Fries Learning How to Learn, Learning How to Understand

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-7519-3838-9
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 168 Seiten

Well, I was sent to school and I was told to learn. But nobody ever took the time to tell me how to learn ... and worse, nobody explained to me how understanding worked. So it was up to me to find out what learning was all about and to find out how understanding worked. Indeed, there are tools with which this work can be done, a thinking grid of how to understand. No matter how you may choose to apply this knowledge, I wish you success in whatever you hope to achieve. There are countless books for teachers on how to teach and for students on how to learn, but Learning How to Learn stands alone in the clear, practical approach it takes in providing teachers, students, parents, administrators, and government officials the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in today's diverse educational settings. It is more than just a philosophy of education. It is a guide of incomparable value for students of all ages who aspire to be autonomous learners and for others, experienced or novice, who may be charged with planning, programming, and executing educational curricula and programs. The many illustrative examples add to its exceptional readability, and the book can be read in its entirety or used as a desk reference for specific topics. Francis C. Pengitore, Ed. D. Adjunct Assistant Professor of Higher Education Administration

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fries, Wolfgang

Leseproben

The Breakdown of an Entry Word in the Dictionary

Every dictionary has its own breakdown of entry words. The respective breakdown of the entry word is depicted in the instructions for the use of the dictionary and should definitely be read! Here is an example from :

Language

Language serves to express an idea. An expression therefore means that the receiver gets an impression. If you want to impart an idea, then you must first have something to impart. You form what you want to impart into an idea (a mental picture). This idea will be codified, meaning to be put into a certain form and sent. The receiver accepts the expression, decodes it and gets an idea (= an impression).

The purpose of the word is for the use of the language. When a word is defined, its meaning should be clear. With a word, an idea gets an expression. Of course, the recipient will only have the same impression when he can define the word in the exact same way as the sender defines it.

This is how we reach an agreement and an understanding. The possibility of having the same impression as the expression is achieved when both the sender and the recipient can define the word equally. However, this only works if both use the same dictionary for each word in the same way.

A dictionary’s purpose is to facilitate the maintenance of a uniform language that ensures that one can express oneself so that the receiver gets the same impression.

The defined reading a bit improperly: “To capture* with the eyes and the mind.“ For example, Peter reads: “Merga intef iftrek.“* He can capture each letter as words with his eyes and his mind to save as a picture.

Language is about what meaning is linked with a word. Peter can read the sentence: “Merga intef iftrek;“ however, it has is no meaning. Therefore, it leads to no understanding. Thus, one could define understanding as “the assignment of a meaning.“ To mean something means that something has a value that is determined through a definition.

Karl fights with Peter. How much meaning do we have here? Well, two males are fighting against each other. Neither knows how old the two are, who has the better starting position, nor whether it is a dispute or a contest. Let us define Karl as a 25-year-old athlete with a black belt in judo and Peter as a 16-year-old with no training whatsoever in self-defense as a beginner of judo. Through these definitions, we have given values to both of them that one can now assign and that give a certain understanding about the situation.

Thus, it is useless if one grasps “Merga Intef iftrek“ with the mind. The same is true with symbols or words whose meaning one does not know and that have not been looked up or that one has imagined.

Language’s value is dependent on one’s knowledge of the meaning of words. Otherwise, there would be no need to speak a word because it is the meaning that makes the word!

Word and meaning have a unique relationship. The meaning gives the word value and there are words whose meaning is so heavily charged that they control the human being like a puppet, e.g., “love.“ “I am leaving you, you lazy bum!” Every human being has an entire battery of words to which he reacts in his own way.

Therefore, be aware of this, and look at the word itself and not the energy behind it that makes you into a slave!

This is also the reason that lets the human being live his life less and less and even “die” eventually: It is the energy in his mind, that makes him into a puppet.

Language and Concept

Language is used to convey concepts. A concept is a complete scene with objects, people, actions and goals. There are concepts of such size that they enable one to write an entire book about it or a larger work consisting of several volumes, like the structure and function of a government in a country or how to build a rocket to fly to the moon.

Thus, one constructs a sentence with words and sentences to write a book, combining small concepts to create a large one. Even a word stands for a concept. Let us take the word “to subscribe.“ The complete concept is: Peter subscribes the contract. Similarly, one can use “subscribe” as follows: Long ago she had learned that many people didn‘t subscribe to her morals. Here the meaning of “subscribe” is used in a different concept and so “subscribe” has a superior meaning. One could say, “subscribe” means to agree.

The reason for this example about words and sentences as a concept is as follows: When looking up a word in a dictionary, one will find several definitions for one word. However, one will notice that there is a superior concept, which is used in the definitions analogously. It enables me to better understand the individual definitions when I look up a word in English when I recognize a superior concept among them!

Understanding - The Final Solution

Well, you must know something about the thing and the influencing elements to understand them. If you know nothing about them, you cannot think about them!

The human develops understanding through observing and connecting observations of his environment and himself. Purely mechanically, pictures are stored in the mind and, depending on objectives, interconnected. The human either perceives things directly, or he informs himself, whereby the language must be understood first to understand the information itself, so that words are converted into pictures in the mind.

Understanding means more than just having an idea or a picture of something. Understanding is achieved when one can connect two or more things, thereby recognizing a consistent context.

The human understands by

1. Analyzing and organizing data to recognize a product.
2. Answering the “why“ - question.
3. Word/symbol, meaning, mass;

Discussion

1. Analyzing and Organizing Data to Recognize a Product. Suppose that the product is a wet tablecloth. Understanding now addresses the sequence of how this wet tablecloth came to be.

Consider a product of a traffic accident: “Normal“ would be if you drive a car without leaving the road uncontrollably. “Not normal“ would be if you have an accident. Of course, the question here is: “How did the accident happen?“ With this question, you try to explain the accident. You collect data in between: from the starting point to the ending point.

If you really pay attention and notice, for example, leaves laying in the road that caused the car to skid, resulting in the accident, you find a logical explanation and gain understanding.

Finding fault when the toaster is not working: Check if the toaster is plugged in and turned on. If it does not work, there might not be any electricity. First, try to turn on the light in this room. Next, use the hair dryer that you used in the morning to determine if electricity is going through the line. If no electricity is in the line, check the fuse in the fuse box to see if it is defective.

This is how from the beginning you can detect step-by-step where the fault lies, if the toaster is defective or there is no electricity. You also can plug the toaster into an outlet where an appliance has just worked. Of course, the problem can easily be solved if you have measuring instruments, e.g., a volt meter, but generally they are not found in the average household. Here it is important that you really observe and check and do not start to think: “It cannot be, that ...“ This, by the way, is the biggest problem of the human being … he thinks too much!

2. Answering the “Why“ Question. Now this point is self-explanatory. If you do not understand something, ask how or why to get an explanation. Explanations bring clarity and understanding! When something is completely understood, then there are no more questions. Consequently, you can derive the definition of understanding from the questions asked. (I would love to be really bombastic and use words like interrogative pronouns [question word for: who, whom, which, what and whose, etc.] but I want to be understood and possibly by everyone. My writings are probably too plain for the “educated” individuals, but at least I know what I am talking about! I mean, I do not have profile neurosis. I do not have to go into the dictionary to pick out words that no one has ever heard of and are not understood, only to be recognized or to be on a par with an academic or scientific* level.)

3. Word/Symbol, Meaning, Mass. Word/symbol, meaning, mass clearly refer to the language and the subject that is expressed by a word. To communicate, you first have a word or symbol that is used. The word/symbol is understood to the degree that you know the meaning and, even better, when you have the actual mass/ object in front of you that is identified by the word.

When you study tractors, it is a good idea to have a tractor in front of you. Just having a picture or a model of a tractor is a poor substitute. To learn about something also means to know how to deal with it! In order to get along in a world with material objects, you must know how to handle the objects. Of course, this can be achieved only if you take things into your own hands. If you get a feeling for tractors, you will realize that they get dirty and can break. Theory is no substitute for...