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Language In Learning (07/23/2024)
In my attempts to channel everything that I learn into serving others, language has played a pivotal role. To give a couple of examples...
Language is the means by which knowledge is transmitted. Therefore, knowing something about language is vital to learning. One of the most fundamental concepts within language is distinguishing between nouns and verbs. Generally (very generally!), nouns are things and verbs are what they do.
Nouns are predominantly static and spatial in that they can be visualized as a gestalt, a picture in the mind. Verbs are dynamic and temporal, linking nouns together into sequences of actions or states like the frames within a movie. How are we making associations and building context? When it comes to learning, many things can be deciphered simply by looking for all of the nouns and all of the verbs within any given description and seeing how they interrelate. If one's knowledge base is wide enough, then pretty much anything can be understandable to some degree, even if we've never encountered the subject before. The imaginings and inferences then become sharper and increase in accuracy the more information that we take in.
When we become skilled in transfering knowledge from one domain to another, we can often realistically gauge what will most likely be required of us to become "good" in a subject without having yet "mastered" it. However, it must always be kept in mind that learning is constant no matter what degree of "mastery" we obtain. Therefore, pride in one's knowledge is foolishness. Humility is not only a virtue, it counteracts the errors that arise from The Dunning-Kruger Effect. We might be able to quickly learn what to look for and how to move, but creating and fostering constructive habits within our perception and behavior takes time.
Language is also the primary means of communication between people. Getting to know someone is not like learning from a book though. A person's choice of words might only vaguely hint at what is going on within them at any given moment. Their intonation, the facial expressions and gestures that they make as they say them, and so on can provide extra context, but all of it is embedded within an entire lifetime of experiences. How do those experiences relate to their worldview and how they interact with everything around them?...It might seem a bit funny to put it this way, but what are their nouns and verbs?
In short: Language is a core part of acquiring skills and building relationships.
Some music:
• OM53 - cast (get better)
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