The Learning Pyramid

One of the reasons why I love my job is in people that work for Unium. And it's not only about how friendly, positive, ready to help and open they are. It's also about how eager they always are to develop. How intelligent and broad-minded, well-educated and curious they are. Coming with all different backgrounds they will never stop surprising you.

And thanks to one of the colleagues I accidentally met in a coffee room last morning, I found out about the Learning Pyramid. She gave us couple hints about what it is so that we can dig that topic dipper on our own afterwards. Thanks go to her for that as well. So today while reading articles on David Kolb's Experiential Learning Model (in later posts about that), I also conducted a small research on the Learning Pyramid.

Basically, what it shows is the percentage of knowledge acquired through different activities. Those activities can be classified as Passive and Participatory Teaching Methods, the latter being the most effective, of course.

I knew there was a saying that goes something like "If you want to learn something, start teaching it", but I never knew it was actually supported by research. To add more, lectures turn out to be the most ineffective method. You just look at the percentage difference between lectures and group discussions!

For some people, of course, lectures can be a fine way to learn information as well - if you are an audial who has mastered the skill of successful note-taking and who has an inner-motivation goal and is extremely interested in the topic, the percentage will probably go up by 10-20 points. I'm pretty sure, however, that it will never reach the 50% benchmark.

Another picture that I found in the Net and want to share with you puts the Bloom's Taxonomy next to the Learning Pyramid. My next post will be devoted to the Bloom's Taxonomy in particular, so for now I'll just leave it here for you to analyse and sort of match. They don't correlate completely of course, and are focused on quite different topics. The idea of putting them together seemed to me to be appealing nevertheless.

P.S. What would be really interesting is to combine teaching methods and the Pyramid together (maybe plus the Taxonomy as well) and see which are supposed to lead to better results. Anybody interested in doing that? :)

Learning French flashmob

A lot of people around have been talking and writing about podcasts. Every resourse/blog on personal development topic says at least a few words about podcasts and audio books - sources of information that I have been denying for several reasons. But the joy of using them has finally found me and I can't wait to share one particular podcast that I have been trying out for the last week or so.

A short paragraph on how I came to it first though. I wanted to spend the time I usually waste in subway or on the bus somehow usefully. And on average I have about 15 minutes a day to spend on such an activity - to learn something new. Now, I;ve tried taking up Frnch several times but it never went any further than saying hello, goodbye and 5-10 verbs. So I thought I should try out French podcasts or something like that. And after 2-3 days of listening through several French teaching channels I discovered Coffee Break French on iTunes. These are 15-20 minutes lessons, and there are four seasons of 40 lessons each.

Being a teacher, it's very interesting for me to try a new approach - a way I never used to study something before. Audio-lingual method is completely new to me as to a student, and I am not an audial at all I must say. So the more interesting this experiment is.

Everyday I listen to an episode of the podcast (sometimes two episodes a day, but only if I'm in the mood) and that's all. I'm very interested about where it can take me and how much I can achieve listening to some French speech (well with English explanations, of course) for 15 minutes a day. I have 10th of June as my milestone - it will be 30 days since I started listening to the podcast - and I'm planning to revise everything on that day.

Besides that I also have Mr.Petrov's lessons on my plan. He uses grammar-translation method as a base, but he's become very popular in Russia and has his own TV show where he teaches different languages using his technique. His students aim at achieving simple speaking level by the end of 16 lessons. These lessons usually cover present, past and future tenses of the language, main 50-60 verbs and some basic topics like introducing yourself.

I want to combine these two ways of learning French and see what happens. Mr.Petrov's course is going to be just supplementary for me, I'm not going to plan any schedule like lesson a day. Whenevr I feel like I want to do more French and have 40 spare inutes, I'll start watching, but mainly my experiment is going to be focused on audio-lingual approach.

Bonne journee, mon amis! :)

The Imitation Game

Yesterday I had pleasure to watch a rather smashing hit - The Imitation Game. To start right away - here are the ways I'm going to use it:

1) grab some new vocab for myself ^_^. And since I recently suggested a scheme for vocab learning, I should probably show it in action
So these are the words that turned out to be new for me

 

2) look for pieces to use at the lessons, since Cumberbatch is a popular pal.

3) Besides using particular scenes to show vocab or grammar usage, this movie can serve a good lead-in to the military topic. Since the 70th anniversary of Victory over Nazism is approaching, it will be nice to commemorate the event at the lesson in an interesting and new way.

4) Since movie is pierced with puzzles, codes and other enigma ;) it can serve as an inspiration/theme to a lesson-long quest (maybe for some final lesson) or the concept of puzzle solving can be implemented into a part of a lesson on its own.
- Previously I wrote about a crossword app - the post is here. It can become one of the puzzles.
- Then you can create a double puzzle - here
- or a word scramble using wonderfull BusyTeacher service - here.
- Another mystery to challenge your students - deciphering (this one though has little academic purposes, more just for fun or to set the mood).
- You can also use letter gaps, such as: r_l_e_ed, _mb_ _a_se_.

I'll share my worksheets as soon as I prepare such a lesson ;)

Have a very productive weekend! And let your heart be filled with joy =)

Vocabulary Learning Strategy

You might be aware of this strategy, however I want to share this little tip with you since I find this strategy to be particularly useful when studying new vocabulary at higher levels

The idea is that you create such scheme and provide two examples, synonyms and defintions for a word (these are the most important parts). Origins may help you memorize the meaning if you are familiar with Latin (lots of words come from it) and transcription...well how are you gonna read the language with thousand exceptions? :)

I used this strategy for my Reading Conference lesson so that's why you can see "Use in context (the book)". For general English lessons you can replace that with Use in context (everyday life), for example.

Hope it will be useful! Enjoy! :)

How to learn a new language: 7 secrets from TED Translator

They say that children learn languages the best. But that doesn’t mean that adults should give up. We asked some of the polyglots in TED’s Open Translation Project to share their secrets to mastering a foreign language. Their best strategies distill into seven basic principles:

1. Get real. Decide on a simple, attainable goal to start with so that you don’t feel overwhelmed. German translator Judith Matz suggests: “Pick up 50 words of a language and start using them on people — and then slowly start picking up grammar.”
2. Make language-learning a lifestyle change. Elisabeth Buffard, who in her 27 years of teaching English has always seen consistency as what separates the most successful students from the rest. Find a language habit that you can follow even when you’re tired, sick or madly in love.
3. Play house with the language. The more you invite a foreign language into your daily life, the more your brain will consider it something useful and worth caring about. “Use every opportunity to get exposed to the new language,” says Russian translator Olga Dmitrochenkova. Label every object in your house in this language, read kids’ books written in it, watch subtitled TED and TEDx talks, or live-narrate parts of your day to an imaginary foreign friend.
4. Let technology help you out. Dmitrochenkova has a great idea: “A funny thing like resetting the language on your phone can help you learn new words right away,” she says. Ditto for changing the language on your browser. Or you can seek out more structured learning opportunities online. Dutch translator Els De Keyser recommendsDuolinguo for its gamified approach to grammar, and Anki for memorizing vocabulary with its “intelligent” flashcards.
5. Think about language-learning as a gateway to new experiences. To Spanish translator Sebastián Betti, learning a language has always been about focusing on the experiences that the new language would open up, from “visiting theme parks, attending air shows, enjoying cowboy poetry and folk-rock festivals, to learning about photo-essay techniques.” In other words, he thinks of fun things that he wanted to do anyway, and makes them into a language-learning opportunity. Many of our translators shared this advice. Italian and French translator Anna Minoli learned English by watching undubbed versions of her favorite movies, while Croatian translator Ivan Stamenković suddenly realized he could speak English in fifth grade, after years of watching the Cartoon Network without subtitles. So the next time you need a vegan carrot cake recipe, find one in the language you’re trying to learn.
6. Make new friends. Interacting in the new language is key — it will teach you to intuitively express your thoughts, instead of mentally translating each sentence before you say it. Find native speakers near you. Or search for foreign penpals or set up a language tandem online, where two volunteers help one another practice their respective languages.
7. Do not worry about making mistakes. One of the most common barriers to conversing in a new language is the fear of making mistakes. But native speakers are like doting parents: any attempt from you to communicate in their language is objective proof that you are a gifted genius. They’ll appreciate your effort and even help you. Nervous about holding a conversation with a peer? Try testing your language skills with someone a little younger. “I was stoked when I was chatting with an Italian toddler and realized we had the same level of Italian,” recalls German translator Judith Matz. And be patient. The more you speak, the closer you’ll get to the elusive ideal of “native-like fluency.” And to talking to people your own age.

Posted by: Tedstaff. November 4, 2014 at 5:10 pm EST. Original - http://blog.ted.com/2014/11/04/how-to-learn-a-new-language-7-secrets-from-ted-translators/

By Krystian Aparta