Obviously you already know how to learn ideas that are presented to you in verbal form. You have been engaged in such learning for at least twelve years and you wouldn't even be in college unless you were reasonably successful. But being able to do something does not necessarily mean that you know how you do it. For example, you can surely say the word, "information," but do you know how you arrange your vocal chords, lips, and tongue in order to speak the word? Chances are you know how to do it but don't know any more about how you do it than that you just "do it."
The way that you learn from verbal information is by engaging in rehearsal, that is, silent talking to yourself. There are two techniques of rehearsal. One is called maintenance rehearsal because its major function is to maintain information in mind. You do this by simply repeating it over and over again, such as you probably do with a telephone number. You use maintenance rehearsal to memorize material, to learn it "by heart." Although there are some other memory techniques that I shall describe in a later chapter, repeating verbal material word-for-word is the most familiar way to learn. We call this "rote" learning and it is appropriate when you need to know something verbatim. The danger of rote learning is that you do not really have to understand the meaning of words in order to memorize them. Indeed, you can learn meaningless material (e.g., "Abracadabra"). People may memorize lines without knowing their meaning (e.g., "Four score and seven years ago..."), and we have probably all learned wrong words, (e.g., "a virgin is chased," rather than chaste). Hence, if you feel that you must memorize something in college, such as a definition or formula, be sure you understand it. Otherwise, you may get a "pullet surprise" instead of a Pulitzer Prize.
The other type of verbal rehearsal is called elaborative rehearsal because it requires more than mere repetition. Elaborative rehearsal is necessary if you want to understand verbal information. You can use maintenance rehearsal to learn (memorize) words, but you have to be more active in order to learn from words. Comprehension of ideas is the principal goal of most college courses, and hence elaborative rehearsal, as described below, is the critical form of active participation.
The words one person uses to express an idea convey information to the other person. As we have seen, it then becomes the other person's job to decode the words, figure out their meaning, and learn the idea. This transformation of words into stored knowledge is called information processing. The word, "process," means to change or convert something into a different form. The digestive process converts food into useful minerals; the learning process converts words into useful knowledge. Although learning is as natural as digestion, it may be helpful to reflect on the steps involved in the processing of verbal information. . .i.e., in "digesting" ideas. (1) Verbal input must first be interpreted so as to identify the words. This is especially challenging in the case of listening because the sounds of speech appear to be an almost continuous stream of complex sounds. This challenge is most obvious when listening to a foreign language (or a lecturer who uses a lot of words you don't know). In the case of reading, although the words are clearly demarcated by spaces, the meaning of the words is often dependent on the context. Hence, in reading as well as listening, deciphering the signals may require some attention.
(2) The next step involves what is called "chunking" the information into phrases. We do not usually think in terms of isolated words, such as...the...large...red...paperback...book. Instead, we lump all of these words together into a single concept or mental image which becomes the unit for further processing.
(3) It is then necessary to Œparse‹ the chunks of information, by which we mean to determine what is the subject, the predicate, and the object of a sentence. Substantially the same information can be conveyed in a number of different sentences. For example, "John hit Jim with a ball," "Jim was hit with a ball by John," and "It was a ball with which John hit Jim," are different ways of saying the same thing. Parsing means to sort out who did what to whom with what.
(4) We use the word "coding" to refer to transforming words into their non-verbal ideas/thoughts/images/concepts. For the preceding sentence to be meaningful, you have to know who John and Jim are, what a ball is, and what it means to be hit with one. Actually, these meanings are somewhat unique for each of us, but verbal input must be coded into the non-verbal form that represents knowledge. (5) Coded information usually brings to mind other information that is stored in memory and that has been somehow associated with the new information. Continuing the preceding example, perhaps you have been hit by a ball and the sentence may remind you of that experience. You might reflect on the type of ball involved, or where the ball hit Jim. (6) Finally, the new information must become integrated into your own knowledge system. For example, your opinion of John may be influenced by this act, and your understanding of the relationship between John and Jim will be adjusted to include this new event. More generally, new information may be compatible with your existing knowledge and simply be added to it, or the new information may NOT fit with what you already know. When this happens, the correct solution is to change your earlier beliefs. We sometimes do this but we are more likely to dismiss the new information as being somehow unacceptable, or we distort the new information to make it fit.
When the steps involved in processing information are enumerated as I have just done, the task appears to take on formidable dimensions. Indeed, you may wonder how something you do so casually could be so complicated. The reason for this apparent discrepancy is that each time you process an item of information, it gets progressively easier. For example, when you first started learning arithmetic, the fact that 2x2=4 was probably difficult to process. You even had to learn what multiply means. But as you kept rehearsing that fact and integrating it with related multiplication facts, it became automatic. This idea is showngraphically in Figure 4.1.
Note carefully that, in this context, the word "automatic" does NOT mean an innate reflex, as it did with attention. Information processing becomes automatic when it is so well learned that it no longer requires your conscious attention. It is like riding a bicycle. At first, you had to pay close attention to keeping your balance, steering, and pushing on the pedals; with practice, all those things became "second nature." This ability to process any familiar information automatically enables you to allocate all of your cognitive capacity to the new information.