“Make It Stick” is one of my favorite books on meta-learning and the science behind the most successful learning strategies. In today’s post, I’ll share a few of the key points and how they apply to learning Japanese.
Practice Retrieval
The harder it is for you to recall new learning from memory, the greater the benefit of doing so…the effort of retrieving knowledge or skills strengthens its staying power.
Make It Stick
Perhaps you had the experience at school of reading and rereading your textbooks as the foundation of your learning process? During college, I certainly went through my share of highlighters trying to draw my attention to the most important passages and then repeatedly reviewing those until I felt like I’d internalized that information.
Little did I know that that was one of the least productive methods. The problem is that repeated exposure to the material gives the sensation of fluency — your brain recognizes that you’ve seen it before and merrily signals you that you must know it: after all, look how familiar it is?
A better strategy is retrieval practice, i.e. self-testing. Empirical research bears out that practicing retrieving information makes learning stick far better than re-exposure to the original material.
From the book, “To be most effective, retrieval must be repeated again and again, in spaced out sessions so that the recall, rather than becoming a mindless recitation, requires some cognitive effort. Repeated recall appears to help memory consolidate into a cohesive representation in the brain and to strengthen and multiply the neural routes by which the knowledge can later be retrieved.”
In the case of language learning, whether you’re using written flashcards, Anki (or another SRS), notebooks, whatever, you will learn new vocabulary and grammar points faster when you try to go from your native language to Japanese than vice versa. Test yourself by trying to produce Japanese (“How would I say, ‘the dog ate my homework’?”) rather than recognizing what “犬は宿題を食べた” means.
Mix Things Up
The authors discuss the concept of “desirable difficulties” using an example from the Cal Poly baseball team, in which batters practicing would swing at a number of fastballs, then move on to curveballs, and later change-ups. These batters performed better in practice than those who faced the three pitches in random order. But as it turned out, “the player who asks for random pitches during practice builds his ability to decipher and respond to each pitch… and he becomes the better hitter.”
The technical terms for this: “massed practice” vs. “interleaved practice.” Massed practice is how we typically approach learning—whether it’s via curveballs or math problems —we work through a set of similar problems until we attain a perceived level of mastery and then move on. Interleaved practice, on the other hand, is a much better course to mastery. Whether it’s mixing up the types of pitches we’re facing or the types of math problems we’re solving, we want to keep ourselves on our toes and not make it too easy.
Applied to language learning, consider the example of learning verb conjugations. A common drill is to take a deck of flashcards with one verb on each and flip through the deck, conjugating each verb into the past tense, one after another, then repeating the exercise using passive tense or causative or what have you. This drill becomes more effective and stickier if you choose the target conjugation randomly for each verb, perhaps by rolling a die or using a separate paired deck with all the verb tenses randomly assigned.
As another example, you may have targeted lists of vocabulary for particular topics, like cooking or computer programming. Rather then studying just those words within a single topic, the principle of interleaving suggests that you mixed them up, combining multiple categories.
The bottom line is, as you study, seek out ways to interleave your practice.
Space Things Out
Spaced repetition is better than mass repetition. Scientists call this phenomenon “the spacing effect.” As I wrote about previously in “Memory Quickstart”, memories (i.e. learning) are established more quickly and firmly by increasing the intervals between recall practice sessions. From the authors, ““The more you repeat in a single session, the more familiar it is and the less you struggle to remember it, therefore the less you learn. Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.”
This is the foundational principle behind Spaced Repetition Systems like Anki. They automatize the spacing process so that you’ll test yourself at the optimal intervals.
Action Steps
- Do read the book, it is excellent, and includes additional learning strategies beyond the few I listed here;
- Whatever the material you’re studying, find ways to self-test and practice retrieval as opposed to mere recognition;
- Interleave the types of things you’re studying so that your brain gets a little more challenge;
- Revisit the material over time, whether that’s using an SRS or a calendar or other reminders. Don’t try to use mass repetition in a single session to burn the material into your neurons – that doesn’t work for the long haul.