Learning in Circles

Language learning

Language learning must be done in circles: It’s impossible to learn it all the first time around.  You need a second lap.  

  But more than that, by studying more things in a language, you learn stuff that you didn’t get last week in class.  

  In addition, every student is different, so you can’t count on Student A to learn the  same stuff as Student B in a given unit.  

So the million dollar question: Why don’t you just slow down and teach it bit-by-bit?  Because that’s neither conducive to communication nor profitable for class time.  The blanks that inevitably will be left in a student’s mind will be filled in in the lessons that follow.  

One student can’t grasp the entirety of Concept 1 without learning Concept 2.   However, his friend completely understood Concept 1, but didn’t wrap his mind around Concept 2 until the end of semester, when he saw it  compared to Concept 8.  

Am I making sense? 

To accommodate learning styles, circular teaching is necessary.  Teaching incomplete concepts is pointless because the students leave the classroom with nothing that they can hold on to.  The same topics need to be looked at again at a later time in the course of the semester/year/or whatever.  

I basically got this idea from Prof Jacqueline Schram, I’ve just added a little.