To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test
1–10 of 36 posts
Re: To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test
#2Here's one example of this kind of phenomenon. If you really want to understand a question, write a paper about it. It's easy enough to read five or ten research papers in an area, and if you do that thoroughly, and write extensive notes as you do so, you'll start to feel that you understand the area and the issues involved.
However, if the way you learn is much like mine, when you try to start writing you will realise that you haven't grasped it with anything like the fullness that you had thought. Start writing anyway: you have a bibliography, and hopefully you have a rough idea of the thesis you want to defend. Write the literature review sections. Sketch outlines of arguments, and then try to take them apart. Find counterexamples. If your position has any merit, you will eventually figure out some convincing arguments. Flesh them out: write a first draft, as rough as you like. Improve it by smoothing out poor phrasing and removing extravagant, unsupported claims (it may only be obvious once you've written them that this is what they are).
After some time you will have a reasonably presentable paper. More than that, though, you will actually understand the issues: how the various ideas in the field fit together, why you really disagree with some of the papers you've read, and perhaps even what your own take on it is. It's hard work! But writing is what makes the difference. If you just read a lot you can come away with the misapprehension that you understand the field, when in reality you just know a lot about what people have written.
Re: To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test
#3Recalling information is not necessarily learning. That 'drawing-relation-diagrams' method contributes more towards understanding in my view.
Also this is very limited in domain. As an example, here in India students learn English for an year or two before appearing in MBA examinations. One common observation is that many students do thousands of comprehensions and unseen passages but still stand nowhere in the 'reading between the lines' part, which is essentially, understanding. They spend all the time testing themselves, whereas 'testing' should follow after 'acquiring the knowledge'.
Re: To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test
#4Here's one example of this kind of phenomenon. If you really want to understand a question, write a paper about it. It's easy enough to read five or ten research papers in an area, and if you do that thoroughly, and write extensive notes as you do so, you'll start to feel that you understand the area and the issues involved. However, if the way you learn is much like mine, when you try to start writing you will reali…
I think you're spot on. You don't really understand something unless you can explain it to an interested yet uninformed outsider.
Re: To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test
#5I'm not sure this is a new finding. I believe it's called the rehearsal or retrieval effect. I recall reading about it in a textbook about learning theory a decade ago.
It's the basis of the study/summarise/recall/revise method.
Re: To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test
#6Here's one example of this kind of phenomenon. If you really want to understand a question, write a paper about it. It's easy enough to read five or ten research papers in an area, and if you do that thoroughly, and write extensive notes as you do so, you'll start to feel that you understand the area and the issues involved. However, if the way you learn is much like mine, when you try to start writing you will reali…
I think you're spot on. You don't really understand something unless you can explain it to an interested yet uninformed outsider.
If you think writing prose solidifies your understanding of a subject, try formalizing its findings as knowledge .. in code.
Most specifications can be turned into a database for some form of Prolog, play with it. At the very least, you might get yourself a type or model checker, or you might get lucky and actually get an expert system out of it.
Re: To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test
#7Man, ionfish beat me to the punch. Things I learn best, are things that I put into practice or write about. Things that I have an opinion about usually form some sort of dialog that I consider to be analogous to writing. This has been the case for me in every subject imaginable. Politics, math, science: all things that are conceptual with ideas. I know that history encompasses ideas, but rout memorization of facts has never appealed to me. Writing about a time period or such requires not just that I know the facts, but that I recall them, restructure them and express them in my own words. Even if it's just filtering through a couple extras areas of my brain, it makes a huge difference in my ability to remember important facts later.
I've never tried to pay attention to my knowledge before and after a test, but I've taken too many tests that I didn't feel accurately represented the material to be leery of offering as much praise as the NYT does.
Re: To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test
#8This is certainly true of physics or mathematics. You can read all the textbooks you want, but you can't claim to understand those subjects unless you sit down and actually solve some problems or prove some theorems.
Re: To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test
#9"What I cannot create, I do not understand." -- Richard Feynman
Re: To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test
#10ARGH. The title completely ignores the fact that the experiment-subjects that retained the information the best DIDN'T just take a test, they also retrieved it from memory and wrote what they knew. THEN they were tested on it.
Horrible, horrible summary.
A better title might have been "What they say is true, Read, Write, [Recite] - Then you'll test well."
That is: "Read the Source Material - let's say a chapter of 10-15 pages. Close your book. Meditate on it for a minute or five. Now, without looking at the source material, write a one or two page summary of the material. Review your summary. Now, without looking at either the book, or your summary, verbally summarize the chapter."
It's the foundation of every study plan I've ever seen - and the NYT article goes off on this "Just take a Test" tangent that isn't even supported by the observations they make.