Hm hm hm hm, whew, so much to learn. Hey, James from www.engvid.com . Today's lesson,
I want to teach you about Super Learning, you know, from one of my favorite, well, not
my favorite superhero, but my brother's and a good friend of mine's superhero: Superman. Why is he Superman? Because he does everything better than the
average person. Today's lesson is how to learn better. Now, I'm not saying better than the average
person, but to improve your ability to learn or to, yeah, be better than the average person
when they learn. And you might say "Why is that important? This is an English lesson." Learning English: the grammar, vocabulary,
syntax, reading and writing, they're all great things. The problem is when you're not able to learn
on a constant basis and continually improve, if you get bored and stagnant, you stop learning,
you stop working, you give it up. If I can give you some tools with which to
improve and give you the ability to learn faster, as you get it in faster and you learn,
you will complete the goal that you started for yourself, which was to learn English. So, let's go to the board and do some Super
Learning. Alright? Super Learning, it's Mr. E with his big "S"
on his chest, flying powerfully. This lesson I'm giving to a guy named Joseph
Alain Leconte, he's from Haiti, I was out on the street one day and he came up and said
"Hey, I watch your videos, thank you very much!", and Alain - sorry, Joseph Alain, thank
you very much for stopping to say hello. I always appreciate it and I love the support
that you guys give. But let me get to the board and get to the
lesson, that's why you're here. So, we're going to go one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven different things or exercises I can give you to help you become a Super
Learner. Super Learning isn't anything special, it's
basically doing not just your best, that's one thing, it's maximizing your potential,
and what I mean by - you have a line that you start at, and here's what you can possibly
do. Most of us, at our best, move up here. When we do Super Learning, we actually go
up here and learn as much as we can actually do. And it's surprising how much you can take
in and how much you can use to become better in a short period of time if you're given
certain tools, and I'm going to give you a few hints today. One of the first things is there's Mr. E with
a megaphone, he's speaking out. If it's written material, say it out loud. What? Well, when you read it, read it, that's using
your vision, okay? There are three ways learn, there are actually
more, but three basic ones people are taught in teachers' colleges that most students use
to learn. One is visual, with your eye, one is auditory
with your ear, and the other kinesthetic, doing something. That's why, in school, you'll notice teachers
write on a board, you look at it, then they speak, you listen, then you write down information. By doing those three, you can keep up to 80%
of the information, alright? And also, repetition and a few other things. But there's the things that help you learn. A lot of people have things that they're better
at, so some people are better at listening than they are at understanding information
when it's written, or when they do it, they're confused, but if you explain it to them, they're
like "Oh, I get it, I can do that." Same with some people, they need to see it,
you demonstrate it, they can understand, but if you say it to them or make them do it,
they don't, okay? So, there's two of the three, and obviously
number three, the kinesthetic, if they do it, they understand much better than if you
write it on the board or explain it. So, why am I telling you "If it's written,
say it"? Well remember, I said if all three are combined
you learn better? So, if something's written down, one of the
better ways to understand it is to say it out loud because when it's written, you're
using your visual. When you say it out loud, that's right, your
auditory comes in. It's another component, so it means more of
your brain has to be used to absorb the information. It's also got a repetition factor. Because you read it and then you say it, you're
repeating it to make it go deeper, so it's not just one time, I'm finished, it's one,
"How are you today?" "How are you today?" By doing that alone, guess what? That's right, you've listened, you've watched,
but you've done the third one by accident, by opening your mouth, you're using kinesthetic:
"How are you today?" You've done it three times now. You've looked at it, you've said it, you've
heard yourself, three repetitions for one reading. Some people will read it once, by doing that
alone, you're doing it three times, so you can see, you can learn three times as quickly. That's why we call it Super Learning, taking
what you have and maximizing your potential. Also, when you're saying it out loud, it gives
your brain the opportunity to critique or look at that information, because you're saying
it, does it make sense to you? Why doesn't it make sense? What is confusing to me? When you're looking it down, you might say
"I don't understand", or understand and it stops. When you say, "Does this sentence even work?",
cool? Alright. Next: If it's spoken material, write it down. Oh, it's the same, you just repeated it. No. It is the same in that we are using more senses
to learn it, but when something's spoken, it's quickly forgotten. So, the added bonus to writing it down is
you have notes to remind you so you can look at it later. But, one of the important things about writing
it down is it's a motor skill that forces your body to go through, once again, we're
going to kinesthetic movement, forcing the brain to work because you're taking sound
and you're interpreting it into a - I would say, visual medium, so then you've got the
kinesthetic writing it, then it's the looking at it, because I've never met anyone who writes
like this. Okay. Usually they write and they look. So, when you're in a lecture hall, most students
do this naturally. They write it down. I met a person who was really interesting,
well maybe I'm making that up and it was something I read, but they said that they were at a
meeting with someone and the person actually - they wanted to meet this person and talk
to them. Just imagine a big manager and a small employee. The big manager wanted to meet the small employee
and the big manager took out a book and a pen and started writing down what the small
employee said. It's like "Why?" "Well, I can learn from you." So, when I'm sitting there talking to you,
I can learn from you if I'm writing it down. If I don't, it gets forgotten, so it makes
it more important to my brain because if I'm writing it - taking the time, my brain goes
"This must be important, I should remember it." It also gives me the opportunity, or you the
opportunity, to go over what you've written down and see if it makes sense and clarify
it. So you get to question it, think about it,
give it some sense in your head, and it helps you remember it. So, these are brother and sister. If it's written material, say it out loud. Try to see if you can actually understand
it when you just say it to yourself. If it's spoken material, write it down. Write it down afterwards and look and go "Does
this actually make sense?" Now, going with the writing, we've spoken
about writing twice, there's a third one. This is rather interesting. Most of you, when you think of writing - or
actually, let's actually be honest - most of you in the 21st century, you don't write,
you type. You go to a classroom, you sit down, you type
- click click click, right? Click, click, click, or you do on your cell
phone - click, click, click, and you take these notes. It reminds me of people who take pictures
of everything and you ask them "Do you remember that concert we went to last year?" "Yes." "Do you look at the pictures?" "No." "But you took many pictures." "Yes." "But you don't look at them." "Yeah." It's like, it was a waste. You should have watched and enjoyed instead
of taking pictures that you never look at. So, you've missed it twice. You've missed the actual thing and now you're
missing what's actually in your computer. The same with typing. When you type, it actually doesn't activate
your brain as much. "Well, I took the notes, you said write it
down." I said "Yeah, write, write, I didn't say 'type'." When you type it, your brain doesn't really
know that this an "S" button and this is a "T" button and this is a "U" button. It has no clue. It just knows "press button, press button,
press button". When you're writing, each character is individual,
so it forces the brain to pay attention to what you're doing, and that paying attention
to what you're doing makes the language or whatever subject you're studying go deeper
into your brain. Now, you notice I said here, I said "Write
in cursive, do not print." And some of you are like "What's that?" I know! Time has changed. There was a time when I went to school, you
had to learn cursive. In fact, it was so bad, they gave you a pencil
because you weren't good enough, and when you mastered cursive, they gave you a pen
and everybody waited for that day to be given a pen like "You may now write in permanent
ink, no more pencil for you because you're a big boy now!" So, for those of you who don't know what cursive
is, because some of you won't, this is cursive. Now, some of you right now are going "What
did he just do? Is that - is that Arabic? Is that Sanskrit, what is that? This is not English!" This is cursive. You're welcome. Or, I can write it like this, I'm going to
be off the board, but you'll see, you will see what I mean. The thing about cursive is it combines two
parts or two part - the two parts of your brain, your left and right hemisphere. So, one is more artistic, one is more scientific,
I mean, this is just general, don't take it too seriously, even scientists have a problem
with it, but they're saying the two parts of your brain deal with different parts. One form in function, one more logical thinking. In cursive, it's combined, because when we
write, that's more logical information, but the cursive is artistic, you can see, swirl,
swirl, dots, all art. So, the two parts of the brain work together
to make the information go deeper into the brain, so you remember it better. So, when I say "print", this is okay, not
good enough. You want to do this. This will even require, for many of you, a
lot of time to master. I just recently started doing it again, and
it took me a few days after years of being able to do it to get this consistent. You have to focus. So, this is interesting in case you think
"He just made that up, it came from nowhere!" Well actually, I made it up with a whole bunch
of important people down in the United States. In The New York Times article, it was April
30th, 2013, the College Board findings, now the college board in the States deals with
the universities, and what they found is that they have a general test that they give to
all the students to see if they should go to university. They call it the SATs, but you don't need
to know that. But it's just a general test through America
that everyone does to go into university and, depending on your score, you can go to a better
and better school, and they found that the people who actually wrote in cursive outperformed
not by millions, but outperformed or did better than the people who printed, and I'm not even
talking about typing, they just noticed that these guys did better than these guys. It's the same information, it's just they
did it differently and gave their brain an opportunity to work a little harder, to learn
a little more. So, I'm suggesting for you that when you do
notes, try to write in cursive. Here's a little secret: once you get good
at cursive, it's actually faster, because you flow, so you can write more. Oh, who would have thought? Like... raining in here, sweat dripping. Okay, anyway. The next one, we've talked about this and
there, as I said, in the College Board findings, they found the difference between printing
and cursive and an improvement in people's ability to remember the information and score
or do better on tests. That's real-world Super Learning. Next one: Talk to yourself about it. What? Yeah, you're gonna be that person who walks
down the street "So, I gotta get four bags of milk, and then the cat said, and what I
said to my boss..." and people - "They're crazy, crazy!". Yep, become that person. Talk to yourself. I have found that, if I'm reading something
that's an idea and I start speaking about it, the parts that I don't understand, I can't
really talk about, I just get like "Uhhh", and then that tells me to write down in cursive
"I don't understand that and I have to re-do it". I've got to re-study that part because I can't
explain it to myself. Because when I can understand it, I can explain
it to myself. So, talk to yourself about it. Whenever you get confused, that tells you
that is a part you have to go back and study, alright? So, you're finding the holes in your knowledge. So, if it's not increasing the knowledge,
at least it's saying "You really don't know this, you should study it." Now, see this, has the "blah blah", see this,
"blah, blah?" That's me and you right now, or you and I.
Teach someone. I studied martial arts for a number of years,
and one of my teachers used to make all of the instructors teach someone else, so if
you wanted to get a black belt, you had to teach a class at brown belt. When you were teaching, they would look at
your students, and all the mistakes your students made, they would say "Hey, guess what? All the stuff they don't know - you don't
know! That's why they don't know it! You didn't teach it to them." So then you would have to learn this stuff,
get good at it, and teach your students and then they would test you again and then they
would say "Okay, all of the student you taught know this, you must know this material, now
you can go for your black belt test." Simple but effective. What the students don't know, the teacher
must not know, because if the teacher knew it, they would teach it. Teach someone else what you know. It's not even what I just told you that you
can show what you know, you notice there are holes in your knowledge, or you don't really
understand when people confront you with questions, it means they ask you questions like "Why
does that happen?" and you will be able to either go "Well, because dadadadada", or you'll
go "Well, ooh, that's good. Ooh, I don't know." And then you have to go learn. You see, the thing about learning is that
it's not just taking information in, it's understanding that information, being able
to use it, and keeping that information. And also knowing what you don't know. Many people make the mistake of thinking "Because
I know this, this, this, and this, I have a lot of knowledge, or I'm a very smart person.",
but the smartest people look for what they don't know, what they don't understand, because
they know if you understand these things and know these things, there's a greater room
of improvement than just knowing more and more and more, because the holes, or the things
you don't know, end up bringing you down. Cool? So, teaching someone else helps you to fix
those holes, so it's harder to bring you down and you can build on that knowledge to go
higher, faster. And finally, I want to talk about summarizing,
because I haven't done any of that at all, I've just - take information, take information. This is going to happen when we talk about
reading. I've done a couple of videos before about
summarizing for reading and writing, or writing, you know, essays, saying you're summarizing
- it's like the five part essay thing, I said, summarize using one word, because if you can
get a one word and a picture, what you will find is you can get it bigger - a greater
idea, or really be able to give a, what's the word I'm thinking of, an exact idea to
the reader. But, if you can't get it down to one picture,
one word, then it's just a bunch of babbling or meandering, which means going around like
this without getting a focus on what you're saying. And I was saying that, for using a title or
the idea for a paragraph, get it into one word and then expand upon it. Well, the same thing is when you're reading. Read, stop at the end of a paragraph, try
to get a picture in your head, write it out. And that word or picture should express what
the paragraph's about. And if you can do that, two things happen. Number one, if you summarize in the margin,
means the corner, you can maybe have 10, 15 words which is much easier to remember than
10 or 15 pages, that will summarize the idea of what you've read. It also gives you a break to make sure you
understand what you've read before you go to the next part. Do you remember, it talked about building? Another word for building when we say going
on top of each other is called "scaffolding". So, you're scaffolding, if you get this and
understand it then read it and summarize and read and summarize, you're making sure along
the way, you always understand, so when you get to the ideas that they're trying to teach
you, it's easier for you to get the big, global picture, because all the way along, you've
been making sure you understood. Many people read a lot of pages, get to the
end and say "Hm, I don't understand what I just read.", and have to read again, which
is a complete waste of your time. And remember, with Super Learning, we're trying
to minimize the time and maximize the learning. So, summarize in the margins when you read. Cool? So, I'm hoping you got at least one, two,
or three tools under your belt you can use right away. Eventually, you should try to use all seven,
but I'd like to give you - can you believe it - a test, because if it's about Super Learning,
I want to know what you just learned. Alright, quiz time! You are Super Learnified. That's not a word, but the whole point about
that video or this video was you're learning and you're Super Learning, so let's see what
information you've actually learned and you keep, because learning without keeping the
information is a waste of time, alright? You don't want to burn your hand on a fire
on a regular basis and have to re-learn - bsh, ahh, bsh, ahh! So, first question I want to do because we're
going to do a quiz is this: here are the five questions and I want to see what information
you have retained. Retaining means "to keep". Number one: Printing is the best way to remember
information. Hmm, I have my handy markers here. Red is for "false", blue is for "true", which
one will it be? False! But James, you told us that writing is better
than typing with our fingers! No, I said that's okay, but the best thing
to do is use cursive. Cursive is that line, when we were drawing
like this, like "See", like that, right? So, cursive is the best way. Printing is okay, it's better than typing
information in, but cursive is the superior. So, let me open these caps so I don't go "click,
click, click" every five seconds, alright? Next: The article about cursive - see, you
could have looked here, haha -The article about cursive was in Psychology Today. Oh no, it was written in, where did we write
it? New York Times. They were looking at the SATs, right? So, this one is also false. What about this one here: Summarizing when
reading helps to improve memory. True. We said when you summarize, it gives you the
ability to get the ideas clearer in your head and then scaffold, remember we talked about
scaffolding, putting one idea on top of another, to go higher and higher in knowledge? That's why. Number four: Reading out loud is for children
and is best avoided by advanced students. You know, when children read and they're like
"The cat and the dog went to the store. The cat got hit by a car." Ooh, that's a bad story. So, is it just for children? This is false. Why is it false? Remember what we said, we're trying to get
- there are three different ways of learning for people, kinesthetic, auditory, and visual. By reading out loud, we're engaging or we're
using our auditory sense, right? So, we have been looking visual, reading,
remember we talked about auditory? And then moving your mouth being in the kinesthetic
sense. It's not just for children, it's for advanced
students as well, to help clarify what's in their brain and make sure they understand
because you have time to think about it, hmm. Number five: Teaching others helps with remembering
information and finding out what you need to relearn. True or false? True. When you teach others, you remember the gaps. A gap is a space in your knowledge. People have a tendency, or they will ask you
questions, which is a good thing because when they ask you questions, you get to think and
think "Do I know the answer to that question, or do I understand the material well enough
to answer that question?" That helps you learn, because you will go
back, study and research, and if there are holes in your knowledge, you will improve
it, and if you can explain it well enough that people understand, it says that you have
learned the material very well, and that is an excellent thing, because really, that's
what learning is about, improving yourself so you go to the next level, and also challenging
yourself, because it's not just about English. This can be used for anything you're learning,
from medicine, sports, and English. Now, I'm going to give you the bonus. These things aren't exactly, well, none of
these are about English and they don't need to be, but these things will help you learn
English faster, so you'll, you know, you'll grow faster with it, and that's the point
of the exercise. The first one is: get some sleep. A lot of people are walking around with four
to five hours sleep and they're so proud of themselves, like "I only need four hours sleep." Heh, but in the long run, they've done a lot
of medical studies saying dementia and Alzheimer's, which are diseases of the mind ,the less sleep
you get, the more you are able - you will probably get Alzheimer's or dementia which
means less mind capacity or not being able to think when you're older. So, when you really need your brains, you
won't have them, so get some sleep, okay? When you sleep, your brain actually stores
information. It deletes or gets rid of information that
you don't need to have, like how many times did you open a door today, and it looks for
the information that's important and it keeps it. So, the more sleep you get, the better your
brain can actually do that, so the learning you've done today, you can keep for tomorrow,
but when you don't sleep, you run the risk of losing everything, okay? So, get some sleep, that's the first thing
you should do. Now, here's a hint that you should do before
you go to bed. So, five to ten minutes before you go to bed,
try to review what you've done in the day. So, if you were working on grammar, try to
think of what grammar points you learned, what were the important points, what were
the exceptions. Here's why: they have found that, when you
go to sleep, the things that are on your mind will be played out in your mind when you have
what they call REM sleep, or rapid eye movement, you're dreaming. So, you can influence that and help with keeping
your memories by thinking about it before. If it's important, your brain will take it
in and, as you sleep, go over it. Not bad, huh? 5-10 minutes, you study for hours, take 5
or 10 minutes before you go to bed and try to remember. I would do the same thing if I were doing
Spanish or German, try to say a few things of what's important and go to bed. You might have a dream in English, that's
not such a bad thing, and you'll be practicing while you sleep, yes? You get the extra practice in while you get
that extra sleep. Last thing is exercise. I can't remember my Latin, but I think it's
"Mens sana in corpore sano" which means a sound mind and a sound body, old Latin. Exercise is the event of making your feel
good, giving you the energy to learn, but also because the body is fit, when you're
healthy, everything works better, including your brain. It is part of your body, after all, so if
you're getting better circulation, better breathing, your mind works better. It's clearer and works faster, so it makes
learning easier to do, because really, when we do Super Learning tips, it's to make learning
easier so you can learn more, retain it, and enjoy what you've learned by being able to
use it. So, go out there and exercise. It doesn't mean lift millions of weights or
do CrossFit, it means take a walk in nature, alright, walk the stairs, don't take the elevator,
because the little things make a huge difference, alright? So, get some exercise. Believe it or not, all of these things have
to do with learning English, because they make you a better person, and making you a
better person gives you the ability to learn more. Homework, yay! Finally, we've got our homework we've got
to do. I want you to take two of the concepts that
you've learned today, take just two of them, and use them to re-learn the lesson I've just
taught you. Huh, no! I've told you before that when I had teachers,
they made us teach students, and what we couldn't teach, we didn't understand. So I'm not saying take seven, take two, go
out to a friend and explain these concepts and see how well they understand. If they're like "I don't get it, why this
and that?", re-watch the video because that's your studying. Because I'm looking at it this way, if I can
get you to look at this again and again and start teaching it as much as possible, three
months, six months, you'll be learning everything you do a little bit better, English, of course,
your first choice, but if you're getting better in every way, you'll learn better and you'll
have another reason to come back and learn more. And on that note, what I want you to do is
I want you to go to www.engvid.com , where you can learn about other lesson I've done
on how to learn faster or learn better. You can learn lessons in grammar, reading
and writing, and there are other fabulous teachers you can learn from. As always, thank you very much for taking
the time out of your busy schedule to learn from us. I always appreciate every minute you spend
with me, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video, okay? Have a good one.
