Prática de Shadowing: Why Studying LESS Makes You Learn Faster (Science-Based) - Aprenda a falar inglês com vídeo

The best way to study and learn is to access components of your memory systems that offset forgetting.

That is the way to remember things.

That is the way to gain mastery over them.

And I'm going to teach you how to best do that using the data gleaned from the peer -reviewed literature.

Now, before I do that, I want to talk about what learning is.

Neuroplasticity is this incredible feature of your nervous system, which of course includes your brain and your spinal cord,

which is the ability for your nervous system to change in response to experience.

So any form of learning involves neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity, we sometimes hear as neuroplasticity, two words, or neuroplasticity.

Those are the same thing, essentially.

The change that underlies neuroplasticity at the level of cells, which we call neurons or nerve cells, generally involves three different mechanisms.

One is the strengthening of certain connections, what we call synaptic connections.

Synapses are the location between neurons where they communicate with one another.

It's actually a gap between the neurons.

It is technically called the synaptic cleft.

It's a gap.

And within that gap, chemicals are passed across that gap that allow one neuron to activate other neurons, or many neurons to activate many other neurons,

or to inhibit the activity of other neurons.

So one form of neuroplasticity is the strengthening of connections between neurons.

Another form of neuroplasticity is the weakening of connections between neurons.

And yet a third form of plasticity, which is often discussed in the media, but is very rare actually in the nervous system,

especially the adult nervous system of humans, is neurogenesis or the addition of new neurons.

Let's just get this out of the way up front because the addition of new neurons, again, grabs so much attention in media articles,

but it's responsible for a near trivial amount

of the sort of neuroplasticity that is important for today's discussion or frankly for most all discussions.

It is true you have a specialized set of neurons in your olfactory bulb that are responsible for smell, as well as a specialized set of neurons in the so -called dentate gyrus of your hippocampus,

an area of the brain that's important for memory, in which new neurons appear to be added throughout the lifespan,

but this is not the major mechanism by which learning and memory occurs in humans.

Rather, the major mechanism by which learning

and memory occurs in humans is the strengthening of existing connections and the weakening of existing connections,

or the formation of new connections between already existing neurons, not new neurons.

Okay?

Now, the removal

or weakening of connections between neurons being an important component of neuroplasticity is very important for sake of today's discussion.

I want to emphasize that when we hear about weakening of connections, we often think, well, that means forgetting, or that means the brain is getting less good.

However, so much of the neuroplasticity that underlies,

for instance, the acquisition of a new motor skill is actually the reflection of removal of connections.

So we don't want to project any kind of value onto a discussion about adding new connections, removing new connections.

Let's just leave it at this level mechanistically.

When you hear about neuroplasticity, just know that it could be the consequence of strengthening of connections as well as weakening of connections

and that neither strengthening of connections in the nervous system nor weakening of connections can map directly to the formation

or removal of say memories or information.

Just know that these are the important mechanisms.

In fact, if you look at a baby that is, let's say, I don't know, nine months old, their motor skills are not terrific typically compared to the motor skills

that that child will have when they are six or seven years old.

And believe it or not, the improvement in motor coordination that one observes in humans

and other species for that matter from birth until the adolescence

and teen years and adult years is largely the reflection of the removal.

That's right.

The removal of neural connections as opposed to the formation of neural connections.

However, the neural connections that remain become much more robust.

They become much more reliable.

Okay.

So that's the mechanistic backdrop for everything that we're going to talk about today, which is how to study and learn.

And as I mentioned earlier in my introduction,

most of learning and remembering new material is about offsetting the forgetting process that naturally occurs anytime we hear new information.

So, in keeping with what will ultimately reveal itself to be the dominant theme of today's discussion, right now and for reasons that will become clear later,

I want you to take a brief quiz.

Now, the moment people hear quiz or test, typically it spikes their adrenaline, they start feeling stressed, but don't worry,

you're gonna keep your answers to yourself and you're doing this for a very specific purpose.

Here's...

My question, this is a two question quiz.

How many different ways, mechanistically speaking, does neuroplasticity occur?

Is it one mechanism, two mechanisms, or three mechanisms?

Or is it four or five?

Okay.

Can you name in your head two of the three major changes

that the nervous system can undergo which are reflective of neuroplasticity?

Okay, so the answer to question was, is that there are three different modes of neuroplasticity as you recall, or as you may not have been able to recall.

And by the way, if you were not able to recall the three different modes of neuroplasticity or mechanisms underlying neuroplasticity, that is fine.

As you'll soon realize, recognizing the errors in your information retention is another critical and very useful way to retain more information,

even if you got the answer wrong or you didn't know.

In fact, especially if you got the answer wrong or you didn't know.

So the three ways are the strengthening of neural connections, second, the weakening of neural connections, and third, through neurogenesis, the addition of new neurons.

Why did I provide this quiz?

Why did I test you?

Well, as you'll soon learn, if you look across the total body of research on how best to study and learn, it involves doing exactly what we just did,

which is to periodically stop and test yourself on the material that you learned.

Testing is not just a way of evaluating what knowledge you've acquired and which knowledge you have not managed to acquire.

It also turns out to be the best tool for offsetting forgetting of any kind.

This study looked at whether or not studying material four times, so study, study, study, study,

was better in terms of locking that information into people's minds, allowing them to use that information flexibly, which is an element of creativity,

essentially giving the mastery of the material.

Then a different group which studied once, studied the material twice, studied the material three times, then was tested on the material.

Or a third group that studied material once, then took one, two, yes, three tests on the material.

Now, so what I just described was three groups, all of whom read a passage.

This was a passage about animals, about biology, some other topics too in different experiments.

Again, three groups.

One group studies four times, then later they take a test.

The second group studies one, two, three times, takes a test on that material, and then later takes a test.

The third group studies the material once, then takes three tests on the material and then later takes a test.

So what's analyzed and compared between these different groups is their performance on that final test.

That should be pretty much obvious given the way we've been

going today in this description of tests as a way to offset forgetting.

Okay.

So the more tests that you take as a way to expose yourself to the material, the better you're going to perform on that material at some later point.

Now, of course, at some point you have to be exposed to the material for the first time, right?

That's why it's studying and learning.

But after one exposure to new material, taking more tests on that material, even if you don't perform that well on those tests,

100

as long as you're able to see the accurate answers to those tests

101

and compare your answers to those answers will lead to better performance on the ultimate test

102

and retention of that material at some later time.

O que é a Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing é uma técnica de aprendizado de idiomas com base científica, originalmente desenvolvida para o treinamento de intérpretes profissionais. O método é simples, mas poderoso: você ouve áudio em inglês nativo e repete imediatamente em voz alta — como uma sombra seguindo o falante com 1-2 segundos de atraso. Pesquisas mostram melhora significativa na precisão da pronúncia, entonação, ritmo, sons conectados, compreensão auditiva e fluência na fala.

Prática de Shadowing: Why Studying LESS Makes You Learn Faster (Science-Based) - Aprenda a falar inglês com vídeo

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O que é a Técnica de Shadowing?