Be A Super Student This School Year!
July 8, 2010
Can you imagine being a super student? What would it feel like if you could start acing your tests? If you know how; if you know your internal processes – you can master the skill of learning immediately!
We each have internal processes or strategies for doing anything we do. These are processes that go on inside of us that we usually are not consciously aware of. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) looks out how people do what they do. We each have internal representational systems that we use to process our external stimuli. The top three representational systems that we use are: visual, auditory and kinesthetic (feeling). Most people will have a primary representational system that they use when interpreting their world. When you think of how you do something that you do well, do you see yourself doing it? Do you hear the sounds? Do you feel the process or have emotions? You might do a combination of all three, but there is usually a primary modality. It might also be different for different things that you do.
The key to being a great learner is to use your primary representational system to learn. Let’s say your primary representational system is visual. If you are taking a history class, you can see the events you are learning about as though they were on a movie screen. Visualize the events clearly and make the images bright and vivid. If your primary representational system is auditory, you can listen to the events and hear them as they happen. Hear the people’s words as they speak. Make the sound full and clear. Hear the events as they happen. Listen to the sounds in you mind. If you are a kinesthetic person, feel the events. You might even feel yourself living the events you are learning about. Feel the emotions as the events unfurl.
A great example of how to use this technique is a strategy for spelling. The primary modality used by the greatest spellers is visual. This is because we can see the letters but often the sound of a word does not clearly indicate how it is spelled. Let’s take the word “Econlockhatchee”. First break it down into chunks. The first part of the word is “Econ”, then “lock” then “hat” then “chee”. Write each part of the word on an index card and hold it up and to the left of your eyes. Look at each part several times until you can spell each part. Then put them all together to spell the word. Now that you have done this with Econlockhatchee, you will be able to spell this word perfectly forever!
These kinds of strategies are very effective and can be used for anything that anyone does well. We have strategies for everything we do in life, including learning. When you explore your strategy for learning and use the internal representation that works the best for you, you will be master at learning!
