In education and psychology, retention refers to the preservation of the association of learning. In fact, good retention is linked with having a good memory. Proper retention is also affected by the environment. If we are interested in the material we have learned, like our response to the stimuli, we have enhanced retention. Often when we learn a new task, especially a new language, we forget what we have been taught. This is due to forgetting when there’s been an interference with your old material in your memory. It’s also known as proactive interference, where you can not learn a new task or a new language because your knowledge of other languages hampers your retention power, thus making you forget. Without retaining what has been learned, all that you have learned will leave after the passage of a certain time.
How can you enhance learning retention?
There are a lot of factors that can affect your ability to retain what you have started learning in your new language course online or offline. Maybe you are already a student or working, or maybe it’s due to the stress that can hamper your learning.
Let’s look at the best ways to learn a language online through these tips.
1. Break your information into pieces your brain can retain easily
It’s often a common practice to retain a huge amount of material in a very short period. Or, like when you learn the German language online, you learn a lot in a short amount of time. And not to forget, German is a difficult language to learn. So you may find yourself at odds when after your class is over, you forget something. What you can do is make a chart, write the words you are learning, and write the pronunciation in a language you are adept at so you can remember it. For Danke ( thank-you in German), you can write the pronunciation as Dun-Keh. Breaking down the word by syllable while pronouncing also helps.
Also, you can set up a period for study, after which you can take a short refreshment break.
2. Try to categorize items into groups.
One of the best ways to retain information is by grouping items into similar categories. When you connect and associate, you can group the details into bigger squares and make it easier to retain. Like you can group similar-sounding words in a group, which will make it easier to retain a foreign language better. Like Au – Aux – L’eau in French homophones. They are all pronounced similarly, like how in cold o is pronounced. This is especially helpful for learning French for beginners.
3. Test yourself after every lesson or video
You can check whether your learning retention by testing yourself. Preferably once in a while. Or it would be better if you could do it after every lesson or module. You can learn at night and test yourself afterward in the morning. Then you can understand what you have retained and what you have forgotten.
4. Learning from the mistakes you committed while learning
Testing is important; it helps you to understand the mistakes or errors you made, which have made you retain and forget. Understanding the problem areas, maybe it has more to do with how you pronounce hence the ways it left a trace in your memory. If you understand whether a language is phonetic,+ as in do they sound the same when they are spelled almost all the time) like German, you can then concentrate better on pronunciation.
5. Actively engaging in your course
You can ask your instructor to test you on your pronunciation or ask them to recommend videos that would further enhance what they have taught. One of the best ways to learn more about the language is by watching movies or series in that language with subtitles too. As you keep on watching more, your ears get adjusted more to the sounds which get ingrained into your memory. You also get to know how the words sound in different moods and situations. You can also try forming sentences or writing paragraphs later in your language-learning journey.
These are some of the ways through which you can ensure and enhance your learning retention. You can also try to review and then summarize each of the topics you have been taught. You can offer help to your fellow batchmate trying to learn the language; it would also enhance your understanding of the language. If you would like to have an option on one for one private lesson according to your grasp, K -12 experts provide you with that option too.
