ON LEARNING

The means of education is a matter of teaching and learning. In the last century, people emphasized effective teaching with a philosophy that if a teacher teaches well, students can learn better. Therefore, many educational technologies were invented to facilitate teachers' teaching skills, for example, wall charts, maps, audio and video clips, overhead projectors and transparencies. However, from the studies of brain-based learning, the occurrence of learning relies mainly on the learners themselves. Imagine a wonderful teacher teaching brilliantly with excellent lesson planning intertwined with a variety of teaching resources while the students are unfocussed and have their heads in the clouds. Does effective teaching equate to effective learning? The answer is obviously no. It is the learners themselves who dominate and control their own learning process. Learning involves the acquisition of knowledge and skills, understanding the concepts and principles, and applying them in one's daily life, thus causing changes in values and behaviour. You, as a learner, are fully responsible for your own learning. In principle, memorization of facts is not learning at all as you are only acting like a robot without much understanding. Getting to know and understand the underlying principles without putting them into practice is still not true learning. For example, you know eating junk food is unhealthy and understand that it can cause obesity leading to a series of health problems. Yet you still like to eat lots of it. You know your spoken English is not fluent and understand that practice makes perfect. Yet, you dare not speak up due to the lack of confidence and are afraid of other people laughing at you. You know that time is running short and there is a lot of revision to be done before an examination and understand that if you do not revise well, you will fail. Yet you prefer to spend most of your time playing instead of studying. In fact, quite a lot of people are prisoners of their own bad habits and commit the same mistakes again and again without correction. Do you think this so-called “learning” is useful? The important key to true learning is self-reflection which tells you whether you learn a lesson or not. As a Confucius saying goes, “Knowing what you know and knowing what you don’t know is knowing your strengths and weaknesses.（知之為知之，不知為不知，是知也。）” At the end of each school day, you should reflect and think about what you have learned that day. Which lesson was the most interesting and which one you still don’t really understand? Highlight those concepts you have difficulty in understanding or in applying in red. Mark those you know very well in green. Keeping such reflective journals for each subject in your study helps you realize which topics you lack confidence in and need follow-up action by asking your classmates or teachers. Sometimes you think that you have mastered a concept but actually you have not. Examples shown during a lesson or provided in the textbooks only furnish you with additional information and techniques. Acquisition of skills can only be done by practising. By applying what you have learned in different situations you can master a subject well; first-hand experience is essential to true understanding. During a problem-solving process, the difficulties you encounter give you very good feedback on how much you know and understand. Never act like a Peking duck waiting for your teachers to spoon-feed you. Other than completing the homework and projects assigned to you, do additional exercises, especially those more challenging ones, for your own good so that you can gain more experience in tackling different types of problems and do not need to worry about tests and examinations. When you have time, read more books on a wide variety of topics to increase your language abilities and build up your own knowledge. Take my advice, “Be a proactive learner!” and you will be rewarded with a bright future.