Self-sabotage and counter-productive learning strategies
I read this really interesting paper on a vocabulary class, and it made me think of how we sabotage our own learning and avoid doing hard work that we know will be helpful.
The paper was assessing the efficacy of a vocabulary course and how students learned. It was designed to be learner centred--students would select words that were personally useful to them rather than a teacher picking for the whole class.
At the beginning of the course they were given a notebook with information to fill in for each word, and were instructed on how to select words, effective learning strategies, and what is involved in knowing a word. They were tested each week on 30-40 words and assessed at the end of the course on how well they recalled and could use words.
Overall, most students didn't remember many words very well.
They generally didn't use the strategies taught at the beginning of the class and fell back to rote memorisation--spending a lot of time repetitively reading their notes or copying by hand. They copied example sentences from dictionaries rather than make their own. Only 3/9 did self-testing.
Many studied only to pass the weekly test, sometimes cramming the night before, and didn't do any revising afterwards to make sure they remembered.
The majority picked words from textbooks or words they thought would impress the teacher, and then complained that the course wasn't good because they were learning words that weren't useful.
The goal of the course was to teach students to take responsibility for their own learning--learning what is personally useful, strategies to remember words long-term with deep knowledge like being able use the word in a sentence and recall it. However, the majority of students fell back to strategies that required less brain power (but not necessarily less time).
Anyway, this made me think of how I don't always study in ways I know are efficient. It's so much easier to take a class and do no work outside. Repetitively drilling vocabulary rather than making my own sentences. Doing 10 minutes a day of an easy app rather than something that taxes my brain. Falling back to English translation rather than pushing through and trying to explain it in my target language. Always using English subtitles. Avoiding native materials. Avoiding talking to native speakers.
Does anyone else do the same? And why?
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