A Better Learner By You
By tutors unit, student support unit (LMS management) and R&D
“Learning is a mysterious ability that we share, we, living creatures. It’s this long, complex, self-centric, social, physical, biochemical, emotional interaction we unconsciously make, every moment we truly experience.”
This is how the course A Better Learner By You introduction begins.
This course automatically shows up on the student’s course library once they complete 40 hours of Arabic learning of any track (i.e. online, blended or face-to-face).
Then it continues…
“It forces you, to bring back a countless amount of information the present moment, fetches them into your memories, both the working and the long-term memory, erases old information, interleaves the rest with what you’ve just gained, gives you the pleasure that you can only experience with the uh-ha moment! In short, it is what can truly changes you; and when you do it rightly, it certainly makes you… a better you.”
And the third paragraph…
“As you’ve decided to add a new skill to your unique set, you will find a good amount of information in that will help you moving ahead with your decision of learning Arabic, all that we’ve meant of this course is to refresh your already-stored “chunks” of knowledge that brought you in the first place to this particular moment and offer some new patters and perspectivs as we learn from life, science and from you.”
In a face-to-face track, only a few learners can complete 240 hours of Arabic, the majority can attend up to 120 hours, the exact half, so we had to be very wise in planning and dividing the content of this course.
“We’ve divided this course into 12 modules:
- Coping with learning challenges
- When formal education and life come across
- Summing up and interleaving
- Your brain secrets
- Learning and controlling the necessary technology
- Language-acquisition techniques
- Summing up and interleaving
- Arabic in your daily tasks and career
- Getting the best out of you
- What’s next?
- Summing up and interleaving”
And this is the course TOC. Notice this repeated summing up and interleaving module? Without it, we couldn’t give this course its current name.
You might want to do the same. Whenever you complete three to four chapters of whatever you are learning, pause deliberately, gather all the notes you have jotted down, open up the text you have been reading and reconnect the dots.
Back to the intro…
“Our approach in this course is based on the technique which we refer to as the Active Learning/Skill Cycle ©, it is the secret sauce that keeps your skills fresh, enhanced, recall-able and reliable at any time should you need them.
Try to “plug-in” a skill that you want to learn and watch with your own eyes how this technique is so effective in concreting your skills and knitting them into your own life.”
On the personal and community levels.
Believe it or not, and so far, all of us at The Arabic Institute (Khobar branch) know how to play guitar (each to a certain level of course)!
So, for us, no other skill is better for the “plugin” exercise than learning guitar… Let’s do it!
You teach yourself playing on the guitar on your own or with someone else’s help; then…
→ you convert the verbal and non- verbal information into knowledge;
→ you understand these information and ACCEPT them after long or short processing;
→ you apply that understood knowledge into your instrument, your fingers and you ears;
→ you judge and evaluate your performance, keep trying until perfection and at a certain point, you ask others for their feedback;
Then, we insist on adding this step:
→ once you reach a promising level where you could barely keep your newly acquired skill to yourself and you feel the need to share it all over the world, you must do it the best possible way, and the best form of sharing is teaching. So transfer that information someone who has no prior knowledge;
→ on a personal level, you would surely get new information from your learners, in a form of a question, a gesture or even a feedback. It is your job to convert them into knowledge;
→ and the cycle runs forever…
The same goes with Arabic.
Only because of a course like this one, we were able to understand and develop:
- The Eastern and western learners and all learners in between…Who we have been sharing our insights on them with you.
- Arabic by none-natives… A preparing course that we will provide to our learners of none native to teach others who share their mother tongue.
- Arabic for business programs.
And other information we convert into knowledge and apply onto ourselves as individuals and organization. The active learning/skill cycle © has become a part of our DNA.
“From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for giving us the opportunity to learn from you. All that we’re hoping for is that you can find your own unique path throughtout this course journey and share it with us.
Happy learning!
Yours,
The Arabic Institute team”
Yours,
The Arabic Institute teams
If you were looking for definitions:
Information is data that has been given some meaning by way of relational connection.
Knowledge is the concise and appropriate collection of information in a way that makes it useful.
Understanding is a psychological process related to an abstract or physical object, such as a person, situation, or message whereby one is able to think about it and use concepts to deal adequately with that object. Understanding is a relation between the knower and an object of understanding. Understanding implies abilities and dispositions with respect to an object of knowledge that is sufficient to support intelligent behavior.
