How come that one person starts to speak a language and understands native speakers just in 6 months of studying while the other in the very same time has gone through just a couple of basic topics?
I´ve passed through something similar at the University, but I just thought that it´s because I´m from a little town and don´t have any particular talent or maybe just I'm not very smart.
Now I'd like to share something with you:
We know that every person has his or her own rythm of learning new information. Some can find a response just in a second, as if they are heading to it in some kind of a race car. They don't have any difficulties learning a new rule by heart, even though it's about a difficult topic.
Others go slowly, just as hitchhikers. They need more time to understand the core of a question, and even more to memorise something.
There are also those who can switch race drivers' and hitchhiker's modes. But it always seems like the race drivers are better than the others, as they can easily reach the knowledge and it comes to them with no or just a little effort.
It turned out that in my classes I've dealed more with the first ones. Although after a long-term work with hitchhikers I understood, that their approach has a lot of benefits.
When we're moving slowly we have more time to see the world around us. The same in learning - if we spend a lot of time solving some problem or looking for an answer to a difficult question, if our path is full of obstacles, the very way fills up with more sense. We study the question all over and we spend as much time as we need to get to the answer. When we finally achieve to put in our heads, it's quite difficult for it to find the way out, as it is an issue that took you a LOT of time to solve.
Car racers do good as well, but if you're moving too fast you can't see the way you're going through - it takes you just a second to reach the aim. Because of that you can miss a lot of small details, which can be quite important. Also: easy come, easy go - a knowledge which you got without any effort can be easily forgotten in a short space of time. I've got various cases when a pupil achieved a high level of language, but still kept making beginners' errors. I found it quite interesting that when I highlited this error for them, the pupil reminded perfectly the rule I was talking about, but in a few minutes they made the same error once again.
There is no better or worse in any of these approaches. Moreover, we can not choose them, our speed of learning does not change if we are more critical with ourselves or sistematically compare ourselves with the others' progress. That's why maybe if you feel stuck it's better try to see it from another point of view and accept that a slow studying has its own benefits which are no worse (and no better) than the ones of speed learners. Be chill and take your time!
Writer: Ksenia Zhavoronkova
Resource: Beth Rogowsky, Barb Oakley, Terry Sejnowski, online course “Uncommon Sense Teaching. Deep Teaching Solutions”
Amazing article! well done.