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Under the Hood The science of vocabulary building

On Metacognition, or Thinking About Thinking

May 14, 2012
Do you say, “I better write this one down, or it will disappear from my brain?” Do you count on answers to questions slipping into your brain hours after the question arises, or phone numbers sticking in your head once you've dialed them five times? If you do, that's great. You're engaging in a process called metacognition. Metacognition means ‘thinking about thinking,’ and educators going back to Piaget believe that engaging in it helps us learn. Continue reading...
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What Babies Teach Us About Vocabulary

May 4, 2012
Cognitive psychologist Elizabeth S. Spelke believes that language is the key to human beings' capacity to combine various forms of intelligence such that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts––an inspiring insight for anyone set on building vocabulary. Continue reading...
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Can You Ever Fully Know a Word?

April 30, 2012
In an earlier post on this blog, we wrote about word knowledge limbo, citing research that shows that our brains don’t travel directly from “not knowing” a word to “knowing it.” In this post, we’ll talk about what it means when you do finally get there. What does it mean to know a word? Continue reading...
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The Forgetting Curve

April 16, 2012
As you’re playing the Challenge, do you ever wonder why you see questions on words you have already mastered? It’s because the game is attempting to circumvent your brain’s natural process of forgetting. Continue reading...
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Can Forgetting Help You Learn?

April 9, 2012
The brain’s active forgetting actually helps you absorb the meanings of words. Continue reading...
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Do I Know You? Word Knowledge Limbo

March 19, 2012
According to vocabulary education researchers, "knowing" and "not knowing" doesn't describe how we learn words. Rather, there's a spectrum of knowledge that ranges from "I never saw it before" to "I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know what it means" to "I recognize it in context -- it has something to do with..." to "I know it." Continue reading...
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Finding the Right Words to Learn

March 5, 2012
As you speed through the Challenge watching the words you’ve learned accumulate like so many dollars in the savings account of life, do you ever stop and wonder how many words are actually out there? Continue reading...
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