Topic C8: How To Promote Learning Of The New Terms

Introduction
What is learning?

How can students obtain the meaning of new terms?

How can students retain the meaning of new terms?

How can students learn to use the meaning of new terms?

How to develop extended vocabulary cards.

How can the senses promote the learning and retention of a new term?

Teaching Suggestions

What is learning?

Learning is the ability to obtain, retain and use new information.

In order to understand the ability called learning, the classification and identifying characteristic of the term "learning" will be defined.

  Ability - able to do the activities to successfully do a task

  Obtain - acquire by a planned activity to gain possession

  Retain - keep the new information in mind for future use

  Use - put the new information into use to solve a problem

In order to promote the learning ability of the new terms introduced in your course and recognize examples of them, the students must be shown how to obtain, retain and use the new terms.

How can students obtain the meaning of the new terms?
The meaning of a new term is obtained by using a planned activity to acquire the definition of the new terms introduced.

The students should be encouraged to use the following five steps to obtain the meaning of the new terms introduced in your course:

1. Recognize when a new term is being introduced in the course.
2. Identify the classification and identifying characteristics(s) of the new term.
3. Look up and learn the meaning of any unknown term used in a term's definition.
4. Make a definition outline of the new terms on index cards.
5. Include on the definition outline examples of the new term.

How can students retain the meaning of the new terms?
Retention of new information only takes place by frequent review of the information.  The best way to frequently review information is making a definition outline of the new terms on index cards.  Using index cards to review the definition of the new terms introduced in the course has the following advantages:

1. Easy to review frequently - learning curve requires frequent review.
2. Quickly review - only a short period of time is needed to review.
3. Organized system of review - retrieval from memory is added by having terms arranged in some logical grouping.
4. Random order of learning - needed to prevent serial position effect.
5. Review only the terms not learned - test oneself to determine which terms are learned.
6. Predict test questions while reviewing - test preparation is promoted by having the information on the index similar to the way it will be asked on a test.
7. Recitation - When predicting test questions, give the answer to the question you made up out loud. This promotes learning for the following three reasons:
    
   1. When you know you are going to recite something, you pay more attention to what you are learning.
   2. You get immediate feedback on how well you know the information.
   3. When you hear something, the information is processed in a different part of the brain.
8. Confidence - by testing oneself while reviewing, the terms can be reviewed until learned.

How can students learn to use the meaning of the new terms?
By having students use the new terms, they learn to make associations or connections of the new term to information already stored in their mind. 

By making associations or connections of the new term to known information, the new term is learned and remembered. This is because the new term is connected to something already known and stored in memory.

The more and better associations the students can make between the term's classification and identifying characteristic(s), the better the term becomes fixed or encoded in their minds and is available to be used.

The following ways can be used to create associations between the term's classification and identifying characteristic(s) and known information.

Each of these four ways requires the new information to be used:

1. Create study groups or learning communities
2. Have class discussions between students
3. Assign articles to be read that contain the new terms
4. Develop an extended vocabulary card for new terms

Directions will now be given on how to develop an extended vocabulary card.

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