hello there
this is jack from to fluency and today
we're going to talk about micro learning
and what this means when it comes to
learning english now micro learning is
becoming a bit of a craze at the moment
and i think there are a couple of things
here to really go into so today we're
going to look at what is micro learning
why it's become such a popular trend
right now why people are talking about
it a lot i'm going to also
spend a bit more time today going
through some of the vocabulary that we
see
so then you can learn some new words and
phrases and i'll give you some more
examples
and then at the end i'm going to give
you
a breakdown
or a summary on how you can use micro
learning when it comes to learning
english please note that the links that
i discussed today will be in the
description along with a link to get my
book the five-step plan for english
fluency you can download that for free
so definitely go and do that um but yeah
we're going to talk about
micro learning today
and i'm going to start with
the website exploding topics which again
is one of my favorite websites
and it says here to go straight into the
definition
micro learning
is a form of spaced repetition learning
in which lessons are broken up into
bite-sized chunks and repeated over time
okay micro learning is a form of spaced
repetition learning in which lessons are
broken up into bite-sized chunks and
repeated over time
so i'm going to say this in a different
way and then look at some of this
vocabulary
micro learning is where you repeat small
lessons over time
so you can think about a topic
you can break this up into
which means to take small parts from the
lesson
and then you learn those small parts and
repeat them over time
so let's say you're learning about the
history
of the uk
well instead of just reading one book on
the general history of the uk
what you can do is break up the history
of the uk which is a massive subject i
understand that into small pieces so you
might say for example
henry ii
or
the period
post world war ii
and then you can break that up further
into different topics
and the key here though is that you're
not just learning about it but you're
repeating
these lessons over time now i've been
thinking about this when it comes to
learning english and again
near the end i'll talk about the method
that i've been
talking about really for for years now
when it comes to micro learning and
learning through repetition but i'm sure
you have heard before how important
repetition is in terms of being able to
remember something and there's something
called the forgetting curve here where
if you repeat something today then
tomorrow then four days eight days 16
days
so that the gap between when you're
repeating something gets bigger over
time then you're much more likely to
remember this
and you can think about doing this in an
efficient way too
so that you're not repeating it more
than you have to
because when it comes to learning
anything we want to be efficient we want
to be able to remember things without
doing more than we need to but at the
same time we need to understand that
repetition is really important and one
of the reasons why i like ebooks
especially kindle ebooks is that you can
highlight passages like parts of the
ebook
and repeat these over time so you can
take the different packages or the
different sentences that you've
highlighted in the book and repeat them
over a period of time and i think this
is a really important thing as well
that whenever it comes to anything
repetition is key if you want to retain
that information
now on another website e-learning
industry they talk about the history of
this and that it says
it has a long history even before
computers were a thing so people were
using this concept
and taking small parts of whatever it is
they're learning and repeating them over
the long term but it says
it really took off when it met the
modern smartphone
so much so that leading micro learning
platforms feel like a mix of twitter and
instagram but educational so it says
here it took off when the smartphone
came about and people started using
social media so for for something to
take off in this business sense
or this educational sense means that it
started to become popular
people started to really use this
because you can think about a plane
taking off
which is what we use that phrasal verb
for as well but if something is really
taking off at the moment it means it's
really becoming popular and people are
using this
now this made me think of something else
and it was about attention spans i think
this is an important topic here too and
i found something on this and it says um
on the orlando sentinel which is
talking about
a study it says consider this
the average human attention span is now
shorter than a goldfishes
a recent study found that the average
human attention span has fallen from 12
seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds today
it is reported that goldfish have a 9
second attention span
and your attention span is the amount of
time that you can concentrate on a task
or on something before becoming
distracted
before your attention
goes somewhere else and just think about
that for a moment because i'm sure you
have
seen this in your life or other people's
lives where you have a conversation
these days and it seems like people
aren't really paying attention or it's
difficult for them to pay attention for
a long period of time
and people have said that maybe social
media and our phones have done this for
us because we're always getting
notifications or we're thinking okay
let's go on instagram for a moment or
let's go on tiktok and especially when
you think about all the new social media
platforms the videos are getting shorter
and shorter and shorter
where in the past people would go on
facebook or youtube and watch a video
for
at least five minutes there were some
short videos but generally speaking most
were 5 10 15 20 minutes and then now
things like tick tock it's all about 10
to 15 seconds and i wonder if that's
just gonna keep getting shorter and
shorter in the future
but we can use this to our advantage or
at least
think about using the the short videos
in a way that's going to be helpful for
us
and the e-learning industry website
talks about some micro learning content
examples it says text
which is phrases or short paragraphs
images
videos of the short variety
short audio
snippets and a snippet is like a small
chunk of audio tests and quizzes and
also games
so you might have heard of a bite-sized
content and this is what this is talking
about bite-sized content and if
something is bite-sized it means it's
small in in nature
so you can think about this in the
literal sense to take a small bite of
something a bite size
means that you're only taking a small
part of your food at once you're not
putting all the food into your mouth so
that's where that comes from something
that's bite-sized so bite-sized content
means a small piece of content
now
this type of micro learning i don't
think is is perfect for
everything
for all subjects because it might be
quite difficult when it comes to
complex
subjects where you need to know their
overall structure
having said that you can learn the
overall structure go into the small
parts of it learn those and then you get
a better understanding so i think it
just depends on you
and also maybe sometimes the topic and
what you're trying to learn
now when it comes to learning english
i've talked about something similar to
this
over the years
where i've talked about the sentence
method
um
which is where you learn
in small chunks
okay
where you take sentences and you learn
those sentences and i've also talked
about
repetition as well where you can take
sentences use spaced repetition software
which is going back to the repetition
example i gave before
and then you can internalize these
sentences
over the long term now you can do this
on your own
where you let's say you're reading a
book and go back to the kindle example
or any kind of ebook app that you might
use where you can highlight sentences
within a book and then go back to those
later
and repeat them
and there might be some software that
allows you to
import these into space repetition
software as well so what you're doing is
you're getting the general concept of
the book and then you're going deeper
into the micro learning and using the
repetition method that we've talked
about in order to
really understand this over the long
term
now
what we're doing here with english
because it's a language
is when we're doing this with sentences
we are internalizing the grammar
over the long term
we are understanding and recognizing
patterns in a natural way
because when you think about learning
grammar you can learn the rules
and think about it in
in that sense where okay i need to use
this then that and then that
whereas i feel and what i've talked
about for years is a more natural way of
learning and the way where it just feels
right to you is where you repeat
lots of sentences so that you just pick
up these patterns
and to pick up these patterns means that
you just internalize them you naturally
learn them so you're not focusing on the
rules instead you're just naturally
getting to a stage where the patterns
grammar feels right to you
now let's talk about social media as
well because like i said a lot of
lessons these days on social media
are broken down into
micro lessons where
you have a minute video or 15 second
video
explaining a phrasal verb or a piece of
vocabulary etc
now the big advantage to this is it fits
in with
this idea of micro learning because
you're taking one concept you're
learning it and it doesn't feel so
overwhelming and it might fit better
with the way that we just engage with
content these days
now
i think there are two things you can do
here to to really expand this
the first one is to
repeat micro lessons
so when you see one of my shorts or
instagram lesson or another teacher's
instagram lesson
you can save that
so on instagram there's a feature where
you can save it and put it into a
category
and then maybe every week you just go
back through the lessons which means you
go and repeat the lessons again
so that you can
implement more of this repetition into
it
and then the second thing you can do
is try to engage a little bit more with
the lesson where you write your own
examples
of whatever it is that you're learning
so let's say it's the phrasal verb to
break down because we've talked about
that in this lesson you can
write a few sentences on this or the the
phrasal verb take off
you can write a few sentences about that
as well and use grammarly or any kind of
app that allows you to
test or check your grammar so that you
know your writing correctly now i think
the downside of this or one of the
downsides is that it's not
so structured okay and the context from
micro lessons
isn't as strong
and i think context
is king with a lot of these things that
we're talking about
and what i mean by context is the
context of
the the sentence okay
so how do you use this sentence who uses
this sentence and when do you use it
because you might be learning some slang
let's say
but without the real context of
who uses this
and
it can be quite nuanced which means it
can be quite tricky to know exactly when
to use it quite hard to know when to use
it exactly
so you might learn some slang and then
you realize
only young kids use this
and maybe you're older and it doesn't
seem quite right to use it
or maybe you learn a phrasal verb
and it just doesn't work in the right
situation
so i think
that
there is a downside to using the social
media these lessons because of the
context but at the same time if you're
getting enough natural input
if you're reading if you're listening to
long-form content
and
you're also just doing the general
things to improve your english then you
should be able to realize the the
context of it and the more english you
know the more you do this over time
the more you'll understand okay
that we use this phrasal verb in this
situation oh i've heard that before
and therefore i know how to use it
so that's quite nuanced it's quite
complex here but just to give a quick
summary
micro learning is becoming a thing and i
think part of this is just the
the attention span and that the way that
the social media websites they're
putting out shorter form content
and this is driven
by people and how they engage with the
content so i think it is user
generated now
there are
many ways you can use this to your
advantage and i've talked about this the
sentence method get sentences and repeat
them
however you're going to do this get
sentences and repeat them and if you can
get sentences from strong context
for example this podcast
then
you're going to have a better idea of
how to use it
and then on the other hand we can also
use social media micro lessons that
teachers are putting out and also just
regular social media videos from people
who aren't teaching english
so just like the the natural um content
and then you can
save them and repeat them and write your
own sentences using them so then we're
introducing that element of repetition
but always be careful about the type of
language you're using or learning sorry
and where the context comes from so
those are my thoughts on micro learning
and what what it means for you as an
english learner now if you've enjoyed
this episode then you can do two things
firstly subscribe to my lessons
on whichever platform you're using
whether you're on spotify youtube or
apple podcast or a different podcast app
just click that subscribe button so then
you don't miss a lesson
and then also if you found it useful
then please share it with a friend so
just click that share button
and send it to somebody who you think
will benefit from this
okay so thanks again for being here
again my name is jack from tofluency
i'll have all the links in the
description for you and i will speak to
you soon bye for now