The Live Method by Ott Ojamets - HTML preview

INTEGRATE ALL THE LIVE-ELEMENTS INTO YOUR DAILY SCHEDULE

Now you know what to do and how to do it, so that you can excel in your language learning journey. But you also have to know what moments of your daily schedule would be the most efficient for implementing the LIVE-elements. So, let´s take a look at how to do that.

Before we can give you specific guidelines on how to act on a daily basis, you need to understand how and why we acquire knowledge and in which circumstances our minds are closed to new information.

Our bodies have developed a strong unwillingness to acquire information due to the school system. Our minds understood quite well in school that when some new information was given to us, then we had to memorize it. And it usually did become memorized after some study – think about all those facts and all those things that you knew about history and everything else when you were in high-school for example.

But later on when you became more focused on family life and work, those facts weren’t memorized as well as they once were. And usually people complain that they are getting older and they aren’t as sharp anymore.

This is not actually the truth, as science has shown us that the difference in brain plasticity between a high-school girl and an elderly lady is really small. This means that memorizing something should be equally efficient for both of them.

So what is different? Why don´t many adults memorize information as well as they used to as children and teens?

The answer is really simple – your memory has developed a system where things that are related to your interests and your goals are memorized well, while the things that are outside of your interests and goals are not memorized at all. It´s again the same idea about the need to have your learning materials on a subject that you´re interested in.

It´s very logical, isn´t it?

It´s quite obvious that if you´re leading a company as a manager and doing your everyday job, then you´re not usually interested in the information that somebody tells you about their lives and things that they are doing. It´s just common sense – as the saying goes, “our heads are not trash cans”. Therefore, your memory makes a choice – “I will only remember the information that is useful for me”. And “I will only acquire information that will benefit me”. Simple!

The same idea applies also to how we acquire new information and which channels do employ to do so. Therefore, if you go to a language school and you sit there in a classroom with 8-10 people, using learning manuals and having a proper classroom experience, then an automatic process is triggered in your mind that hinders your efficiency in learning the language. Why? Because your memory has learned that these kinds of situations are highly inefficient and are not related to your interests.

This simple description explains well how the environment affects the way we memorize information.

Therefore, every time when you put yourself in a situation that resembles “learning”, then your memory will be less efficient, because it will try to block out unnecessary information. Because it is used to the fact that unnecessary information usually comes in big loads while learning something.

This is an important rule for achieving success in language learning – the less your mind realises that you are learning, the more efficient you are.

 So what is the solution?

It´s quite simple. All learning situations have to be as much as possible a part of your daily life. They have to resemble your daily life and they can´t resemble “learning”.

I´ll give you some examples:

A. When you´re listening to your podcast episode/video from your smartphone while having lunch, for example, then it resembles the usual situation when you are skimming your Facebook profile and watching interesting videos. It´s not different from your real life and your memory is open to new information because of that.

B. When you´re sitting at home on your sofa and you have your computer on your lap and you have the headphones on, and you are using some LIVE-elements, then your memory is open, because it´s a usual situation from your life as well. You have your own coffee mug with you, you are in an environment that you know, etc.

These are just some examples, but you get the point.

Therefore, it´s important to use the LIVE-elements as much as possible as a natural part of your everyday life, using the same tools (smartphone, computer, etc.) that you are used to use on a daily basis, because then your memory is more open to the information that you will acquire. And the difference between great results and average results in language learning depends greatly on that.

Now let´s move forward to start with your language learning experience.

GUIDELINES FOR DAILY LANGUAGE LEARNING

Now you have a good overview of the LIVE-methodology and of all of its elements to create yourself a successful language learning experience. To make sure that you do just that we will take the main ideas of this book and bring them together again, to form exact guidelines that you can follow on a daily basis.

To make <