Japanese Online Lessons using SKYPE

What learning methods work best?

February 1, 2022

When thinking about highly effective learning methods, what is frequently cited is the learning pyramid developed by NTL (National Training Laboratories Institute for Applied Behavioral Science) in the 1960s, which shows that different learning methods have different rates of memory retention.

The “learning pyramid”, sometimes referred to as the “cone of learning” suggests that most students only remember about 10% of what they read from textbooks, but retain nearly 90% of what they learn through teaching others.

The following resource give the retention rate for various study methods.

The amount that can be memorized merely by listening to a class is low. So try using your body as much as possible and combine reading, watching, writing, discussing, role playing, and so on.

Also, you probably already found a study method even more effective than role playing. It’s “teach others”. You can’t teach something very effectively to another person if you don’t know it very well. In other words, it’s necessary to understand the subject well in order to teach it effectively to another person. The study method that utilizes this principle is called “teach to learn”. Please try to teach another person (or even yourself) what you’ve learned. There are various methods you can use. You can collect all the points you’ve learned and make your own original textbook or you can upload what you’ve studied to SNS.

*To be precise, I would like to add that there are some criticisms for this learning pyramid that is not well-founded. However, many instructors who have been involved in language education for many years feel that different learning methods have different effects, and many of them support this. Also, since active learning is said to be effective, I thought it would be helpful to introduce it here based on my actual experience, although it may not be an accurate resource.