Learning to Be a Better Learner

Activity

https://services.viu.ca/sites/default/files/metacognitive-awareness-inventory.pdf

Learning

- Should not just mean studying for your quizzes and exams in school
- Could also occur outside the confines of a book (Ex.: acquiring new skills for a sport/hobby)
- Learn how to learn these things

Abstraction

- “Homo Sapiens”
o “wise man”
o can think in a more complex level than our ancestors and other beings
o can think about thinking like how we think of things and why we think in a certain way
about things
- Metacognition
o “thinking about thinking”
o “The awareness of the scope and limitations of your current knowledge and skills.” –
Meichenbaum, 1985) –
o Enables a person to:
a. Adapt their existing knowledge and skills for a learning task
b. Seek their optimum result of leaning experience
o Thinking process of an individual
o Keeping one’s emotions and motivations while learning in check
a. Some learn better when they like the subject,
b. When they are challenged by the subject,
c. If they have a reward system

o Two Aspects:
1. Self-appraisal
 Personal reflection on your knowledge and capabilities
2. Self-management of cognition
 Mental process you employ using what you have in planning and adapting
to learn
– For both of them to work, you must have an accurate self-assessment
– Be honest about what you know and capable of in order to find ways to utilize your
strengths and improve your weakness

- Elements of Metacognition
o Metacognitive knowledge
 o What you know about how you think
- Metacognition Regulation
o How you adjust your thinking process
- Metacognitive Knowledge
o Several variables that affect you know or assess yourself as a thinker
1. Personal variable
 Evaluation of your strengths and weaknesses
2. Task Variable
 What you know or what you think about :
a. the nature of the task
b. strategies the task requires
3. Strategy Variable
 Strategies/skills you already have in dealing with certain tasks
- Skills in Exercising Metacognition
1. Knowing your limits
o Look at the scope and limitations of your resources
o Look for ways to cope with other necessities
2. Modifying your approach
o Recognizing that your strategy is not appropriate with the task
3. Skimming
o Browsing over a material and keeping an eye on keywords, phrases, etc.
o Works best when you want to get an idea about the content
4. Rehearsing
o Repeatedly talking, writing, and doing what you learned
o Trying to make a personal interpretation or summary of the learning experience
5. Self-Test
o Trying to test your comprehension of your learning experience/skills
o Does not only focus on what you learned but how you learned it

Other Strategies:

1. Questioning your methods

2. Self-reflection
3. Finding a mentor/support group
4. Thinking out loud
5. Welcoming errors as learning experience

Four Types of Metacognitive Learners

1. Tacit Learner
o Unaware of their metacognitive processes although they know the extent of their
knowledge
2. Aware Learner
o Aware of some of their metacognitive strategies but using techniques are not always
planned
3. Strategic Learner
o They plan their course of action toward learning experience
4. Reflective Learner
o They reflect on their thinking while they are using strategies that will adapt their
metacognitive skills depending on their situation

Benefits of using Metacognitive Techniques

1. To be a self-regulated Learner
o Education should not be limited by the capabilities of the teacher and the context of
textbooks
2. Compensation and development of cognitive limitations of the learner
o The student is now aware of his/her capabilities
3. Student is enabled to transfer knowledge from one context into another

Tips in Studying

1. Making an outline of the things you want to learn

2. Break down the task in smaller and manageable details
3. Integrating variations in your schedule and learning experience
4. Try to incubate your ideas
5. Revising, summarizing, and taking down notes then rereading them
6. Engage what you have learned
o Examples:
a. Highlight keywords
b. Write your opinion on a separate notebook
c. Create a diagram/concept map
d. Copy the key paragraphs word for word