Throughout this year, my opinion on my learning habits and preferences did not change significantly. I still believe that I am a mix of a visual and a tactile learner. I understand information better by writing it out, color coding, visualizing, sitting in the front of the room, but I remember it better if I act it out, walk while reading, or arrange it in thematic groups. A few keys habits/needs I’ve noticed in terms of my learning processes are the following: 1) I cannot memorize information that is typed out or written by someone else – it needs to be my own writing. I am not sure if that is because of my handwriting or the way in which I organize information. In the same vein, I tend to understand and retain information better if it is written in blue ben (if color-coded, the basis color would be blue). 2) No matter how good someone is at explaining concepts, I may understand them I the moment they are being explained to me, but if I don’t go back and rework them o my own, I will rarely remember them. I have the same issue when I don’t understand the reasoning/logical continuation leading to an idea or a result. I have a hard time remembering a fact if the why behind it has not been explained to me in a logical manner. 3) I love trees and charts! If there is a way in which I can depict information in a tree, showing the relations between key ideas, then I will do it, because that is the easiest way for me to understand and remember all the information associated with it. Same for charts; pros and cons are a prime example; I would much rather write them as bullet points in two columns than in a paragraph or sentence(s).
For language learning specifically, I have noticed both with Spanish and English that I learn much faster by being forced to speak (i.e. being thrown into a country that only speaks that language) or by interacting with native speakers; asking them questions, having to paraphrase what I want to say in very simple terms, even including pantomime, because I have no other way of communicating my thought to them. Then what usually happens is they figure out what I’m trying to say and say it in that language. When this happens, whatever it is I was trying to covey, I will not easily forget later on because much time and attention were spent on it, and I tried to figure it out myself (going back to the learning styles).
Another strategy that I find works really well for me when learning a language (in addition to the ones mentioned before) is listening to songs in that language, looking up the word-for-word translation of the lyrics, and reading along while the song is playing. That way I have the general sense of what the song is about, and more or less what each word means, so when I have to recall said words I will remember them in the context of the song and will hence be much more likely to remember what they meant.
I really enjoyed the cultural stereotype beat-boxing video, as well as our discussions on the effects of language on learning. The topic of dead languages or dialects reminded me of a similar chapter I did in English literature in high school, where I had to read the story of an Italian family that migrated to the US, and write a diary entry as one of the children in that family. Language is an integral part of a people, and without knowing it, we can never really understand them fully. Thus, regardless of where I will raise my family and what other languages are spoken in the household, I have decided that my children will have to learn Greek.
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