Learn English Podcast: How to Learn Faster with Microlearning (Examples Included)

- [Jack] Hello there, this is Jack from To Fluency.

And today we're going to talk about microlearning

and what this means when it comes to learning English.

Now microlearning is becoming a bit of a craze

at the moment, and I think there are a couple of things here

to really go into.

So today we're gonna look at what is microlearning,

why it's become such a popular trend right now,

and why people are talking about it a lot.

And we'll also spend a bit more time today

going through some of the vocabulary that we see.

So then you can learn some new words and phrases,

and I'll give you some more examples.

And then at the end, I'm gonna give you a breakdown

or a summary on how you can use microlearning

when it comes to learning English.

Please note that the links that I discuss today

will be in the description along with a link to get my book,

"The 5 Step Plan for English Fluency."

You can download that for free,

so definitely go and do that.

But yeah, we're gonna talk about microlearning today,

and I'm gonna start with the website exploding topics,

which again is one of my favorite websites.

And it says here to go straight into the definition.

Microlearning is a form of spaced repetition learning

in which lessons are broken up into bite-sized chunks

and repeated over time.

Microlearning is a form of spaced repetition learning

in which lessons are broken up into bite-sized chunks

and repeated over time.

So I'm gonna say this in a different way

and then look at some of this vocabulary.

Microlearning is where you repeat small lessons over time.

So you can think about a topic you can break this up into,

which means to take small parts from the lesson,

and then you learn those small parts

and repeat them over time.

So let's say your learning about the history of the UK.

Well, instead of just reading one book

on the general history of the UK,

what you can do is break up the history of the UK,

which is a massive subject, I understand that,

into small pieces.

So you might say, for example, Henry II

or the period post-World War II

and then you can break that up further

into different topics.

And the key here though, is that you're not just learning

about it, but you're repeating these lessons over time.

Now I've been thinking about this when it comes

to learning English and again, near the end,

I'll talk about the method that I've been talking about

really for years now when it comes to microlearning

and learning through repetition.

But I'm sure you have heard before how important

repetition is, in terms of being able to remember something.

And there's something called the forgetting curve here,

where if you repeat something today, then tomorrow,

then four days, eight days, 16 days,

so that the gap between when you're repeating something

gets bigger over time, then you're much more likely

to remember this.

And you think about doing this in an efficient way too,

so that you're not repeating it more than you have to

because when it comes to learning anything,

we want to be efficient.

We want to be able to remember things without doing more

than we need to, but at the same time, we need to understand

that repetition is really important.

And one of the reasons why I like eBooks,

especially Kindle eBooks, is that you can highlight passages

like parts of the ebook and repeat these over time.

So you can take the different packages

or the different sentences that you've highlighted

in the book and repeat them over a period of time.

And I think this is a really important thing as well,

that whenever it comes to anything, repetition is key

if you want to retain that information.

Now on another website, eLearning Industry,

they talk about the history of this and that it says

it has a long history even before computers were a thing.

So people were using this concept and taking small parts

of whatever it is they're learning

and repeating them over the long term.

But it says it really took off

when it met the modern smartphone,

so much so that leading microlearning platforms

feel like a mix of Twitter and Instagram, but educational.

So it says here, it took off when the smartphone came about

and people started using social media.

So for something to take off in this business sense,

or this educational sense means that it started

to become popular, people started to really use this.

Because you can think about a plane taking off,

which is what we use that phrasal verb for as well.

But if something is really taking off at the moment,

it means it's really becoming popular

and people are using this.

Now this made me think of something else

and it was about attention spans.

And I think this is an important topic here too.

And I found something on this and it says

on the Orlando Sentinel, which is talking about a study,

it says consider this, the average human attention span

is now shorter than a goldfish is, a recent study found

that the average human attention span

has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds today.

It is reported that goldfish

have a nine-second attention span.

And your attention span is the amount of time

that you can concentrate on a task or on something

before becoming distracted,

before your attention goes somewhere else.

And just think about that for a moment,

because I'm sure you have seen this in your life

or other people's lives, where you have a conversation

these days and it seems like people

aren't really paying attention, or it's difficult for them

to pay attention for a long period of time.

And people have said that maybe social media and our phones

have done this for us because we're always getting

notifications or were thinking, okay,

let's go on Instagram for a moment or let's go on TikTok.

And especially when you think

about all the new social media platforms,

the videos are getting shorter and shorter and shorter

where in the past people would go on Facebook or YouTube

and watch a video for at least five minutes.

There were some short videos, but generally speaking

most were five, 10, 15, 20 minutes

and then now things like TikTok

it's all about 10 to 15 seconds.

And I wonder if that's just gonna keep getting shorter

and shorter in the future, but we can use this

to our advantage or at least think about using

the short videos in a way that's going to be helpful for us.

And the eLearning Industry website

talks about some microlearning content examples.

It says text, which is phrases or short paragraphs, images,

videos of the short variety, short audio snippets,

and a snippet is like a small chunk of audio,

tests and quizzes and also games.

So you might have heard of a bite-sized content,

and this is what this is talking about, bite-sized content.

And if something is bite-sized,

it means it's small in nature.

So you can think about this in the literal sense,

to take a small bite of something,

a bite size means that you're only taking

a small part of your food at once,

you're not putting all the food into your mouth.

So that's where that comes from,

something that's bite-sized.

So bite-sized content means a small piece of content.

Now this type of microlearning, I don't think is perfect

for everything, for all subjects,

because it might be quite difficult when it comes

to complex subjects where you need to know

that overall structure.

Having said that, you can learn the overall structure,

go into the small parts of it, learn those,

and then you get a better understanding.

So I think it just depends on you and also maybe sometimes

the topic and what you're trying to learn.

Now, when it comes to learning English,

I've talked about something similar to this over the years

where I've talked about the sentence method,

which is where you learn in small chunks,

where you take sentences and you learn those sentences.

And I've also talked about repetition as well,

where you can take sentences,

use Spaced Repetition software, which is going back

to the repetition example I gave before

and then you can internalize these sentences

over the longterm.

Now you can do this on your own where you,

let's say you're reading a book and go back

to the Kindle example or any kind of e-book app

that you might use, where you can highlight sentences

within a book, and then go back to those later

and repeat them.

And there might be some software that allows you

to input these into Space Repetition software as well.

So what you're doing is you're getting the general concept

of the book, and then you're going deeper

into the microlearning and using the repetition method

that we've talked about in order to really understand

this over the long term.

Now what we're doing here with English,

because it's a language is when we're doing this

with sentences, we are internalizing the grammar

over the long term.

We are understanding and recognizing patterns

in a natural way.

Because when you think about learning grammar,

you can learn the rules and think about it in that sense

where, okay, I need to use this, then that, and then that,

whereas I feel, and what I've talked about for years

is a more natural way of learning and a way

where it just feels right to you is where you repeat

lots of sentences so that you just pick up these patterns.

And to pick up these patterns means

that you just internalize them, you naturally learn them.

So you're not focusing on the rules,

instead you're just naturally getting to a stage

where the patterns, grammar feels right to you.

Now let's talk about social media as well,

because like I said, a lot of lessons these days

on social media are broken down into micro lessons

where you have a minute video or 15-second video

explaining a phrasal verb or piece of vocabulary, et cetera.

Now, the big advantage to this, is it fits in with this idea

of microlearning because you're taking one concept,

you're learning it and it doesn't feel so overwhelming

and it might fit better with the way that we just engage

with content these days.

Now, I think there were two things you can do here too,

to really expand this,

the first one is to repeat micro lessons.

So when you see one of my Shorts or Instagram lesson

or another teacher's Instagram lesson, you can save that.

So on Instagram, there's a feature where you can save it

and put it into a category.

And then maybe every week you just go back

through the lessons, which means you go

and repeat the lessons again, so that you can implement

more of this repetition into it.

And then the second thing you can do is try to engage

a little bit more with the lesson where you write

your own examples of whatever it is that you're learning.

So let's say it's the phrasal verb to break down,

because we've talked about that in this lesson,

you can write a few sentences on this

or the phrasal verb takeoff, you can write a few sentences

about that as well, and use Grammarly

or any kind of app that allows you to test

or check your grammar so that you know

you're writing correctly.

Now I think the downside of this, or one of the downsides

is that it's not so structured.

And the context from micro lessons isn't as strong.

And I think context is king with a lot of these things

that we're talking about.

And what I mean by context is the context of the sentence.

So how do you use this sentence, who uses this sentence?

And when do you use it?

Because you might be learning some slang, let's say,

but without the real context of who uses this

and it can be quite nuanced,

which means it can be quite tricky to know

exactly when to use it, quite hard to know

when to use it exactly.

So you might learn some slang and then you realize

only young kids use this and maybe you're older

and it doesn't seem quite right to use it.

Or maybe you learn a phrasal verb and it just doesn't work

in the right situation.

So I think that there is a downside

to using the social media, these lessons

because of the context, but at the same time,

if you're getting enough natural input, if you're reading,

if you're listening to long form content

and you're also just doing the general things

to improve your English, then you should be able to realize

the context of it.

And the more English you know,

the more you do this over time, the more you'll understand,

okay, that we use this phrasal verb in this situation.

Oh, I've heard that before

and therefore I know how to use it.

So that's quite nuanced, it's quite complex tier,

but just to give a quick summary,

microlearning is becoming a thing.

And I think part of this is just the attention span

and the way that the social media websites,

they're putting out shorter form content,

and this is driven by people and how they engage

with the content, so I think it is user generated.

Now, there are many ways you can use this to your advantage,

and I've taught about this, the sentence method,

get sentences and repeat them.

However you're going to do this,

get sentences and repeat them.

And if you can get sentences from strong context,

for example, this podcast,

then you're going to have a better idea of how to use it.

And then on the other hand, we can also use social media

micro lessons that teachers are putting out

and also just regular social media videos

from people who aren't teaching English.

So just like the natural content, and then you can save them

and repeat them and write your own sentences using them.

So then we're introducing that element of repetition,

but always be careful about the type of language

you're using or learning, sorry,

and where the context comes from.

So those are my thoughts on microlearning

and what it means for you as an English learner.

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Okay, so thanks again for being here.

Again, my name is Jack from To Fluency.

I'll have all the links in the description for you

and I will speak to you soon, bye bye for now.