Most of us learn only ten percent of what we read. Don’t you think that is a little bit of a poor performance? Shouldn’t that be a matter of concern for us? Wouldn’t you like to know how we can retain more of what we want to learn?
We can learn a great deal from William Glasser’s interesting observations about learning.
After reading through our books, we often forget most of what we read by the end of the reading session. That’s because the average retention level is just 10% of what we read.
We seem to retain more of what we hear. It is believed that we learn around 20% of what we hear. So, using an audio file to learn something might work out better as the sense of hearing apparently helps to retain more than reading.
But we tend to retain 30% of what we see. That means we learn more when we see something with our eyes. That is more than reading and hearing. Perhaps that has something to do with visual impact and visual memory.
However, we retain 50% of what we see and hear because two faculties are simultaneously engaged in this process. Hearing has a retention rate of 20% and seeing has a retention rate of 30%. When we add them up, we get 50%. So, learning from teachers or through audio-visual media might make more sense.
But there are other ways of enhancing the retention level to 70%. We can do that by forming a group and discussing the topic in question. Here we would not only see and hear the speakers but also engage with them by sharing our ideas and observations. Since we have a participatory role in discussions, we would pay more attention to the matter under discussion. This may help us to imbibe more knowledge and open new vistas of variegated opinions of participants in the discussion.
Going a step further, we can retain 80% of what we learn through experience. Because, it does not take much effort to retain what we have ourselves gone through. Our experiences leave indelible marks on our memory because we cannot forget what we have lived through.
If you thought that 80% is the highest retention level that can be achieved, let me spring a final surprise for you. If William Glasser is to be believed, you can retain 95% of what you learn if you learn it with the intention of teaching what you learn. That’s because you always want to share the best of your knowledge with your students. The moment you think of teaching something, your learning skills hit a new high. You suddenly realise the kind of responsibility you are about to shoulder. That motivates you to learn what you are about to learn with rapt attention and focus. As a teacher, you would certainly not relish the idea of getting caught on the wrong foot in front of your students. So, learning something to teach others is something that offers the highest probability of retention.
Now you know the secrets of good learning techniques. Now you know that the best way to ensure that you retain the maximum of what you learn is if you learn it with the intention of teaching the same to others. Once you start teaching what you learn, it will become a permanent fixture of your long-term memory because you would be repeating and revising the same thing over and over again in the class year after year.
