Mastering the Italian language is not just focusing on basic vocabulary, key grammar structures and attending conversation lessons. If you are struggling to try to learn Italian and achieve a decent level of understanding it means you need it for travelling or being able to be an independent speaker. Therefore you do not need to watch Italian-language videos or learn tenths of terms by heart. You seriously need to master deep learning in order to unlock yourself and expand your knowledge.
Read more to discover how you will do it.
Meaningful learning: how it works
Reading my posts, you discovered that learning is not just a mere acquisition of notions.
Meaningful learning (the actual scientific term of this cognitive process) is to create, connect and transform your knowledge into a powerful, dynamic and resilient net of competences to naturally, effectively and confidently master your life.
At a deeper level, it is the act of connecting new information to your pre-existing knowledge.
That is to say, existing neural cells expand their connections, grabbing new data, creating such a thread of competences engaging each other, and enhancing their power as a orchestra of musicians whose sound blends into a single voice.
Precisely this is what occurs when you really learn something: it happened when you learnt how to walk as well as when you became able to play your favourite sport.
It is a natural process, but sometimes learners take actions that negatively affect it, due to time lack and inappropriate studying approaches.
How does the lack of this process affect your learning?
Engaging memory in the right way
Memory is a function of the mind that operates across different regions of the brain, each of which is dedicated to a specific task.
When children learn their tongue, they are not consciously involved in the process, so everything happens naturally.
The portion of memory in charge to store competences like this, or even skills like riding a bike or walking, is the procedural one.
To put it simply, you can imagine it as the system that allows you to perform actions.
When walking, as well as when speaking, you do not connect names or definitions to it: you just do it.
That’s the power of procedural memory.
After you have learnt (stored information stimulating the appropriate portion of memory) how to do it, you just run it.
While speaking a second language you are learning, procedural memory allows your mind flow to unconsciously provide you with terms and grammar structures you need according to the message you are thinking of and you want to express.
What if, instead, you stimulate declarative memory while learning a new language?
Declarative memory, as its name suggests, manages the declaration of contents, such as illustrating or identifying something.
To be precise, when you learn a new word activating declarative memory, you create a sort of double-side flashcard in your mind.
If you want to learn the Italian translation of the word milk and you are a native Dutch speaker, for example, you would have the idea of the fruit in your mind, connected to two different terms: melk (Dutch term learnt when you were a baby) and latte (Italian word you are memorising).
Every time you need to say latte, you will think of the idea you have in your mind, and you will get the double option.
Imagine this steps occurring in your mind, while you are at the restaurant saying you are allergic to milk:
- you visualise milk, the drink as you experienced when you were a baby or a kid, so linked to the word melk
- you think “how to say melk in Italian”
- you switch to Italian
- you get the backside of the flashcard > latte
- you say it.
When you use the procedural memory instead, you create two different ideas of milk: one of them connected to its Dutch denomination, the other to the Italian one.
The steps occurring in your mind, this time, would be:
- you visualise latte, the drink as you experienced when you drank it in Italy or mentioned during a conversation with your Italian language teacher
- you say it.
Almost imperceptible time gap, lasting fractions of a second, but wasting (if using declarative memory) or saving a significantly relevant amount of energy.
And the brain works properly and effectively when taking less effort for a more effective result.
Mastering deep learning while learning Italian matters: