to speak using whatever words and structures

have stuck in my brain, trying to, you know, trot them out when I'm

speaking, I'm also testing myself.

In other words, the ultimate test is my ability to speak to someone.

Even now in these, uh, tests like IELTS, they're relying more and more on that face

to face test conversation with a tester.

He suggests that people are overly optimistic in terms of their self

evaluation, and I'm sure this is true if someone asks us, where are you in the

language, you'll perhaps give yourself credit for more than you can do, but you

know yourself, when you're speaking, you know where you can't remember things,

you know where you can't understand, we know where we are in the language.

So that in a sense is a form of testing.

And if testing is the answer to successful language instruction or

language learning, then we wouldn't have the situation that we have at least in

the English language school system in Canada, where we are regularly tested

and the vast majority of kids graduate without being able to speak French.

I'm talking about French instruction in the English language school system.

So testing itself is not the answer.

Rather, the answer is forcing ourselves to come across different vocabulary

items, different structures, in different contexts, rather than

trying to ace one particular subject.

So, in other words, we have to read widely, we have to listen to

a wide range of content, so that we're forcing our brains to retrieve

things according to a pattern that...

It doesn't have to be dictated by some spaced repetition system, it's

sufficient that it is spaced and therefore these words will show up with

some frequency in different contexts that we are listening to and reading.

And as long as we continue to engage with the content in this

way, we are in fact doing what Peter Brown suggests in his book.

Peter Brown also refers to the importance of knowing how people

who are learning should know how the learning process works.

Therefore, they should know some of these things about the importance of

interleaving and not block learning.

They should know that this much vaunted learning styles is not true, that we

all essentially learn the same way.

Whatever our personal preferences may be, I prefer to read, I prefer to

listen, the brain learns in the same way.

And so learning styles is not a concept that teachers or learners should hang

their hat on, rather it's this importance of retrieval practice, spacing the

retrieval, varying the activities.

Another concept that he talks about, which I think is relevant

to language learning, he says...

We should try to do things before they are explained to us.

So struggle with the language, for example, before you have the grammar.

So if I'm going to start into Finnish, I'll try to figure out

how does the Finnish language work?

Where are the verbs and the nouns and try to struggle a little bit, trying

to solve the riddle of the language.

And then go to the grammar explanation when you are curious and when you

have already had this experience with the language, that's a much better

way than trying to teach you upfront how the language works when you don't

have experience with the language.

I think this is an interesting book.

By the way, I will leave a PDF summary of the book in the description box.

But I think the point that we should have a better understanding of how

the brain learns is an important one and that much of the learning

activity in schools that's practiced in schools where there's an emphasis

on trying to ace material, block learn, focus on learning this is misguided.

And we need to have an approach that's based on more variety,

interleaving, spacing out our learning.

All of these things I think are very relevant, very useful.

And, uh, so I bring this book to your attention.

Uh, you should look it up and look up relevant and related

material on the internet.

I think it'll help you for your general learning and also

for your language learning.