Organize-Process-Test-Repeat

by Ken Tangen

Learning vocabulary is an essential skill for anyone wishing to succeed in higher education. You may not like facts but you have to conquer them. Sometimes there is no option to memorizing the bones of the body, the views of rationalists or the elements of the periodic table. Here is how to do it.

I introduced the OPT-Repeat model for learning vocabulary in Captain Psychology’s How to Learn Vocabulary: Biological Psychology. In this four step model, OPT means to organize, process and test. Repeat means that the process is recursive. You often have to go through the organize-process-test steps repeatedly.

You can use this model for learning any list of terms.

ORGANIZE

Facts require organization. It is difficult to remember individual facts. It is better when the facts are grouped into meaningful units. It is best when our meaningful units are small.

Lists, then, are good news and bad news. The good news about lists is that they are not individual items. The terms have been organized into a list. There is a structure to it, or structure can be given to it. And there are several structures to chose from (alphabetical, conceptual, time line, etc.).

The bad news is that lists usually are not well organized and they are too long.

Organization

In general, an alphabetical list is not a well organized list. It is a form of organization, and it is better than no organization at all, but alphabetical lists have two main purposes. First, they allow you to easily check for duplicates. If you want to make sure there are no duplications in the list, sort the items into an alphabetical list. Second, alphabetical lists are great for looking things up. Alphabetical lists are perfect for dictionaries, glossaries and packing lists. It is a simple structure that is easy to access.

For learning, alphabetical lists lack meaning. The more meaningful structure the better. We want our lists to be clustered or categorized. We want lists with lots of structure.

Length

For learning, lists tend to be too long. If you’re given one long list of terms, you need to break it down into smaller segments. Learn a bit at a time. Don’t try to swallow it whole.

As long as people have had lists, we’ve known that shorter is better. You know this from your own experience. If given a choice between to lists of equal difficulty, you would select the shortest of them. Research proves it is true. Short lists are easy and long lists are hard.

The longer the list, the harder it is to remember the middle. We remember the first part and the last part of a long list but we forget the items in the middle. This phenomenon is called the serial position effect. It occurs because we have two memory systems at work when we’re learning a list. Working memory helps us remember the last items in a list because we haven’t dumped them out yet. We are still “working” on them. We remember the first part of a list because we’ve stored it in long-term memory. It is not consolidated or permanent but is in the temporary store of long-term memory. At night, we move items from temporary long-term memory to a sparsely-encoded consolidated more permanent memory. We have no memory system devoted to recalling items in the middle of a list.

The obvious solution is to divide long lists into shorter ones. Here are four ways you should consider.

1. Make A List of Don’t-Knows

An odd aspect of our memory systems is that we can immediately tell if we don’t know something. This is called negative recognition. You know you’ve never heard the word “Smiwpook.” I know you’ve never heard it because I just made it up. But it isn’t clear why you know for certain that you don’t know it.

It is reasonable to assume that you would have to search your memory banks for all strange works you’ve heard, or all words that start with S. But you don’t have to conduct a search. It is not clear why our memories work that way but let’s use it to your advantage.

I’ll give you a list of words. Scan them quickly. Mark it if you don’t know it, and move on. Negative recognition is a fast and accurate way of identifying a sublist: a group of words and phrases you don’t know.

Mark it as a Don’t-Know if it is a single word you don’t know. Mark it if it is a phrase you don’t know, even if you know the individual words.

2. Make A List of Things Likely to Be on The Test

Make a list of things you think will be on the test. How do you know what to study? Use my Rule of Three. A word or phrase is likely to be on the test if:

• • it is mentioned in class
  • it is in the class notes
  • it is in the textbook

If it is in all three, study it hard. If it is only two, study it medium. If it is only in one, give it a little study, just in case.

3. Make A List by Categories

Make a series of lists, one for each major category of information. You get to choose the categories but easy choice is by theorists, time eras and by application (clinical, research or theoretical, for example). The smaller the list, the less categories there typically are.

Similarly, time eras and application categories aren’t always particularly helpful. Try lot of different categories and use what works. For variety, try arbitrarily selecting a group of terms, by a beginning letter. Give it a try.

As you look through the list, you’ll find that some groups have terms pretty well distributed across the alphabet. Often there isn’t an overwhelming number of terms that begin with any particular letter, but it is worth a try because every data set is different. If you found most of the terms start with the letter S, you could then subdivide that category into small segments. You can create as many sub-lists as you wish.

4. Make A List of Personal Interests

There are two goals to taking a class: getting through it and getting something out of it. These are not mutually exclusive goals but they are not identical. I took classes that impacted me greatly but I didn’t ace. And I’ve taken classes where my grades were great but the class was a waste of time.

Do both. Study to get through the class. And identify something in the class material that you can take with you. There is no reason you can’t improve your life while you get through school. You can do both.

Look for at least one thing that is helpful or interesting to you. If you can find one good idea in every chapter and every lecture, you’ll have a great head start in improving your own life. While you’re looking at this material, don’t forget to add items to your  “Someday When I Feel Like It” list.

 

PROCESS

Lists are good, and short lists are best, but regardless of their length, you must process them. Don’t leave them in their original state. Elaborate them. Here’s how to start.

First, look up all of the terms on your Don’t-Know list. Second, process the information verbally, using your semantic memory. Third, process the information graphically, using your visuospatial memory.

Let’s take a look at each in some detail.

1. Look Up Don’t-Knows

It’s time to do something with the lists you’ve made. A good place to begin is to look up the definitions of your Don’t-Knows. They were easy to identify and you’ll make quick progress. Tackling your Don’t-Knows will give you the biggest bang for your buck. It doesn’t take long to convert Don’t-Knows to Sort-of-Knows. Remember to mark off the items from your Don’t Know list when you understand them. Check off all the items you have now mastered.

2. Write A Story

People are great storytellers. It is how we make sense of our world. Our right hemisphere looks at the overall experience but our left hemisphere makes a logical story out of it. Here is a story using our target words. I’m sure your stories will be better. But here is an example to get you started. It is a story of learning terms.

Learning facts is mostly a matter of repetition. This is the secret of how to learn lists. But there are a number of  mnemonics that can help. The best one, in my experience, it called chunking. It is a naïve mnemonic, meaning that people do it naturally, without thinking about it. I’m sure when I was little I thoguht the alphabet included LMNOP as a single chunk. It took me awhile to figure out that they were individual letters. Chunking occurs pretty automatically, clustering is thoughtfully putting things into blocks or categories, which requires more work.

I also like making up songs and rhymes. Remember 30 days hath September or the alphabet song (ABCDEFG, won’t you sing along with me)? There is something about singing your way through a test that appeals to me. It works great for listing questions.

I’ve tried acronyms (ABC instead of American Broadcasting Company, and RDO instead of regular day off) and acrostics (RADAR or HOMES for remember the Great Lakes), but I would remember the nickname or abbreviation but not what the letters stood for.

What story can you tell?

3. Draw A Picture

People are great at words. But we are also great at pictures. We used words in Write a Story, let’s switch to pictures. Let’s draw a picture.

Some people believe that pictures are more symbolic, thus easier to remember. Part of this is certainly true. Allan Paivio’s research on remembering lists of images shows that they are easier to remember than lists of words. The idea has its flaws (concrete pictures are easier to remember than abstract words but abstract pictures don’t seem to be that memorable or distinctive. Still, there is no reason not to try being more visual.

Clusters

Put a term or phrase on each index card or Post-It Note. Make enough to cover a table or whiteboard. Lay the tables out rather randomly, and then move them around until patterns emerge. When you spot a term that relates to another term put them next to each other or on top of each other. Make stacks or groups until all of the easy relationships have been found.

You’ll probably have some left over, a sort of miscellaneous group, but that’s okay. Look at all of the major points you were able to identify with this technique. This technique works best with concrete nouns but it is surprisingly helpful for abstract concepts too.

Icons

Think of the signs you see at airports which use only a few signs to indicate where to go and what to do. Try making your own icons for the information you are trying to remember. Use smiley faces and simple lines. Think graphic, not art.

Pictures

If you’re more of an artists, your drawings could be sketches, illustrations, cartoons or paintings. If photography is your thing, find images that remind you of the terms you’re trying to learn.

Structural Overview

 These are previews of material. They tend to be graphics only. Think of them as illustrations in book or album art. They give you an idea of what is coming.

These are a good way to summarize a theory or explain a series of processes. They use words and pictures.

Mind Maps

This word-displays provide a different way of representing outlines. Some are called concept maps or words clusters but all of them give a graphic description of information

 

TEST

After organizing and processing information, it is time to see if you have learned it. You won’t know when you stop studying if you don’t measure your performance. As a general rule, confidence precedes competence. You think you can do it before you actually can. When it comes to studying, this results in your stopping too soon. You prove your competence.

There is nothing like a dress rehearsal to show where the weak points are. This is true of plays and musicals. It is true of baseball and soccer. It is true of taking a test. The best predictor of test performance is getting a practice test that is quite similar to real thing.

Here are some ways to test your knowledge.

1. Flashcards

I don’t know who invented flashcards but I suspect they have been around for as long as we’ve had paper. The advantage to flashcards is the you have to break down the material you are trying to learn into small bits, small enough to fit of a card.

Vocabular terms are a perfect fit for flashcards. The term is the cue and the definition is the response. You can quickly move through a lot of material because you are only “flashing” the cue quickly.

This is nearly the identical technique Ebbinghaus used to study memory. He wrote down a word per card, showed it to himself for 1 second, and moved on to the next card. He repeated the list over and over again.

What Ebbinghaus discovered is that lists of words that are on different topics (i.e., lists with no rational connections between items) seem like nonsense to us and are quickly forgotten. We forget random facts quickly, within a few hours. There is a rapid drop off in performance.

Ebbinghaus found three things help overcome this rapid forgetting tendency. First, he studied the list in the same order. This allows to anticipate the next cue. Think of it as a chain of associations. Practice your lists in the same order every time (at least initially). After you have mastered the material, you can shuffle the cards and consolidate your responses. But at the beginning, start by keeping the list in a single order.

Second, distribute your practice over a number of days. Don’t do too much at once. It is easy to get overwhelmed and get the associations mixed up. No more than an hour a day to start with.

Third, overlearn. Don’t stop when you can say the list correctly (what Ebbinghaus called “complete memory”). Keep going. The more time you spend on the cards, the better you will learn them and the better you will be able to remember them.

Use actual cards, not software. Until you’re an expert flashcard user, stick with real paper. Writing the cards out will help you slow down and maintain your focus on the cards. Paper cards are also easier to shuffle into new patterns.

Once your performance is perfect, shuffle the deck and try again. Flashcards require a practice-shuffle-practice approach.

The bonds between cue and response are unidirectional. If you only flash cues and give responses, you won’t be ready for test items which give you a definition and ask to you supply the cue. So, an advanced step in flashcard use is to flip the cards over and use the definitions as cues.

2. Teach Someone

Here is an idea that seems silly but actually works. Test your knowledge by saying it out loud. Don’t do all of your studying silently. Use your voice. You can do your flashcards dramatically like a Shakespearean actor or yell them to your neighbors across the street. Or maybe just talk in a normal voice. But saying it out loud make things easier to remember.

Let’s extend that idea in a technique that will help you and your classmates. Teach someone. Explaining what you know to someone else helps them but it also highlights weaknesses in your knowledge base. If you can’t explain it to someone else, you don’t really know it.

Don’t have anyone to teach? Use your phone. You can call your mother or you can make a video of yourself giving the explanation. Either will work.

3. Create Your Own Tests

Before you take a test in class, create your own to test your knowledge. You don’t have to be an expert at test creation. Simple tests work quite well. I think you’ll be surprised that your tests aren’t that much different from those your professor generates.

Here are few examples.

Listing

      List the three types of distinctiveness:

Multiple Choice

1. 1. The method of loci and backward chaining are both:
   2. reduction mnemonics
   3. technical mnemonics
   4. external mnemonics
   5. naïve mnemonics

Essay

1. 1. What’s the difference between a naïve and a technical mnemonic?

 

REPEAT

1. Distributed Practice

Ebbinghaus confirmed what was previously generally known. He proved that the existence and form of the serial position effect. He proved that repetition is the best way to learn lists. He proved that shorter lists are easier than longer lists.

In addition to these confirmations. Ebbinghaus discover some important points. He discovered the forgetting curve, overlearning, and distributed practice. Distributed or spaced practice is the opposite of cramming. It is spacing out practice or study sessions over time. It distributes the work load.

By distributing practice, we gain in long-term retention and is speed of learning. We learn faster (fewer hours) with distributed practice and we learn better (slower forgetting).

Subsequent research shows that an hour a day provides the biggest bang for the buck. If you are trying to learn a skill, start practicing an hour a day, every day. The same seems to hold true for studying. An hour of studying a day provides enough time to understand concepts and apply them to practice problems. It is enough time to focus on memorizing facts and creating mental structures.

Studying does not include reading the textbook or taking notes in class. It does not include writing papers or completing assignments. Those tasks require additional dedicated time.

Studying is time spent organizing, processing and testing. Studying is OPT-Repeat time.

2. Overlearn

I previously mentioned Ebbinghaus’ discovery that we do best when we go beyond confidence or complete memory. In general, we need more time than we estimate.

We often underestimate how long tasks will take. You know from your own experience that bosses often suffer from this problem. They expect a task to be done “today,” even though you know that it will take three days.

It is not surprising that other people underestimate common tasks. It is more surprising that we do the same thing to ourselves. It’s bad enough that other people are mean to us. It’s crazy that we are mean to ourselves. We put unnecessary stress on ourselves. We push ourselves to get everything done, knowing full well that it can’t be done.

Underestimating time can be part of striving for perfection. We know that it is impossible to be perfect but that doesn’t stop ourselves from self-recrimination when we are less than perfect.

We often confuse familiarity for speed. We rate familiar tasks as easier than they are. This is true of gardening, accounting, cleaning and getting organized. We know what is involved but tell ourselves that it will only take a “few minutes” to clean the kitchen, pull the weeds, sort through our clothes and balance the checkbook. Or we go the other way and overestimate these tasks as “impossible” to complete.

We do the same thing with studying. We postpone writing a paper because it is overwhelming or something we can easily do riding the subway.

We study vocabulary, and feel good because we put “enough time” it. The terms look familiar. We’re sure we’ll be able to pick them out because the test is multiple choice. We are confident we will do well.

The familiarity of terms causes us to overestimate our competence. The test format causes us to underestimate the test’s difficulty. Remember, multiple choice doesn’t mean easy. Being generally aware of the material doesn’t equal readiness.

Athletes do lots of drills so players don’t have to think about what to do next. Try to drill your memorized knowledge (multiplication tables, periodic table of elements, historic dates, etc.). Practice it until everything flows.

Baseball players and bowlers use heavier bats and balls during practice. When they get to ready games, the equipment seems lighter and easier to use. Study for multiple choice tests as if they were listing or short answer exams. Practice as a higher level.

Keep studying. Don’t stop too soon.

3. Avoid Flow

Flow is the feeling that everything is effortless. When you’re in the flow, you are “in the zone” and fully immersed. It is a mental state of being. It is great for physical activities and for meditation. Rowers and runners hit their strides. They can feel when they are in the flow. Meditation, yoga and martial arts all rely on being in the flow.

Flow is not only a mental state. It is an emotional cue. Flow is a good indicator of cognitive load. Think of it as a measure of how hard the brain is working.

In meditation and athletics, you don’t want the brain to be working. You want to get out of the way. You don’t want to think about this being a big day, that everything depends on you, or that they moment will change your whole life. When you’re doing a sport, you want lots of flow. You want your brain disengaged.

When you’re learning, you want your brain engaged. It requires brain power to hold things in working memory, pull things out of long-term memory, and make sense of a new area of knowledge. Thinking is work. You want flow to be low.

The amount of flow indicates what your brain is doing. When thinking, you want to avoid flow.

You work with flashcards until you reach flow, and beyond. For memorizing, flow is your friend. It is your goal. Keep memorizing until it is effortless.

You avoid flow when you are struggling with a new concept. If you’re trying to “wrap your head around” an idea, you should not feel flow. If you feel flow when doing non-memorizing tasks, it is an indication that you should switch to a new topic. Stop studying Spanish and switch to history.

The difference between memorizing and thinking is like the difference between running and lifting weights. Running should be continuous, smooth and rhythmic. You should be in the flow. In contrast, flow should not be part of lifting weights. If you are not struggling to lift weights, they are too light. If three sets of 10 reps is easy, you increase the weight.

When you are lifting mental weights, you don’t want flow. The mental floating of flow indicates you should switch to a new topic. It signals you should interleaf your topics.

Interleaving is the topical version of distributed practice. Our three sets of lifting weights is distributed practice. You work, rest, work, rest, work and stop. It is the same task distributed over time. Interleaving is distributing the topics. Our long-term performance is best when we switch from topic to topic.

If you took only one class a term, you would be used blocked practice. You study A, then B, and then C. There is no interaction or overlap between them.

If real life, you take several classes at once. You study A, write a paper for B, take a test on C, do an assignment for B, take a test for A, etc. You are using the most advanced version of interleaving: random interleaved practice. A less complicated version of interleaving is to always study ABC, ABC, and ABC. There is overlap but the topics are always in the same order. This is less effective than random interleaved practice but better than blocked practice.

Flow can help your interleaved practice. When topic A practice items are getting to easy, switch to those for topic B or C. The trick is to use flow as your trigger. When learning new material, flow signals it is time to switch.

Energy is another cue for interleaved switching. The brain gets tired from studying a single topic. With each thing we learn, there is a little build of proactive interference. Sticking new ideas in requires that old information be pushed around. It is this old information that makes it difficult to get the new stuff in. You will notice that as your study session continues, ideas become less clear and it seems harder to put things in memory. It is harder. The proactive interference is building up.

When the ideas seem to run together, switch to a new topic. You don’t have to stop studying completely. Just switch to a new topic. The switch provide contrast. It makes it easier for your brain to differentiate between topic A and topic B. Interleaving also gives you more practice pulling things out of long-term memory. When you switch, you clear out working memory and load in the new topic. Think of it like restarting your computer. It clears out all of your mental caches.

When things get easy, switch.

 

NEXT

You’ve learned how to apply the OPT-Repeat model to learning facts. We learned how to identify Don’t-Knows, and practiced every step. We organized the data, processed it and tested our progress. And we did it recursively. We went through the material until we could prove we learned it. We went beyond confidence. The next step is to do it all over again but with more terms. You’ve mastered facts.