How Do You Become A Good Learner?

The best student I have ever taught had booked a four-day intensive one-to-one course with me and his objective was to speak French by the end of it. He wanted to go from zero-knowledge to being able to communicate in just four days. He was preparing himself to go to Paris for a concert for which he was to conduct a French orchestra. When he started the course, he knew no French at all. Of course the fact that he was already trilingual helped considerably as he did not have to overcome the anxiety of hearing and reproducing new sounds. This also meant that he was able to comprehend many grammatical concepts and acquire them rapidly. Being a German speaker, he had an understanding of conjugation and the gender of nouns. Being an Italian speaker, he was able to guess a lot of vocabulary and transpose rules of syntax into French. Being a musician however meant that he had a very secure knowledge of rhythm, timing, applying rules, exceptions to rules and was able to memorize a lot without writing anything down. Being a conductor gave him the self-confidence, at no point did it cross his mind that he was not able to do this. He was in control! By the end of day one, he could get by with quite a few phrases and was able to conjugate a few verbs. By the end of the four-day course he was able have a long chat in French without my having to make efforts to understand him. The few mistakes he made did not alter the meaning of his speech.

This example really illustrated to me how learning a language and possibly learning in general, engages multiple skills of all kinds, linguistic of course but also musical, emotional, imaginative, kinetic, logical, scientific and possibly even a good sense of humour. I always remember how as a child I learnt English listening to and repeating Beatles songs. The rhythm and melody of the vocals helped my memory retain the vocabulary and structures and the absurdity of some of the lyrics tickled my sense of humour. I never forgot how to say 'jar' ('wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door' Eleanor Rigby) though it could be argued it might not be the best context in which to put the word 'jar', it definitely made it memorable! It engaged the imagination, a precious and powerful tool for memorization.

In the world of study and education, we aim for specialization and expertise and we tend to focus on one or two subjects to the exclusion of all others which could be used to consolidate that specialization. Having general knowledge, playing an instrument, being able to swim, dance, play chess, ride a bicycle, laugh at a joke all contribute to learning other things as well as developing self-confidence which in turn is an asset for learning. Emotional balance is acquired through engaging in a variety of activities and learning different skills without having to reach perfection or specialization.

I would like to see an Education system that forgets about exam results and start focusing on providing an education that generates balanced human beings who are able to learn what they want and feel empowered by school. I believe a new kind of education system would introduce the study of far more subjects and give a more important role to the Arts.