LESSON 1:

LEARNING TO BE A BETTER LEARNER

PREPARED BY: KENO ALVIR G SUNI, RPM
LESSON OBJECTIVES

At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

◼ Explain how learning occurs;
◼ Enumerate various metacognition and studying techniques; and
◼ Identify the metacognitive techniques that you find most appropriate for yourself.
METACOGNITION

◼ Commonly defined as “thinking about thinking”

◼ It is the awareness of the scope and limitations of your current knowledge and skills.
◼ Enables the person to adapt their existing knowledge and skills to approach a learning task, seeking for the
optimum result of the learning experience
◼ Includes keeping one’s emotions and motivations while learning in check
◼ The goal of metacognition is for the student to be a self-regulated learner.
METACOGNITION BASICALLY HAS TWO ASPECTS:

◼ self-appraisal is your personal reflection on your knowledge and capabilities.

◼ self-management is the mental process you employ using what you have in planning and adapting to
successfully learn or accomplish a certain task.
SIMILAR CONCEPTS:

◼ metacognitive knowledge or what you know about how you think

◼ metacognition regulation or how you adjust your thinking processes to help you learn better
METACOGNITIVE KNOWLEDGE

- Under metacognitive knowledge, there are several variables that affect how you know
or assess yourself as a thinker:
• personal variable, which is your evaluation of your strengths and weaknesses in
learning
• task variable, which is what you know or what you think about the nature of the
task, as well as what strategies the task requires
• strategy variable refers to what strategies or skills you already have in dealing with
certain tasks.
- You must have an accurate self-assessment—you must be honest about what you know
and capable of in order to find ways to utilize your strengths and improve on your
weaknesses.
EXERCISING METACOGNITION

- The following are other skills that can help you in exercising metacognition:
• Knowing your limits.
The scope and limitations of your resources so that you can work with what you
have at the moment and look for ways to cope with other necessities
• Modifying your approach.
The recognition that your strategy is not appropriate with the task, to modify
your strategy in comprehending your material
• Skimming.
Browsing over a material and keeping an eye on keywords, phrases, or sentences
It is also about knowing where to search for such key terms.
EXERCISING METACOGNITION
• Rehearsing. It’s not just about repeatedly talking, writing, and/or doing what
you have learned, but also trying to make a personal interpretation or
summary of the learning experience.
• Self-Test. Trying to test your comprehension of your learning experience or
the skills you have acquired during learning.
- Other strategies that you need to develop include asking questions about your
methods, self-reflection, finding a mentor or support group if necessary, thinking
out loud (though you have to be considerate of others also when doing this), and
welcoming errors as learning experiences.
TIPS FOR STUDYING

- Other tips that you can use in studying are the following:
1. Make an outline of the things you want to learn, the things you are reading or
doing, and/or the things you remember.
2. Break down the task in smaller and more manageable details.
3. Integrate variation in your schedule and learning experience. Change reading
material every hour and do not put similar topics together.
4. Try to incubate your ideas.
5. Revise, summarize, and take down notes, then reread them to help you
minimize cramming in the last minute.
6. Engage what you have learned.