Today's recommendation: an interesting youtube channel

I've been asking myself, during my few years in University, how to take advantage to all of my classes, to learn as much as I can from them and to success at studying time without letting my current life affairs aside, that means, managing my time correctly to grow as a person and as a professional. And, I should say that for me, it has not been an easy task. I believe, sometimes we set aside the importance of well knowing how we learn and what are the strategies that can help us to achieve those academic or personal goals. Why so? Maybe we try to concentrate so much on learning that we often forget we all have different ways to do it and so, we do not explore them at all; we just follow other's strategies, rules, and paths and we do not test or get conscious of the ones that contribute to make us better learners.

Shiho Chiya in the text, The Importance of Learning Styles and Learning Strategies in EFL teaching in Japan, guide us to understand better this topic. We should start by defining a learning strategy as “ specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new situations", (Oxford, R.1990). Taking that into account and as Chiya affirms, introducing and teaching those strategies in a classroom will improve the learning and teaching process in different ways because they help students become independent, active and self-directed learners. In consequence, the teacher should guide students through this path by, first, showing them all the possible learning strategies they can use and, second, making them realize which ones really fit them.

While doing research wanting to improve in those areas of my life, I found myself enjoying and learning so much about this topic from the youtube channel of Thomas Frank. I truly recommend this channel, as it is an interesting alternative to approach ourselves to this huge world. I have been learning a lot not just about learning strategies, but also about tactics to make our daily lives better: how to build better habits, how to fight against those actions that do not let you be better or think better about yourself, and so on. Plus, I have been practicing my listening skills, while I learn vocabulary, and some listening and speaking traits (intonation, rhythm and fluency). I must recognize that at first, it was a challenge for me to understand every single word he says, but that was why -and that is why- I keep watching his videos and daring myself to understand and learn from each of them.

Now, I would like to share with you some of the videos that I like, hoping you will find them interesting and helpful. 

1. 8 Thinks To Stop Doing When You Wake Up in the Morning

2. How to Study with INTENSE Focus - 7 Essential Tips

3. How to ACTUALLY Break your Bad Habits

4. 10 Essential Productivity Apps for iPhone and Android 

5. Study Less Study Smart: A 6-Minute Summary of Marty Lobdell's Lecture 

References

Chiya, S. The Importance of Learning Styles and Learning Strategies in EFL teaching in Japan. Susaki Technical High School Kochi Prefecture March, 2003. Taken from: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.483.6182&rep=rep1&type=pdf