SUPERLEARNING: Develop your learning style to its full potential

Hm hm hm hm, whew, so much to learn.

Hey, James from www.engvid.com . Today's lesson, I want to teach you about Super Learning,

you know, from one of my favorite, well, not my favorite superhero, but my brother's and

a good friend of mine's superhero: Superman.

Why is he Superman?

Because he does everything better than the average person.

Today's lesson is how to learn better.

Now, I'm not saying better than the average person, but to improve your ability to learn

or to, yeah, be better than the average person when they learn.

And you might say "Why is that important?

This is an English lesson."

Learning English: the grammar, vocabulary, syntax, reading and writing, they're all great

things.

The problem is when you're not able to learn on a constant basis and continually improve,

if you get bored and stagnant, you stop learning, you stop working, you give it up.

If I can give you some tools with which to improve and give you the ability to learn

faster, as you get it in faster and you learn, you will complete the goal that you started

for yourself, which was to learn English.

So, let's go to the board and do some Super Learning.

Alright?

Super Learning, it's Mr. E with his big "S" on his chest, flying powerfully.

This lesson I'm giving to a guy named Joseph Alain Leconte, he's from Haiti, I was out

on the street one day and he came up and said "Hey, I watch your videos, thank you very

much!", and Alain - sorry, Joseph Alain, thank you very much for stopping to say hello.

I always appreciate it and I love the support that you guys give.

But let me get to the board and get to the lesson, that's why you're here.

So, we're going to go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven different things or exercises

I can give you to help you become a Super Learner.

Super Learning isn't anything special, it's basically doing not just your best, that's

one thing, it's maximizing your potential, and what I mean by - you have a line that

you start at, and here's what you can possibly do.

Most of us, at our best, move up here.

When we do Super Learning, we actually go up here and learn as much as we can actually

do.

And it's surprising how much you can take in and how much you can use to become better

in a short period of time if you're given certain tools, and I'm going to give you a

few hints today.

One of the first things is there's Mr. E with a megaphone, he's speaking out.

If it's written material, say it out loud.

What?

Well, when you read it, read it, that's using your vision, okay?

There are three ways learn, there are actually more, but three basic ones people are taught

in teachers' colleges that most students use to learn.

One is visual, with your eye, one is auditory with your ear, and the other kinesthetic,

doing something.

That's why, in school, you'll notice teachers write on a board, you look at it, then they

speak, you listen, then you write down information.

By doing those three, you can keep up to 80% of the information, alright?

And also, repetition and a few other things.

But there's the things that help you learn.

A lot of people have things that they're better at, so some people are better at listening

than they are at understanding information when it's written, or when they do it, they're

confused, but if you explain it to them, they're like "Oh, I get it, I can do that."

Same with some people, they need to see it, you demonstrate it, they can understand, but

if you say it to them or make them do it, they don't, okay?

So, there's two of the three, and obviously number three, the kinesthetic, if they do

it, they understand much better than if you write it on the board or explain it.

So, why am I telling you "If it's written, say it"?

Well remember, I said if all three are combined you learn better?

So, if something's written down, one of the better ways to understand it is to say it

out loud because when it's written, you're using your visual.

When you say it out loud, that's right, your auditory comes in.

It's another component, so it means more of your brain has to be used to absorb the information.

It's also got a repetition factor.

Because you read it and then you say it, you're repeating it to make it go deeper, so it's

not just one time, I'm finished, it's one, "How are you today?"

"How are you today?"

By doing that alone, guess what?

That's right, you've listened, you've watched, but you've done the third one by accident,

by opening your mouth, you're using kinesthetic: "How are you today?"

You've done it three times now.

You've looked at it, you've said it, you've heard yourself, three repetitions for one

reading.

Some people will read it once, by doing that alone, you're doing it three times, so you

can see, you can learn three times as quickly.

That's why we call it Super Learning, taking what you have and maximizing your potential.

Also, when you're saying it out loud, it gives your brain the opportunity to critique or

look at that information, because you're saying it, does it make sense to you?

Why doesn't it make sense?

What is confusing to me?

When you're looking it down, you might say "I don't understand", or understand and it

stops.

When you say, "Does this sentence even work?", cool?

Alright.

Next: If it's spoken material, write it down.

Oh, it's the same, you just repeated it.

No.

It is the same in that we are using more senses to learn it, but when something's spoken,

it's quickly forgotten.

So, the added bonus to writing it down is you have notes to remind you so you can look

at it later.

But, one of the important things about writing it down is it's a motor skill that forces

your body to go through, once again, we're going to kinesthetic movement, forcing the

brain to work because you're taking sound and you're interpreting it into a - I would

say, visual medium, so then you've got the kinesthetic writing it, then it's the looking

at it, because I've never met anyone who writes like this.

Okay.

Usually they write and they look.

So, when you're in a lecture hall, most students do this naturally.

They write it down.

I met a person who was really interesting, well maybe I'm making that up and it was something

I read, but they said that they were at a meeting with someone and the person actually

- they wanted to meet this person and talk to them.

Just imagine a big manager and a small employee.

The big manager wanted to meet the small employee and the big manager took out a book and a

pen and started writing down what the small employee said.

It's like "Why?"

"Well, I can learn from you."

So, when I'm sitting there talking to you, I can learn from you if I'm writing it down.

If I don't, it gets forgotten, so it makes it more important to my brain because if I'm

writing it - taking the time, my brain goes "This must be important, I should remember

it."

It also gives me the opportunity, or you the opportunity, to go over what you've written

down and see if it makes sense and clarify it.

So you get to question it, think about it, give it some sense in your head, and it helps

you remember it.

So, these are brother and sister.

If it's written material, say it out loud.

Try to see if you can actually understand it when you just say it to yourself.

If it's spoken material, write it down.

Write it down afterwards and look and go "Does this actually make sense?"

Now, going with the writing, we've spoken about writing twice, there's a third one.

This is rather interesting.

Most of you, when you think of writing - or actually, let's actually be honest - most

of you in the 21st century, you don't write, you type.

You go to a classroom, you sit down, you type - click click click, right?

Click, click, click, or you do on your cell phone - click, click, click, and you take

these notes.

It reminds me of people who take pictures of everything and you ask them "Do you remember

that concert we went to last year?"

"Yes."

"Do you look at the pictures?"

"No."

"But you took many pictures."

"Yes."

"But you don't look at them."

"Yeah."

It's like, it was a waste.

You should have watched and enjoyed instead of taking pictures that you never look at.

So, you've missed it twice.

You've missed the actual thing and now you're missing what's actually in your computer.

The same with typing.

When you type, it actually doesn't activate your brain as much.

"Well, I took the notes, you said write it down."

I said "Yeah, write, write, I didn't say 'type'."

When you type it, your brain doesn't really know that this an "S" button and this is a

"T" button and this is a "U" button.

It has no clue.

It just knows "press button, press button, press button".

When you're writing, each character is individual, so it forces the brain to pay attention to

what you're doing, and that paying attention to what you're doing makes the language or

whatever subject you're studying go deeper into your brain.

Now, you notice I said here, I said "Write in cursive, do not print."

And some of you are like "What's that?"

I know!

Time has changed.

There was a time when I went to school, you had to learn cursive.

In fact, it was so bad, they gave you a pencil because you weren't good enough, and when

you mastered cursive, they gave you a pen and everybody waited for that day to be given

a pen like "You may now write in permanent ink, no more pencil for you because you're

a big boy now!"

So, for those of you who don't know what cursive is, because some of you won't, this is cursive.

Now, some of you right now are going "What did he just do?

Is that - is that Arabic?

Is that Sanskrit, what is that?

This is not English!"

This is cursive.

You're welcome.

Or, I can write it like this, I'm going to be off the board, but you'll see, you will

see what I mean.

The thing about cursive is it combines two parts or two part - the two parts of your

brain, your left and right hemisphere.

So, one is more artistic, one is more scientific, I mean, this is just general, don't take it

too seriously, even scientists have a problem with it, but they're saying the two parts

of your brain deal with different parts.

One form in function, one more logical thinking.

In cursive, it's combined, because when we write, that's more logical information, but

the cursive is artistic, you can see, swirl, swirl, dots, all art.

So, the two parts of the brain work together to make the information go deeper into the

brain, so you remember it better.

So, when I say "print", this is okay, not good enough.

You want to do this.

This will even require, for many of you, a lot of time to master.

I just recently started doing it again, and it took me a few days after years of being

able to do it to get this consistent.

You have to focus.

So, this is interesting in case you think "He just made that up, it came from nowhere!"

Well actually, I made it up with a whole bunch of important people down in the United States.

In The New York Times article, it was April 30th, 2013, the College Board findings, now

the college board in the States deals with the universities, and what they found is that

they have a general test that they give to all the students to see if they should go

to university.

They call it the SATs, but you don't need to know that.

But it's just a general test through America that everyone does to go into university and,

depending on your score, you can go to a better and better school, and they found that the

people who actually wrote in cursive outperformed not by millions, but outperformed or did better

than the people who printed, and I'm not even talking about typing, they just noticed that

these guys did better than these guys.

It's the same information, it's just they did it differently and gave their brain an

opportunity to work a little harder, to learn a little more.

So, I'm suggesting for you that when you do notes, try to write in cursive.

Here's a little secret: once you get good at cursive, it's actually faster, because

you flow, so you can write more.

Oh, who would have thought?

Like... raining in here, sweat dripping.

Okay, anyway.

The next one, we've talked about this and there, as I said, in the College Board findings,

they found the difference between printing and cursive and an improvement in people's

ability to remember the information and score or do better on tests.

That's real-world Super Learning.

Next one: Talk to yourself about it.

What?

Yeah, you're gonna be that person who walks down the street "So, I gotta get four bags

of milk, and then the cat said, and what I said to my boss..." and people - "They're

crazy, crazy!".

Yep, become that person.

Talk to yourself.

I have found that, if I'm reading something that's an idea and I start speaking about

it, the parts that I don't understand, I can't really talk about, I just get like "Uhhh",

and then that tells me to write down in cursive "I don't understand that and I have to re-do

it".

I've got to re-study that part because I can't explain it to myself.

Because when I can understand it, I can explain it to myself.

So, talk to yourself about it.

Whenever you get confused, that tells you that is a part you have to go back and study,

alright?

So, you're finding the holes in your knowledge.

So, if it's not increasing the knowledge, at least it's saying "You really don't know

this, you should study it."

Now, see this, has the "blah blah", see this, "blah, blah?"

That's me and you right now, or you and I. Teach someone.

I studied martial arts for a number of years, and one of my teachers used to make all of

the instructors teach someone else, so if you wanted to get a black belt, you had to

teach a class at brown belt.

When you were teaching, they would look at your students, and all the mistakes your students

made, they would say "Hey, guess what?

All the stuff they don't know - you don't know!

That's why they don't know it!

You didn't teach it to them."

So then you would have to learn this stuff, get good at it, and teach your students and

then they would test you again and then they would say "Okay, all of the student you taught

know this, you must know this material, now you can go for your black belt test."

Simple but effective.

What the students don't know, the teacher must not know, because if the teacher knew

it, they would teach it.

Teach someone else what you know.

It's not even what I just told you that you can show what you know, you notice there are

holes in your knowledge, or you don't really understand when people confront you with questions,

it means they ask you questions like "Why does that happen?" and you will be able to

either go "Well, because dadadadada", or you'll go "Well, ooh, that's good.

Ooh, I don't know."

And then you have to go learn.

You see, the thing about learning is that it's not just taking information in, it's

understanding that information, being able to use it, and keeping that information.

And also knowing what you don't know.

Many people make the mistake of thinking "Because I know this, this, this, and this, I have

a lot of knowledge, or I'm a very smart person.", but the smartest people look for what they

don't know, what they don't understand, because they know if you understand these things and

know these things, there's a greater room of improvement than just knowing more and

more and more, because the holes, or the things you don't know, end up bringing you down.

Cool?

So, teaching someone else helps you to fix those holes, so it's harder to bring you down

and you can build on that knowledge to go higher, faster.

And finally, I want to talk about summarizing, because I haven't done any of that at all,

I've just - take information, take information.

This is going to happen when we talk about reading.

I've done a couple of videos before about summarizing for reading and writing, or writing,

you know, essays, saying you're summarizing - it's like the five part essay thing, I said,

summarize using one word, because if you can get a one word and a picture, what you will

find is you can get it bigger - a greater idea, or really be able to give a, what's

the word I'm thinking of, an exact idea to the reader.

But, if you can't get it down to one picture, one word, then it's just a bunch of babbling

or meandering, which means going around like this without getting a focus on what you're

saying.

And I was saying that, for using a title or the idea for a paragraph, get it into one

word and then expand upon it.

Well, the same thing is when you're reading.

Read, stop at the end of a paragraph, try to get a picture in your head, write it out.

And that word or picture should express what the paragraph's about.

And if you can do that, two things happen.

Number one, if you summarize in the margin, means the corner, you can maybe have 10, 15

words which is much easier to remember than 10 or 15 pages, that will summarize the idea

of what you've read.

It also gives you a break to make sure you understand what you've read before you go

to the next part.

Do you remember, it talked about building?

Another word for building when we say going on top of each other is called "scaffolding".

So, you're scaffolding, if you get this and understand it then read it and summarize and

read and summarize, you're making sure along the way, you always understand, so when you

get to the ideas that they're trying to teach you, it's easier for you to get the big, global

picture, because all the way along, you've been making sure you understood.

Many people read a lot of pages, get to the end and say "Hm, I don't understand what I

just read.", and have to read again, which is a complete waste of your time.

And remember, with Super Learning, we're trying to minimize the time and maximize the learning.

So, summarize in the margins when you read.

Cool?

So, I'm hoping you got at least one, two, or three tools under your belt you can use

right away.

Eventually, you should try to use all seven, but I'd like to give you - can you believe

it - a test, because if it's about Super Learning, I want to know what you just learned.

Alright, quiz time!

You are Super Learnified.

That's not a word, but the whole point about that video or this video was you're learning

and you're Super Learning, so let's see what information you've actually learned and you

keep, because learning without keeping the information is a waste of time, alright?

You don't want to burn your hand on a fire on a regular basis and have to re-learn - bsh,

ahh, bsh, ahh!

So, first question I want to do because we're going to do a quiz is this: here are the five

questions and I want to see what information you have retained.

Retaining means "to keep".

Number one: Printing is the best way to remember information.

Hmm, I have my handy markers here.

Red is for "false", blue is for "true", which one will it be?

False!

But James, you told us that writing is better than typing with our fingers!

No, I said that's okay, but the best thing to do is use cursive.

Cursive is that line, when we were drawing like this, like "See", like that, right?

So, cursive is the best way.

Printing is okay, it's better than typing information in, but cursive is the superior.

So, let me open these caps so I don't go "click, click, click" every five seconds, alright?

Next: The article about cursive - see, you could have looked here, haha -The article

about cursive was in Psychology Today.

Oh no, it was written in, where did we write it?

New York Times.

They were looking at the SATs, right?

So, this one is also false.

What about this one here: Summarizing when reading helps to improve memory.

True.

We said when you summarize, it gives you the ability to get the ideas clearer in your head

and then scaffold, remember we talked about scaffolding, putting one idea on top of another,

to go higher and higher in knowledge?

That's why.

Number four: Reading out loud is for children and is best avoided by advanced students.

You know, when children read and they're like "The cat and the dog went to the store.

The cat got hit by a car."

Ooh, that's a bad story.

So, is it just for children?

This is false.

Why is it false?

Remember what we said, we're trying to get - there are three different ways of learning

for people, kinesthetic, auditory, and visual.

By reading out loud, we're engaging or we're using our auditory sense, right?

So, we have been looking visual, reading, remember we talked about auditory?

And then moving your mouth being in the kinesthetic sense.

It's not just for children, it's for advanced students as well, to help clarify what's in

their brain and make sure they understand because you have time to think about it, hmm.

Number five: Teaching others helps with remembering information and finding out what you need

to relearn.

True or false?

True.

When you teach others, you remember the gaps.

A gap is a space in your knowledge.

People have a tendency, or they will ask you questions, which is a good thing because when

they ask you questions, you get to think and think "Do I know the answer to that question,

or do I understand the material well enough to answer that question?"

That helps you learn, because you will go back, study and research, and if there are

holes in your knowledge, you will improve it, and if you can explain it well enough

that people understand, it says that you have learned the material very well, and that is

an excellent thing, because really, that's what learning is about, improving yourself

so you go to the next level, and also challenging yourself, because it's not just about English.

This can be used for anything you're learning, from medicine, sports, and English.

Now, I'm going to give you the bonus.

These things aren't exactly, well, none of these are about English and they don't need

to be, but these things will help you learn English faster, so you'll, you know, you'll

grow faster with it, and that's the point of the exercise.

The first one is: get some sleep.

A lot of people are walking around with four to five hours sleep and they're so proud of

themselves, like "I only need four hours sleep."

Heh, but in the long run, they've done a lot of medical studies saying dementia and Alzheimer's,

which are diseases of the mind ,the less sleep you get, the more you are able - you will

probably get Alzheimer's or dementia which means less mind capacity or not being able

to think when you're older.

So, when you really need your brains, you won't have them, so get some sleep, okay?

When you sleep, your brain actually stores information.

It deletes or gets rid of information that you don't need to have, like how many times

did you open a door today, and it looks for the information that's important and it keeps

it.

So, the more sleep you get, the better your brain can actually do that, so the learning

you've done today, you can keep for tomorrow, but when you don't sleep, you run the risk

of losing everything, okay?

So, get some sleep, that's the first thing you should do.

Now, here's a hint that you should do before you go to bed.

So, five to ten minutes before you go to bed, try to review what you've done in the day.

So, if you were working on grammar, try to think of what grammar points you learned,

what were the important points, what were the exceptions.

Here's why: they have found that, when you go to sleep, the things that are on your mind

will be played out in your mind when you have what they call REM sleep, or rapid eye movement,

you're dreaming.

So, you can influence that and help with keeping your memories by thinking about it before.

If it's important, your brain will take it in and, as you sleep, go over it.

Not bad, huh?

5-10 minutes, you study for hours, take 5 or 10 minutes before you go to bed and try

to remember.

I would do the same thing if I were doing Spanish or German, try to say a few things

of what's important and go to bed.

You might have a dream in English, that's not such a bad thing, and you'll be practicing

while you sleep, yes?

You get the extra practice in while you get that extra sleep.

Last thing is exercise.

I can't remember my Latin, but I think it's "Mens sana in corpore sano" which means a

sound mind and a sound body, old Latin.

Exercise is the event of making your feel good, giving you the energy to learn, but

also because the body is fit, when you're healthy, everything works better, including

your brain.

It is part of your body, after all, so if you're getting better circulation, better

breathing, your mind works better.

It's clearer and works faster, so it makes learning easier to do, because really, when

we do Super Learning tips, it's to make learning easier so you can learn more, retain it, and

enjoy what you've learned by being able to use it.

So, go out there and exercise.

It doesn't mean lift millions of weights or do CrossFit, it means take a walk in nature,

alright, walk the stairs, don't take the elevator, because the little things make a huge difference,

alright?

So, get some exercise.

Believe it or not, all of these things have to do with learning English, because they

make you a better person, and making you a better person gives you the ability to learn

more.

Homework, yay!

Finally, we've got our homework we've got to do.

I want you to take two of the concepts that you've learned today, take just two of them,

and use them to re-learn the lesson I've just taught you.

Huh, no!

I've told you before that when I had teachers, they made us teach students, and what we couldn't

teach, we didn't understand.

So I'm not saying take seven, take two, go out to a friend and explain these concepts

and see how well they understand.

If they're like "I don't get it, why this and that?", re-watch the video because that's

your studying.

Because I'm looking at it this way, if I can get you to look at this again and again and

start teaching it as much as possible, three months, six months, you'll be learning everything

you do a little bit better, English, of course, your first choice, but if you're getting better

in every way, you'll learn better and you'll have another reason to come back and learn

more.

And on that note, what I want you to do is I want you to go to www.engvid.com , where

you can learn about other lesson I've done on how to learn faster or learn better.

You can learn lessons in grammar, reading and writing, and there are other fabulous

teachers you can learn from.

As always, thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to learn

from us.

I always appreciate every minute you spend with me, and I look forward to seeing you

in the next video, okay?

Have a good one.