Education Archives

How to Improve Your Writing—Author Explains

Do you want to improve your writing skills? What does taste have to do with writing? In his book On Writing Well, American writer, journalist, and teacher William Zinsser explains how to improve your writing. The key, he says, is to develop a taste for good writing. Zinsser believes that you should choose authors whose style you admire, then try to emulate their style until you develop your own voice. Here’s why developing good taste is the first step to improving your writing.

Chunking: A Learning Technique for Better Retention

What is the chunking study method? What makes chunking such an effective way to learn? In the context of learning, chunking is where you learn the basic elements of a skill, then combine them into compound skills. Learning via chunking enables you to perform more complex skills with intuitive ease, executing multiple elements in tandem. Learn about the chunking learning method, why it works, and how to implement it.

How to Fix Cluttered Writing: Stop Doing These 5 Things

What exactly is cluttered writing? How does unnecessary wordiness compromise your writing? In his book On Writing Well, William Zinsser points out five common types of clutter: wordy phrases, euphemisms, adverbs, too many adjectives, and qualifiers. By reducing or eliminating these types of clutter in your writing, you will write more clearly and communicate your point more effectively. Let’s look at a few common types of cluttered writing and how to avoid them.

Josh Waitzkin: How to Learn Better and Faster

Does learning come easy to you? Would you like to learn better, faster, and more effectively? According to Josh Waitzkin, effective learning comes from your deep commitment to your growth process. In his book The Art of Learning, he explains how to learn more effectively, drawing from his long experience as a world-class chess competitor. Here’s how to learn better and faster, according to Josh Waitzkin.

Effective Learning Is About Balancing Tensions

What’s the key to effective learning? How do you know when to stop and take a break? When it comes to learning, there are no clear, sharp lines that indicate what to do, where to stop, and so on. For example, your body gives no obvious indication of when you’ve reached your mental limits, so you have to learn to sense when that edge is near. According to Josh Waitzkin, the key to effective learning is to balance three tensions: 1) exertion and relaxation, 2) process and results, 3) the technical and the creative. Here’s how to supercharge your learning by

Advice on Learning Through Trial and Error

Is trial and error a good way to learn? Do you take time to reflect and extract lessons from your mistakes? Error is inherent in learning. Mistakes reveal the flaws in our skills and show us where to grow. The key to learning through trial and error is to focus on the process, not the results. If you fixate on results, you’ll get derailed by mistakes, not learn from them. Here’s why growth comes from trial and error.

How to Find Your Personal Learning Style

What is your preferred way of learning? Why is it important to learn according to your natural, personal learning style? Your personal style is how you instinctively approach learning. When you learn in a way that aligns with your personal learning style, learning comes much easier and you encode the material much faster. Keep reading to learn how to find your personal learning style, which stems from your unique relationship to your skill.

Malcolm Gladwell: Success Comes From Opportunity

What is the key determinant of success in life? Is it hard work? Genetics? Privilege? According to Malcolm Gladwell, success is impossible without the opportunity to become successful no matter how hard you work. Furthermore, Gladwell writes that people who get opportunities early in life have a huge advantage over those whose opportunities come later in life. Here’s why earlier opportunities are more impactful.

Debates Over the Ten-Thousand-Hour Rule

What is the ten-thousand-hour rule? Who first came up with the rule, and what is the research behind it? The ten-thousand-hour rule basically says that you need to practice a skill for at least ten thousand hours before you can be considered an expert. After Malcolm Gladwell published these findings in his book Outliers, there have been a number of criticisms. Here’s why the ten-thousand-hour rule doesn’t hold up.

How to Use Focused & Diffuse Thinking to Learn

What’s the difference between focused and diffuse thinking? How can you leverage these two modes to maximize learning? Authors Barbara Oakley and Terrence Sejnowski offer a number of tips for enhancing your learning that are based on your brain’s ability to alternate between different modes of thinking. They assert that your brain operates in two separate modes, each of which contributes to learning and problem solving in different ways. They call these two modes “focused thinking” and “diffuse thinking.” Read on to learn these ways of improving your learning ability.