According to Benedict Carey, a science reporter, the way we THINK we learn is actually very different from the way we ACTUALLY learn. About 95% of CarAccording to Benedict Carey, a science reporter, the way we THINK we learn is actually very different from the way we ACTUALLY learn. About 95% of Carey’s book is a historical chronology of the clinical studies and science experiments that led to our current understanding of learning. The remaining 5% contains the useful points and strategies you need to be a better learner. Since I’m guessing almost all of us care very much about the useful 5% and very little of the historical 95%, I’ve boiled down his central and most important points of application below:
1. Forgetting actually helps you learn. This is the “Forget to Learn� theory. When we forget something, then try remember it again (“retrieval�), the memory then becomes stronger. Forgetting is critical to the learning of new skills and the preservation of old ones.
2. We perform better on exams when we are in the same state of mind as when we studied. People remember more of what they studied when they return to that same study environment. Since we can’t always predict the context in which we will need to perform, we can help our studying and memory by varying the environment where we study. The traditional advice to establish a strict practice routine is not advisable. On the contrary: Try another room altogether. Another time of day. Practice your musical instrument outside, in the park, in the woods. Switch cafes. Each alteration further enriches the skills rehearsed, making them sharper and more accessible for longer.
3. People learn and remember more when they space their study time instead of concentrating it. This is called “distributed learning� or “the spacing effect.� The spacing effect is especially useful for memorizing new material. Studying a new concept right after you learn it doesn’t deepen the memory much, if at all. Studying it an hour later, or a day later, does. Cramming works fine in a pinch but doesn’t last. Spacing does.
4. The “fluency illusion� is the belief that because facts are easy to remember RIGHT NOW, they will remain that way tomorrow or the next day. It’s one of the reasons students will bomb a test they thought they would have aced. The best way to overcome this illusion is to consistently engage in self-testing. Instead of memorizing a poem by reading it 20 times, read it ten times, constantly trying to recite it from memory as you go. Testing yourself as you go amplifies the value of your study time.
5. Pre-testing is also an important study tool. Even if you bomb a test on Day 1 of a class, that experience alters how you subsequently take in the material during the rest of the semester. On some kinds of tests, especially multiple choice, we learn from answering incorrectly—especially if given the correct answer soon afterwards. Guessing wrong increases a person’s likelihood of answering correctly on a later test. The act of guessing itself engages your mind in a more demanding way than straight memorization, deepening the imprint of the correct answer.
6. Many teachers have said you don’t really know a topic until you have to teach it yourself, until you have to make it clear to someone else. One effective study method is to explain the material either to yourself or to someone you know.
7. The mind works on problems “off-line,� subconsciously, when we’re not aware it’s happening. Sometimes, when we are stuck on a problem requiring insight, distractions can be a valuable weapon rather than a hindrance. However, people do not benefit from such an “incubation break� unless they have first reached an IMPASSE. Knock off and play a videogame too soon and you get nothing. Creative leaps often come during downtown that follows a period of immersion in a story or topic, and they often come piecemeal, not in any particular order, and in varying size and importance.
8. Interruptions are helpful to learning. Interrupting yourself when absorbed in an assignment extends its life in memory and pushes it to the top of your mental to do list. And once a goal is top of mind, we are more focused on accomplishing it.
9. Just starting on a project gives that project the weight of a goal, even if the actual work performed is minimal. We should start work on large projects as soon as possible, without the psychological burden of feeling like the project needs to be completed in one sitting. It’s ok to stop when we get stuck, with the confidence that we are not “quitting� but initiating a percolation period. Quitting before you’re ahead doesn’t actually put a project to sleep, it keeps it awake.
10. Varying your practice and studies, known as “interleaving,� is more effective than concentrating on one skill or subject at a time, because it forces us to be able to adjust and think quicker on the fly. Constant repetition alone is less useful. Mixing up practice with different tasks forces people to make continual adjustments, building a general dexterity that sharpens each specific skill. All that adjusting during mixed practice also enhances our ability to perform each skill regardless of context. Also, since tests themselves are mixed sets of problems, it helps to make homework the same.
11. Over time and with practice, your brain develops “perceptual intuition,� the ability to detect minute differences in sights, sounds, or textures. The brain takes these tiny differences it has detected between similar looking signals and uses those to help decipher new, previously unseen material. Perceptual learning is happening all the time, automatically, and subconsciously.
12. Sleeping improves retention and comprehension of what was studied the day before. What happens during sleep, according to recent theory, is that you open the aperture of memory and are able to see the bigger picture. There is evidence that REM sleep is a creative memory domain, where you build different associations and combine things in different ways. Sleep also improves pattern recognition, creative problem solving, and muscle/motor memory. Napping also provides slow wave deep sleep and REM sleep.
Conclusion: Learning is a restless exercise and that restlessness applies not only to the timing of study sessions but also to their content, i.e., the value of mixing up old and new material in a single sitting. Given the dangers of fluency, or misplaced confidence, exposed ignorance is like a cushioned fall. The experience acts as a reminder to check and recheck what you assume you know. The mind is a forager for information, for strategies, for clever ways to foil other species� defenses and live off the land. That’s the academy where our brains learned to learn, and it defines how we came to be human. Learning is what we do. ...more
It’s common knowledge that Chinese students DOMINATE Americans in global education rankings. In international math competitions, the results aren’t evIt’s common knowledge that Chinese students DOMINATE Americans in global education rankings. In international math competitions, the results aren’t even close. The Chinese are in another stratosphere. But this is typically at the elementary � high school level. What fewer people realize is that starting in college and beyond, Americans start to smoke the Chinese, and never look back. As Huang notes, the best colleges and universities are in the U.S. The best math and science research happen here in the U.S., not in China. Meanwhile China has yet to produce even a single Nobel laureate in science.
Why is that? Why do the Chinese do so well in early education and then taper off after high school? According to Huang, the two countries have a lot to learn from each other. Unsurprisingly, he recommends taking the best of both worlds. From China, adopt a strong work ethic, set high expectations at an early age, establish clear goals, and develop strong study habits. From the U.S., adopt encourage creativity, independence, and analytical thinking. Be open to students asking lots of questions--a big no-no in Chinese culture. This is the secret to Huang’s “hybrid� technique. A technique that he very regrettably labels “Co-core synergy education.� Co-core synergy education is a catch phrase that is about as terrible as “Lean in� is good.
Overall, Huang’s methodology makes a lot of sense. It’s a practice I intend on implementing with my own kids. It’s not a surprise that as a parent (and an Asian American no less) I aspire for my children to be able to build a strong work ethic and study skills, but also strong analytical skills, creativity, and independent thinking.
Oddly, some of these very skills seem to be missing in Huang himself. Midway through his book he mentions a conversation he has with a friend in Beijing who is lamenting that his own son “only� has a 95% GPA, evidently placing him in the bottom 5% of his class. Huang tries to cheer up his friend by saying, “You’re the CEO of a large, successful company. What was your class rank when you were his age?� The friend didn’t know but guessed his grade average was 80%. Replies Huang, “That’s it! What are the people who were ranked at the top of your class doing right now? Not much, are they?�
And there’s the rub. If as Huang seems to suggests to his friend, there is NO correlation between getting good grades and success later in life—if a mediocre student with “only� an 80% grade average becomes the CEO of a large, successful company, while those ranked in the top of their class are doing “not much”—then at the VERY least, there must be other skills that drive success beyond getting high grades.
Much of this book reads like a memoir of Huang’s own experience parenting his son, Yan, who as the book was written had just recently graduated from a “top� law school and is now about to work at a large law firm. I can’t help but wonder whether Yan’s law firm experience will be a wakeup call for his dad, who never really addresses what it takes beyond admission into a prestigious university to achieve success later in life. If so, maybe a sequel to Hybrid Tiger is in the works....more
This book is neither particularly good or particularly bad. For people like myself who grew up as TV junkies, it was a nostalgic trip down memory laneThis book is neither particularly good or particularly bad. For people like myself who grew up as TV junkies, it was a nostalgic trip down memory lane (does anyone remember Space Roller Coaster?!?). Overall, the book left me unsatisfied because the author never lived up to his bargain by answering the most fundamental question posed in the book: Is tv bad for kids???...more
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