Question

"Interleaving for Learning" Please respond to the following: Please read this Wired article, “Everything You Thought You Knew About Learning Is Wrong”, then respond to the following questions: What’s the difference between block learning and interleaving? Explain how you can use interleaving to learn or improve your mastery of a sport, instrument, course, or skill (e.g. basketball, golf, guitar, math, painting, public speaking, etc.) Specify the mini-skills you would interleave together.

Article: https://www.wired.com/2012/01/everything-about-learning/

Answer 1

• A beginning pianist might rehearse scales before chords. A young tennis player practices the forehand before the backhand. Learning researchers call this blocking and because it is easy to schedule, blocking is dominant in schools, training programs, and other settings.
• Whereas blocking involves practicing one skill at a time before the next,for example, skill A before skill B,in interleaving one mixes, practice on several related skills together. For example, a pianist alternates practice between scales, chords, and arpeggios, while a tennis player alternates practice between forehands, backhands, and volleys.
• Bjork explains that when we mix up our study materials, we start to notice both the similarities and differences among the things we’re learning, and this can give us a better and deeper understanding of the material.
• Another possible reason interleaving is effective is that it makes learning more difficult.Learning is simply more effective when it’s challenging.
• Bjork refers to this concept as “desirable difficulties,” and notes that introducing the right kinds of difficulties into the learning process can greatly improve long-term retention, because we’re forced to process new material more deeply.
• For example, if you were learning to play tennis, you wouldn’t practise your backhands, followed by your serves, followed by English literature, because the last skill is completely unrelated to the first two.
• So if you’re studying Italian, rather than spending a whole lesson focusing only on vocabulary or reading, you could mix it up by spending 10 minutes memorising vocabulary, 10 minutes reading or writing, 10 minutes practising your pronunciation and then circling back to one of the previous skills.