INTRODUCTION

The study is carried out to find the best and the most effective way to help students

learning how to learn. Researcher will have to gather information through various studies

done in school and university. On top of that, this research is also done to identify what are

the actual problem faced by teachers and learners when learning how to learn. The result of

this research will be greatly beneficial for the teachers and student alike to come out with one

solution and conclusion of what is the best learning approach of learning how to learn.

Hopefully the result of this research will be very helpful to help students learn. To have and

practice the best learning how to learn method is indeed very helpful for teachers as well as

the students.

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

According to B.F Skinner’s book entitled The Behaviour of Organisms, most research

focused on behaviours manifested by organisms, and exploitation of “laws of learning” from

animals to human. Skinner behaviourism theory relates learning with the stimulus-response-

reinforcement relationship. He viewed learning as a habit formation. Most research done in

North America during that time are on how humans construct and use meanings to guide their

actions was successfully suppressed.

There were also studies by Jean Piaget in Geneva, George Kelly in the United States

(1955) as well as some other researchers in England, but also didn’t primarily address the

construction and use of explicit meanings to guide actions in school learning and to serve as

the foundation for constructing new meanings.

In 1968, David Ausubel wrote a book entitled Educational Psychology : A Cognitive

View. In his book, Ausubel says that it is very important to have the knowledge of do the

learners had already know. It is the most important factor in influencing learning as teacher

can ascertain the students and teach them accordingly.

Paulo Freire has described in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) and The

Politics of Education (1985) that the main concern and idea of helping students “learn how to

learn” is to help them learn how to take charge of their own meaning making. It is helping the

students to understand that our minds are not storage bins where we can pile knowledge

indescrimately.

1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT

The effectiveness of learning and teaching has been an issue in the education world.

Some learners do not know the actual or the right way for them to learn. The challenged that

has been bothering the educators for quite sometimes now is the concern of “how to ascertain

what the learner already knows?”

There has been arguments about the effectiveness of assessing the students through

paper-and-pencil kind of test. It’s worrying of how those kinds of test will come in handy in

revealing what the learners understand for the lesson and can utilize. Some of educators

might felt that clinical interviews, patterned along the lines developed by Jean Piaget in her

study (1955), but focusing on understanding of concepts and concept relationships in explicit

knowledge domains, can be very effective.

The main idea of this research is to find the best and most effective way to help

students learn how to learn. The researcher is narrowing down the scope by conducting the

study in school and Cornell University. In school, the study is carried out among young

children while in university in revolves older learners. This is in order to find the differences

of how younger and older learners learn.

It is indeed a challenge to teach students learn how to learn. There are a lot of “how to

study” books available in today’s market that teach the student all about time management,

learning to concentrate, note-taking, but did not mention anything about how to take charge

of their own meaning making. All those books do not focusing on the empowerment of

learners but rather towards getting good grades in exam which totally the wrong idea of

learning.

The researcher had found out the problem that rises from this issue that has become the

barrier of practicing the right way of learning is that most of the teacher’s and students’ focus

upon learning is all about evaluation. The attention is centred on the evaluation which usually

measure by “invalid” test rather than having a meaningful learning.

The curriculum in school had also been the reason of difficulty for efforts to encourage

meaningful learning. Students have to deal with too much subject matter to be explained at a

time when there is very limited time. Students will not have enough time and space to explore

the concepts of the topic presented or taught. Facts and principles presented frequently are

not related to any kind of experience that is familiar with the learner.

In the United States, the practice of promoting courses in “thinking skills” is viewed as

counterproductive. It does not help much in improving the teaching-learning process in

school and it also burdening as the existing school curriculum is already a crowded one.

1.3 OBJECTIVES

The main objective of the research being carried is to study the most effective way to

helping students learn how to learn. The researcher gathers the information of how the

learners learn in school and in university, Cornell University specifically.

The second objective of the research is to design new instruction for classroom

learning. The researcher will be focusing more on induce more concern on understanding the

concepts and concept relationship instead of just studying for the sake of sitting for exams.

Finally the last objective of this research is to study the change in children’s

conceptual understanding of the particulate nature of matter over the twelve years span of

schooling.

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

There are four main questions being addressed in the research.

1.4.1 What do we know about how people learn?

1.4.2 Can we help our students learn how to learn?

1.4.3 What are major obstacles to helping students learn?

1.4.4 What promise is there for the empowerment of people?

1.5 SCOPE OF STUDY

The research is carried out to find the best and most effective of helping students

learning how to learn. The study has been carried out based on previous researchers’ findings

on the same concern. It is conducted among learners in two different levels which are in

school and university. The method of learning used by the students in learning, ways to teach

them how to learn, as well as the obstacles faced to teach them how to learn is being studied

by the researcher.

1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

If successful, the result of this study should provide teachers as well learners of what

are the best and most effective way to learn how to learn. This study can also help giving

students more meaningful understanding of what they are learning instead of just learning for

the sake of sitting for examinations. Besides that, teacher will know what are the problems

faced to teach students how to learn. Some might not be entirely effective, but in some way it

does improve the quality of knowledge gain through the right way of learning

METHODOLOGY

In the article Helping Students Learn How To Learn by Joseph Novak, Novak was

trying to figure out why students are not able to study efficiently and how to help them to

understand and learns a subject better.

According to this article, in many semesters of him teaching in [if I’m not mistaken in

Cornell University (1974)], several students said that they have trouble understanding even

grasp what their lecturers was teaching. Due to this, Novak came up with several solutions

that hopefully help the students to learn better. One of his many ways of learning and the

most known until today was the mind-maping/concept maps or the Vee heuristic.

Novak wants the students not only to memorize but also to think about what they have

learn. Concept maps or Vee heuristic is a concept where learners will need to derive or

construct new meanings out of the topics that they have learnt. Novak claimed it is simpler

and learners will not only understand what they have learnt but also developed a profound

way to increase their memory capacity.

Novak’s concern was to not only help them to learn but also to take charge of their wn

meaning making, by all means to make sure that the students knows hows to use and

improvise the concept maps.

He managed to get some students to carry out his experiment, which is; he explained

how to make and use a concept map. He made the students to draw a concept map anyhow

they can out of their understanding of any topics in school. From the concept map they had

drawn, Novak asks the students to explain and identify anything that they did not understand

or any flaw they could find from the concept map. Basically he wants to know whether his

idea of teaching students how to learn thru concept mapping is working or otherwise.

CONCLUSION

Towards the end, we can see Novak’s technique of learning how to learn succeeds

until now. The method not only used by learners but also teachers to help the learners to learn

and understand what they learn. The researcher believes that the use of concept maps and the

Vee heuristic represent promising alternatives in helping these learners. Although there many

other methods to aid learners learning to learn, Novak’s method does proof its efficiency as

learners favours his method. Hopefully this method will still be helpful to teacher and

learners in the near future.

FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES AND STUDY SKILLS

ZEU 1163

MADAM BHATMA DEVE KOMARAN

ASSIGNMENT 3

SITI IZDIHAR BINTI ZAINAL ABIDIN 4103005031

NOOR RUSYDIAH BINTI ABD GHANI 4134003451