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jsalvatier comments on Learning how to explain things - Less Wrong
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Comments (18)
Do you have tips for Recalling what it was like before you understood? I frequently notice that I don't know how to do that.
I super endorse Motivating each step, especially when it comes to math. I find I have a lot of trouble with advanced math textbooks that do not do this well (and that's most of them).
Find a way to do the activity in a way that negates your previous knowledge and training.
For example, when I used to teach hooping, if I wanted to remember what it was like to try doing a move that you don't already "have", I would do it in my non-dominant direction. It would feel completely awkward, and I would catch myself making all the mistakes that first-timers to that move make, since I hadn't already trained it into muscle memory. Then when I taught a class, I would be prepared with what mistakes to look for, and already thought of ways to explain how to correct it.
As another example, in a Math Education course I took, they taught us how to do basic arithmetic in different bases (i.e. binary or hexxadecimal) in order to get rid of our intuitive understanding of those operations. That way, we could learn and explain it from a fundamental level, and we would remember how difficult it was at first, to learn.
Ooh! That's actually quite good. This might even make for a good post. Have you thought about writing one up? Even just putting this comment in a post would be good I think.
I wonder if it would be useful to do this with a bunch of skills that you've already mastered (handwriting with non dominant hand, etc.). It would be neat to make a list of ways to negate previous knowledge and training.
This is an awesome strategy!
One of the things I do to figure out how people can do stuff wrong (i.e. in swimming, which isn't something you can try doing in your non-dominant direction) is to break down the motion into tiny parts and do that tiny part while watching them, to figure out if that tiny part is the one they're getting wrong.
I also do a lot of trial and error, because sometimes someone's stroke will look intuitively wrong to me in a way I can't really explain to myself, so I make a guess, teach them how to correct that, and then watch again and see if my intuition is any happier with it.
Good question. Unfortunately, it seems that for recall, it's a case of "you either do or you don't", and this is probably where I'm most unique. The best advice I can give is to use the "Remembrance of Things Past" trick: think about any memory related to that time in your life, and see if you can trigger an association that leads back to what you were thinking then.
Very true. A good example is the definition of a limit in calculus. If you try to just read the formal, standard definition, your brain will feel like mush, but if you learn what the definition is trying to accomplish, all the variables it introduces suddenly make sense.