Observations on Learning
Audio-visual
information from the external world is received, elaborated, and memorised in
relation to the attention given to it.
Attention
is determined by persona! interest and willingness, likes and needs at school
or work. Effectively it involves utilitarian selection resulting in a
hierarchical order from among the stimuli of information. What happens
when the receptor does not pay attention to the information, which comes from
the external world because he is not interested in it?
Let
us first observe learning in a context which is not educational. When somebody
who loves music hears a song by chance and he does not listen to it
intentionally to remember its words or notes, will he ever be able to remember
them? In effect, he can remember more and more each time he comes across it,
specifically: (a) the word order, that is, the word before or after another one;
(b) the mind association among the words, that is, the word which recalls
another word or a whole sequence of words; (c) the connection of the words with
the melody.
Does
it happen that somebody remembers what he does not need or want to remember at a
particular moment?
It
is possible that when somebody talks about A he remembers F perhaps because A
recalls F in his mind. Can it happen that somebody cannot remember what he needs
and wants to remember at a particular moment? It is possible that when somebody
talks about A he does not remember that he may connect A with B perhaps because
he has never associated A with B in his mind, so that A may recall B
automatically.
Maybe
he does not know that B comes after A or he knows it but he does not know how to
join together A to B into AB.
Automatic
links may occur among words, images and sensations in general and for example: when
a historian at a conference talks about the historical figure], he may remind a
spectator of the battle X because the spectator has a picture representing it
and the battle X may remind him of the weapons of the period Y because he has a
sword that he can touch...
Let
us go back to the song mentioned above: what happens when the receptor as a
singer in a chorus decides to listen to it deliberately to remember it?
The
time of the memorisation of the song depends on the attention given to the song
itself:
Major
attention implies minor time to memorise;
Minor
attention implies major time to memorise.
Let
us now observe learning in a context which is educational. The counsellor as a
teacher, during his session makes his academic speech concerning Counselling
theory and practice; as he is a skilful counsellor, his exposition is very
communicative because it represents the teacher's action, which needs the
student's reaction to build up the interaction of the process of learning.
The
student receiving audio-visual information summarises, schematises and takes
down notes. The student, in elaborating audio-visual information, gives it the
familiarity which allows him to learn it very well in a short time.
The
student writes because in his writing, which involves auditory, visual and
kinaesthetic skills, he translates the teacher's spoken language, or the written
language of the book, into his own language.
The
student translates an external information into an internal information. The
external information may include sound (e.g. the teacher's voice) or may
include sight (e.g. the printed page). The internal information is the student's
personal, original expression. The student creates the way of disclosing his
own personality to the external world by using his individual language and by
choosing lexicon, syntax, and symbols which decode the teacher's code into the
student's code.
The
student's code is the means by which the implementation of the internalisation
of external information is possible. The internalisation of information implies
the translation of the unfamiliarity of audio-visual information into the
familiarity of contents, handwriting and computer graphics.
The
student, who is used to elaborating, writes a word with a similar meaning
instead of another one which is difficult to remember or he reports it after
asking the teacher for explanation; the skilled student understands that one
concept is as the integration of another one and he puts them together by
marking them with the same number or asterisk or symbol; he puts data referring
to events, characters or argumentation in a connected series that he can
understand.
The
student becomes author of information by giving a new aspect to external
information, by writing the teacher's utterance in his own way. The student
becomes a source of self-information when he studies by using the new aspect
that he has given to external information, that is, his elaboration.
The
student, in being author and source of information, learns faster and better
what he has to communicate as a learner during his scholastic career, as a
worker during his professional career, and as a performer throughout his life.
Let
us consider external information that is visual information. What does
the student remember better, the page of the book or the same page translated by
himself into his precis? The student used to elaborating may remember, for
example, that: his lines of writing fill just the half of a page; he has written
in block capitals with red ink the titles of the different topics so that he
cannot mix up the topics; he has numbered the different parts for each topic to
remember the different points which he has to communicate to the teacher during
his oral or written task.
The
student uses his notes as visual references where the graphic signs have a
precise semantic value. The student's visual memory can recognise what is
familiar to it such as the student's handwriting as the manifestation of his
personal elaboration; visual memory cannot recognise what it is unfamiliar to it
such as the types used in the printing of the student's book because they are
not the manifestation of his personal elaboration.
During
the lesson, the student takes notes from the teacher's voice. What happens if
the student listens to his own voice rather than to the teacher's voice? Is it
possible to deduce, by observing the process of learning, that the student's
auditory memory may recognise the familiarity of the student's voice as his
physical sound expression, as the student's extension?
The
student who is the actor and author of information seems to recall easier,
when asked for reiteration, what he himself reads, says and writes, by acting as
a performer able to use all of his visual, auditory and kinaesthetic skills and
strategies.
The
student, as the successful communicative performer, exploits his visual
potentiality when he is able to mentally
recall and to externally communicate what involves his hearing, such as sounds,
speeches, utterances, background music, noise, silence. The student exploits his
kinaesthetic potentiality when he is able to use movement to mentally recall and
externally communicate, whereas according to a particular method of teaching and
learning called Total Physical Response (TPS) the physical action while learning
may act as a stimulus to recall learning itself (AsherJ. 1966,1977 -
AsherJ. Price, B.S. 1967).
From
the observations on learning comes the concept of learning as a complex process
which involves mind and any of the five powers of the body: sight, hearing,
touch, smell and taste.
The
student who revises his lesson walking in the garden may remember the blue sky,
his neighbour's voice, the smell of the flowers, the taste of his tea and the
act of walking itself. The student in remembering all of this information may
often recall his learning or some parts of it connected to the perception of his
senses and his motion, and usually the development of learning as related to his
different moods and gestures at different moments.
1
A...B...F: different topics.
Alessandra d'Epiro Dusmet de Beaulieu
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