Applying Principles From Neuroscience to Foster Learning—Four Strategies

David Pleins, Assistant Director, Walker Center for Teaching and Learning, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

 

Key Statement: Foreign language vocabulary acquisition (and the learning of information more generally) need not be a painful enterprise! Through focused retrieval practice, linking words to images, using iconic gestures, and acts of the imagination, students can learn course material more deeply and effectively.

Keywords: Neuroscience, Language Learning, Deep Learning

Introduction

Do your students struggle with remembering and controlling the basic facts in your field? This article will introduce you to four evidence-based learning strategies to support your students as they seek to command technical information, such as new vocabulary, in a variety of learning environments. Much of the lived experience behind the teaching practices in this article arise from my teaching of ancient languages, but the pedagogical principles are widely applicable, showcased by hypothetical scenarios in other disciplines. 

Image courtesy of Julien Tromeur, Unsplash.

The School of Hard Knocks

As a student, I became an expert at the brute memorization of ancient vocabulary at great cost to my time and sanity. Memorizing endless verb charts, noun declensions, and particles was called “learning.” Surely, I moaned to myself, there had to be a better way. Unfortunately, at the time, there was not.

Things got no better when I started teaching. After their first year of instruction, the sad truth was that my students knew only a fraction of the vocabulary they would need to comprehensively read an ancient text. The hill to climb after this was very steep. The tools in the field and our teaching strategies were failing our students.

If only I knew then what I know now! Recent studies in the Science of Teaching and Learning suggest four strategies for information acquisition that markedly improve learning facts and vocabulary. The examples I use here come from the world of language instruction, but these strategies can be used anywhere your students need to gain facility with particular bits of information.

Retrieval Practice: Falling Off a Bike

There’s no shortcut: Learning how to ride a bike involves lots of falling off, getting back up, and trying again. “Retrieval practice” is the mental version of kicking off the dust and trying again.

Much literature now suggests using “spaced retrieval practice” as a starting point for firming up one’s knowledge (Oakley et al., 2021). Spaced retrieval involves an initial encounter with the material (e.g., in a class session or lab) and periodically revisiting that material (e.g., quizzes). One of the key elements of active learning is exerting mental effort to recall information, without relying on notes or other props. For retrieval practice to be effective at building and strengthening neural links, students must try to pull the information from memory and not simply glance over their course notes or the textbook (Miller, 2022, p. 107-125).

This retrieval process needs to start during the time students first encounter new information, before the “forgetting effect” does its worst. Keep in mind that a quiz in that initial window does not have to be graded to have the desired impact. Likewise, any review at the end of class needs to be done by the students, not the instructor. It is essential that the students try to pull the new information out of their heads, both during and at the end of class. The more this retrieval work is done in a spaced and intentional way over several days and weeks, the more students will see what they know and what they do not. Repeated effort will lead to much of the new learning sticking for good.

This sort of teaching practice may seem obvious to instructors of modern languages, and perhaps I need not say more. But this practice would mark a significant advance in the teaching of ancient languages, since few if any textbooks structure retrieval activities into the learning process. The lesson here, regardless of discipline: Spaced retrieval practice is not only useful for foreign language learning but for all sorts of information acquisition. Use this approach in any field and soon they’ll be riding that bike effortlessly.

Images Linked to Words: Hair-Raising Pictures

The dual processing of words and images can impress on the mind a term (or information) much more deeply than simply reading or memorizing the word by itself. It’s not that some are “visual learners” while others are “verbal learners.” That’s the tired myth of learning styles. We all benefit from multiple inputs to put things together. Miller goes one step further to suggest such images need not be printed on paper but can be conjured by the “mind’s eye” to “give a big bump in recall” (Miller, 2022, p. 99).

Here’s an example, using the ancient Hebrew word for “hair standing on end”:

• Say the ancient Hebrew word samar out loud. (Don’t worry about the English translation.)

• Draw a simple picture of a person with hair close to their scalp. (Stick figures are fine.)

• Next, draw another face alongside the first picture with that person’s hair standing straight on end.

• Put an arrow between them that points to the person with the hair standing on end.

• Now write the ancient Hebrew word samar next to these pictures.

• Say the word samar out loud while looking at this crazy pair of pictures.

• Next, cover up the Hebrew word and look only at the pictures. Can you recall the Hebrew word and perceive its meaning? Chances are you can. And a translation in English is not needed. You intuitively grasp the meaning.

• Practice this entirely from memory later in the day to see how you do. Don’t worry if you don’t remember everything. Your brain is sorting things out. Repeat practicing over the next few days. Try it again from memory a week later. 

Visual input linked to words is not only valuable for language studies. In every field, students will find it useful to develop their own “visual notebooks” as they work through the course material. Try it in your classes and see how they do.

Iconic Gestures: The Finger

Some research suggests that retrieval practice, such as speaking new vocabulary out loud, might be much more powerful when combined with physical “iconic gestures” when seeking to teach and learn new words and information (García-Gámez et al., 2021).

For example, do you remember the shock the first time you saw someone point aggressively with their middle finger and snarl a certain four-letter word? You might not recall the specific incident—but I’ll bet the gesture and its meaning stuck! Gesture can be a powerful part of the learning process.

Using gestures can take many different forms in learning: The instructor might first take the lead and have students repeat a gesture while students all say the word out loud together. Students might also devise their own gestures when learning and practicing.

Avoid cognitive overload by using simple gestures rather than acting out the word in some elaborate way. The gesture need not be exactly the same each time. Consistency can be useful, but students shouldn’t panic about not being able to recreate the precise gesture.

Consider these additional examples: In language learning, making an agitated motion with one’s hand while saying the foreign word for “earthquake” will impress the word on the mind through a combination of gesture and word. Similarly, Physics has the right-hand rule, where pointing one’s thumb and curving the fingers around aids in visualizing the polarity of magnetic fields.

What looks to be a simple link between gesture and word masks complex brain information processing. Likely, “procedural memory,” is at work here,  the brain’s encoding mechanism that “lets us carry out processes and skills” (Miller 2022, p. 71). With iconic gestures, the brain conjoins the automatic physical action of a gesture with new information tumbling around the working memory.

We do not need to fully understand the underlying neurological mechanisms to appreciate that using iconic gestures can impress information on learners in deep ways and make retrieval happen more readily. The body’s movements help encode and cue up the memory.

 The Future of Learning: Imagination

One more strategy can enrich the entire process in unexpected ways. Some intriguing neuroscience research suggests that another approach might involve “future imagination,” rather than (past) retrieval practice, as a key learning strategy (Kirwan et al., 2014; Schacter et al., 2012).

This research suggests that our brains process past memories and future imagination in similar ways, but that the future imagination process, “reflects the more extensive constructive processes required by imagining future events” (Schachter et al., 2012, p. 8). If this rich processing is available to learners, why not develop course activities that ask students to envision future scenarios in which the new information will be put to use?  

Using future imagination, I, as the learner, might invent a scenario, such as imagining that I’ll be at a meeting in a few weeks where I’m going to talk about teaching ancient Hebrew vocabulary. I might also imagine that I’ll be quite successful at this meeting, as I call to mind the new words and their meanings.

Class activities using future imagination can energize the learning process. Such scenario-building has the added benefit of being far more enjoyable and relaxing than retrieval practice, which can be stressful and mentally taxing!

Conclusion

I have been struck by the power of each of these strategies, as suggested by the research and my own teaching practice. I encourage you to try out some or all of approaches with your students to discover which ones produce the deepest sort of learning in your own field.

By way of summary: Have your students get back on their bikes by retrieving information again and again. Have them create visual notebooks with images that leave hairs standing on end. Have students use gestures in iconic ways when speaking new terms. And have students enjoy preparing to present new information, with confidence, at a future (imaginary) conference.

Discussion Questions

1. Do students struggle with particular concepts in your field on a consistent basis? What practices have you instituted to deal with these struggles? How well have they worked? 

2. Consider each of the four strategies discussed in this article. Where in your courses might you try them out? Do particular strategies seem to fit better with certain learning situations or types of information you cover?

3. Some colleagues, and even entire departments, might resist instituting new practices along these lines. How could you bring these research-based practices into your department’s conversations about teaching?

   
   

   References

   García-Gámez, A. B., Cervilla, Ó., Casado, A., & Macizo, P. (2021). Seeing or acting? The effect of performing gestures on foreign language vocabulary learning. Language Teaching Research, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/13621688211024364

   Kirwan, C. B., Ashby, S. R., & Nash, M. I. (2014). Remembering and imagining differentially engage the hippocampus: A multivariate fMRI investigation. Cognitive Neuroscience, 5(3-4), 177-185. https://doi.org/10.1080/17588928.2014.933203.

   Miller, M. (2022). Remembering and forgetting in the age of technology: Teaching, learning, and the science of memory in a wired world. West Virginia University Press.

   
   

   Oakley, B., Rogowsky, B., & Sejnowski, T.J. (2021). Uncommon sense teaching: Practical insights in brain science to help students learn. TarcherPerigee.

   Schacter, D. L, Addis, D. R., Hassabis, D., Martin, V. C., Spreng, R. N., & Szpunar, K. K. (2012). The future of memory: Remembering, imagining, and the brain. Neuron, 76(4), 677-694. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2012.11.001

   
   
   
   

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