When people begin to learn a language, they usually think it’s a case of learning new skills (sounds, vocab, grammar etc.) one by one until they’ve mastered them all.  However, there’s another vital and often neglected side to learning: the importance of building your capacity to learn.

To use a sports metaphor, someone who wants to become a football player doesn’t just spend their time practising football skills; they also go to the gym to build their muscles and do cardiovascular training so that they can exercise those ball skills more powerfully on the pitch.  The same principles apply to learning any skill in fact.  Of course, for sport it’s easy to see which muscles you need to develop, but what about intellectual skills like learning a foreign language?

Fortunately Professor Guy Claxton of Bristol university and the author of ‘Building Learning Power’ helps out here by distinguishing four ‘learning muscles’. These are not fixed abilities we’re born with but positive learning dispositions and they can be trained just like muscles.  His ideas have been so successful they are now being implemented in British schools nationwide and Building Learning Power has mushroomed into an international brand.  They’re just as relevant to adult learners as they are to children.

In this article, I’ll briefly introduce the four muscles, and in a series of follow up articles I’ll go into more detail about them, and more importantly, give you some ideas about how to exercise them to supercharge your learning power.  You can think of them as the four Rs: Resilience, Resourcefulness, Reflection and Reciprocity.

Resilience

Professor Claxton defines resilience as having a curious and adventurous approach to learning, but importantly it’s also the ability to stick with learning when the going gets tough.  People stop for many reasons, but some find themselves stopped when learning is not clear-cut and concepts are foggy.  Students who can tolerate this fogginess and keep going consistently out-perform those who don’t.  How easily do you get stopped and what stops you from sticking with it?

Resourcefulness

Resourcefulness is bringing all your resources to bear in your learning.  It’s about being questioning, open-minded, playful and imaginative.  Learners show dramatically increased memory retention when they make links and associations as they learn, and being imaginative and engaging actively with your learning is key here.

Reflection

If you’ve read this far, then you’re already being reflective.  You’re curious not just about what you’re learning, but how you’re learning.  Lifting a mirror up to your learning habits and evaluating your learning process and progress can reap enormous benefits. What’s your strategy and how can you improve it?

Reciprocity

We learn from and often with people.  Humans are fundamentally social animals and indeed our learning instincts have a social basis. Claxton’s last learning muscle is concerned with this social element of learning.  It looks at collaborative learning disposition versus working alone, being open to feedback, attentive and empathic.  Importantly he also includes ‘imitative’ here.  Good learners are able and willing to mimic others – something babies and children do instinctively.

If you’ve found this useful you might want to reflect on the four Rs a little more, list your strengths and weaknesses with respect to them and maybe give yourself a score out of ten.  Next time, we’ll delve into them in more detail and explore some ways you can start to build your learning power.

Gareth