Aim to Be an Active Learner

With high schools and colleges kicking off with the start of another academic year, it’s important to remember that teachers can’t be solely responsible for what we learn. We ourselves need to decide to learn something and work actively towards achieving our goal. To put it another way: we need to aim to become active learners.

Active learning:
Let’s say your teacher tells you that you need to improve your pronunciation in your French or Spanish class. The teacher can highlight your errors and point out what you need to improve on, but only you can actively work towards changing your pronunciation. In other words, you need to accept the challenge of becoming an active student rather than a passive student who relies on her teacher and classwork when learning something.

An active student, however, will set about implementing a set of active learning strategies designed to overcome the passivity of much school work.

A creative and active language student might, for example, write their own French/Spanish lesson and record it onto Mp3 player so it can be reviewed and revised at will.

The very act of producing work like this is likely to benefit the student as he/she will need to go through a certain amount of material.

Mp3 players are excellent tools for learning, but you can’t rely on your teacher or college professor to show you how to make the most of them. You have to create active ways of learning that play to your strengths.

Another example of this is setting aside 20-30 minutes each day to review your class notes. Students who do this learn and remember 60 percent more than their peers who do not regularly review class notes.

In short, learners who take on the responsibility for actively working with their subject both inside and outside of the classroom perform better than their peers.

So don’t be a couch potato: set yourself goals and, just as importantly, set about actively achieving them.