TEACHER EDUCATION

TECHNIQUES FOR LEARNERS TO REMEMBER LEARNED INFORMATION

Written by Kato Ans.


Remembering and forgetting. What is it?
Why Do People Forget?
How to boost memory?


Remembering simply refers to the ability to recall, bring back into memory learned information when needed while forgetting simply means inability to recall learned information when required.

Why Do People Forget Information?
There are various reasons that makes people to forget learned information, they include:

Decay, refers to fading away information with time. The information disappears because there is no use of it.

Inadequate rehearsal, learned information is more likely to be forgotten if there is no enough repetition of it.

Failure to encode, when you receive information and you fail to organize it may lead to forgetting. This can be caused by failure to understand the material clearly.

Interference, is the disruption of ability to remember one piece of information by the presence of other information. It occurs into two ways:-

• Retroactive interference: Occurs when new memory impairs memory for something learned earlier. New learning makes forget the previous learning.
• Proactive interference: Occurs when the previous learning impairs the new learning. The previous experiences make it difficult to earn new materials.

Amnesia, is the loose of memory over entire life span or over long period of time. It may result from brain damage, infection or accident.

Repression, this is the tendency where by real memories are push out because they are emotionally painful. Ignoring the information sometimes is called motivated forgetting.

Proved Techniques To Boost Memory

Attention, is the process of selecting what is important for further processing. It is vital to remembering because unless selective and proper attention is paid to the information to be learned, learning is unlikely to be effective.

Rehearsal, It involves repeating or reciting the skill or information as many as may be necessary to in long-term memory. The more the rehearsal the quicker the information will be recalled.

Organization, if the information to be learned is well organized, it can be remembered easily. One way of organizing the information is to break it into small unit (chunk) and to link these units to each other in the way they relate to each other so that remembering one unit will lead to remembering another related unit.

Distribution Practice, with relatively short study sessions followed by short rest period. This can prevent physical and emotional fatigue. Motivation is usually high when you work for short periods of time.

Recitation, after reading a paragraph in your text book, test yourself on what you have read by repeating the key ideas aloud. These ideas then have a chance to stay in your memory.

Activity, Students who spend some times discussing what they have learnt/studied, remember such information more easily than those who do not.

Mnemonics. Mnemonics are powerful tools for enhancing memory. Here a learner could use acronyms, for instance first letter of each of the points being mastered, or an arrangement that makes the points meaningful to pronounce.
Thus when a student wants to recall it will be very easy to retrieve it from memory.
A typical example is the arrangement of the characteristics  of living things as  MR NIGER i.e. M=Movement, R=Respiration, N=Nutrition, I=Irritability, G=Growth, E=Excretion, and R=Reproduction.
Other examples are, SMART= Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time bound.
ROYGBIV= Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.  and others of the like.

Meaningfulness, if the information learned has inherent/latent meaning, it will be retained in long-term memory. Information meets the criteria for meaningfulness if the new information can be related in some way to what a student already known.



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Gordon, W.C. (1989). Learning and Memory. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Westen, D. (1999). Psychology: Mind, Brain and Culture. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

TEACHER EDUCATION

DESCRIPTION ON HOW TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS CAN BE EFFECTIVELY DONE BASING ON LASSWELL AND BRADDOCK COMMUNICATION MODEL

Witten by Kato Anselemi, (editor in chief)

Communication is a process by which people create and share information with one another to reach a common ground of understanding. It has been argued that human beings are social animals because they live a social life and they interact one another from birth to death. Communication helps people to share with others information, experiences enjoyment/pleasures and other issues of the like.

Lasswell's Formula of Communication

Harold D. Lasswell was an American political scientist and hence his study was mainly focused on communication in political issues. He described communication in the form of questions and since it was not in graphic form, they named it as formula. Lassell's formula lists five questions:

who? says what? in which channel? to whom? with what effect?

 Lasswell and Braddock Model

In 1958, Braddock, R. proposed two more factors for consideration in analyzing communication process: "for what purpose?" and "under which circumstances?"

IMPLICATIONS OF LASSWELL AND BRADDOCK MODEL IN TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS

"Who"

The first question implies a teacher/instructor. For teaching and learning process to be effective, a teacher must be well equipped with professional skills (enough knowledge base) in teacher education. However, he/she must have a good mastery of content to be taught.

"Says what"

The second question seeks to gain insight on the nature of the content in the prepared lesson. For teaching and learning process to be effective, the message (content) to be communicated to learners must be well and systematically organized to the extent that it can be easily learned and understood. For instance the content should organized from simple to complex. 

"In which channel"

The third question seeks information about channels, media, ways or means of communicating the subject matter. It involves all methods, approaches, strategies and techniques to be involved in teaching and learning process. For teaching and learning process to be effective means of communicating the subject matter should selected wisely so as to cut across with the desired learning outcomes.

"To whom"

The fourth question seeks information about the receiver of the information, in the sense of nature, ability, culture, levels and other characteristics of the learner. For teaching and learning process to be effective, the message to be communicated and the means to be used must consider the intellectual abilities and levels of the learners. However, the message should be proved to have significance to learners.

"For what purpose"

The fifth question implies objectives (General and Specific objectives) of communicating that educational information to the students. For teaching and learning process to be effective, the instructional (behavioral) objectives should be technically constructed in respect of "ABCD" and "SMART" so as to successfully cut across with the desired learning outcomes.

"Under which circumstances"

The sixth question implies the context, situation or environment in which teaching and learning process is taking place for instance; time of the day, challenges, problems and other factors observed in the process. However, for teaching and learning process to be effective a teacher must ensure safe and well organized environment for the process to run smoothly.

"With what effect"

The last question seeks to understand the learning outcomes, results of the process as experienced after evaluation. For teaching and learning to be effective, a teacher must be aware of kind of individuals to be produced after the whole process. Individuals who will fit the needy of the society and in labor market generally.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Braddock, Richard (1958). "An Extension of the "Lasswell Formula" ". Journal of Communication. 8:88-93. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466. 1958.tb01138.x

McQuail, Denis; Windahl, Sven (1993). Communication models for the study of mass communication (2nd ed.). New York: Longman. pp. 13-15.