Hello there. This is Jack from to Fluency. And today we're going to talk about micro learning and what this means when it comes to learning English. Now, micro learning is becoming a bit of a craze at the moment and I think there are a couple of things here to really go into. So today we're going to look at what is micro learning, why it's become such a popular trend right now, and why people are talking about it a lot.
I'm going to also spend a bit more time today going through some of the vocabulary that we see. So then you can learn some new words and phrases. And I'll give you some more examples. And then at the end, I'm going to give you a breakdown or a summary on how you can use micro learning when it comes to learning English. Please note that the links that I discussed today will be in the description along with a link to get my book, The Five Step Plan for English Fluency.
You can download that for free. So definitely go and do that. But yeah, we're going to talk about micro learning today and I'm going to start with the website Exploding Topics, which again is one of my favorite websites. And it says here to go straight into the definition. Micro learning is a form of spaced repetition learning in which lessons are broken up into bite sized chunks and repeated
over time. OK, micro learning is a form of spaced repetition learning in which lessons are broken up into bite sized chunks and repeated over time. So I'm going to say this in a different way and then look at some of this vocabulary. Microlearning is where you repeat small lessons over time. So you can think about a topic you can break this up into, which means to take small parts from the lesson and then you learn those small parts and
repeat them over time. So let's say you're learning about the history of the UK. Well, instead of just reading one book on the general history of the UK, what you can do is break up the history of the UK, which is a massive subject. I understand that into small pieces. So you might say, for example, Henry the Second or the period post World War 2. And then you can break that up
further into different topics. And the key here though is that you're not just learning about it, but you're repeating these lessons over time. Now, I've been thinking about this when it comes to learning English. And again, near the end, I'll talk about the method that I've been talking about really for for years now when it comes to micro learning and learning through repetition.
But I'm sure you have heard before how important repetition is in terms of being able to remember something. And there's something called the forgetting curve here, where if you repeat something today, then tomorrow, then four days, 8 days, 16 days, so that the gap between when you're repeating something gets bigger over time, then you're much more likely to
remember this. And you can think about doing this in an efficient way too, so that you're not repeating it more than you have to. Because when it comes to learning anything, we want to be efficient. We want to be able to remember things without doing more than we need to. But at the same time, we need to understand that repetition is really important.
And one of the reasons why I like ebooks, especially Kindle ebooks, is that you can highlight passages like parts of the e-book and repeat these over time. So you can take the different packages or the different sentences that you've highlighted in the book and repeat them over a period of time. And I think this is a really important thing as well, that whenever it comes to anything, repetition is key if you want to
retain that information. Now on another website, e-learning industry, they talk about the history of this and that. It says it has a long history, even before computers were a thing. So people were using this concept and taking small parts of whatever it is they're learning and repeating them over the long term. But it says it really took off when it met the modern smartphone, so much so that leading micro learning platforms feel like a mix of Twitter and
Instagram, but educational. So it says here it took off when the smartphone came about and people started using social media. So for something to take off in this business sense or this educational sense means that it started to become popular. People started to really use this because you can think about a plane taking off, which is what we use that phrasal verb for as well. But if something is really taking off at the moment, it means it's really becoming popular and people are using
this now. This made me think of something else, and it was about attention spans. I think this is an important topic here too. And I found something on this and it says on the Orlando Sentinel, which is talking about a study, it says consider this, The average human attention span is now shorter than a goldfish's. A recent study found that the average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000
to 8 seconds today. It is reported that goldfish have a nine second attention span, and your attention span is the amount of time that you can concentrate on a task or on something before becoming distracted, before your
attention goes somewhere else. And just think about that for a moment, because I'm sure you have seen this in your life or other people's lives where you have a conversation these days and it seems like people aren't really paying attention or it's difficult for them to pay attention for a long period of
time. And people have said that maybe social media and our phones have done this for us because we're always getting notifications or we're thinking, OK, let's go on Instagram for a moment or let's go on TikTok. And especially when you think about all the new social media platforms, the videos are getting shorter and shorter and shorter. Where in the past, people would go on Facebook or YouTube and watch a video for at least 5
minutes. There were some short videos, but generally speaking, most were five 10/15/20 minutes. And then now things like TikTok, it's all about 10 to 15 seconds. And I wonder if that's just going to keep getting shorter and shorter in the future. But we can use this to our advantage or at least think about using the the short videos in a way that's going to be helpful for us. And the e-learning industry website talks about some micro
learning content examples. It says text, which is phrases or short paragraphs, images, videos of the short variety, short audio and snippets. And a snippet is like a small chunk of audio tests and quizzes and also games. So you might have heard of a bite sized content. And this is what this is talking about bite sized content. And if something is bite sized, it means it's small in in
nature. So you can think about this in the literal sense to take a small bite of something, a bite size means that you're only take in a small part of your food at once. You're not putting all the food into your mouth. So that's where that comes from, something that's bite sized. So bite sized content means a
small piece of content. Now this type of micro learning I don't think is is perfect for everything for all subjects because it might be quite difficult when it comes to complex subjects where you need to know the overall structure. Having said that, you can learn the overall structure, go into the the small parts of it, learn those and then you get a better understanding. So I think it just depends on you and also maybe sometimes the topic and what you're trying to
learn. Now, when it comes to learning English, I've talked about something similar to this over the years where I've talked about the sentence method, which is where you learn in small chunks, OK, where you take sentences and you learn those sentences. And I've also talked about repetition as well, where you can take sentences, use spaced repetition software, which is going back to the repetition example I gave before. And then you can internalize these sentences over the long
term. Now you can do this on your own where you, let's say you're reading a book and go back to the Kindle example or any kind of ebook app that you might use where you can highlight sentences within a book and then go back to those later and repeat them. And there might be some software that allows you to import these into space repetition software as well.
So what you're doing is you're getting the general concept of the book and then you're going deeper into the micro learning and using the repetition method that we've talked about in order to really understand this over the long term. Now what we're doing here with English, because it's a language, is when we're doing this with sentences, we are internalizing the grammar over the long term. We are understanding and recognizing patterns in a
natural way. Because when you think about learning grammar, you can learn the rules and think about it in in that sense where, OK, I need to use this, then that and then that. Whereas I feel, and what I've talked about for years is a more natural way of learning and a way where it just feels right to you is where you repeat lots of sentences so that you just pick up these patterns. And to pick up these patterns means that you just internalize them. You naturally learn them.
So you're not focusing on the rules. Instead, you're just naturally getting to a stage where the patterns grammar feels right to you.
Now let's talk about social media as well because like I said, a lot of lessons these days on social media are broken down into micro lessons where you have a minute video or 15 second video explaining A phrasal verb or piece of vocabulary, etc. Now, the big advantage to this is it fits in with this idea of micro learning because you're taking one concept, you're learning it, and it doesn't feel
so overwhelming. And it might fit better with the way that we just engage with content these days. Now, I think there are two things you can do here to really expand this. The first one is to repeat micro lessons. So when you see one of my shorts or Instagram lesson or another teacher's Instagram lesson, you can save that. So on Instagram, there's a feature where you can save it and put it into a category.
And then maybe every week you just go back through the lessons, which means you go and repeat the lessons again so that you can implement more of this repetition into it. And then the second thing you can do is try to engage a little bit more with the lesson where you write your own examples of whatever it is that you're learning. So let's say it's the phrase of verb to breakdown, because we've talked about that in this lesson.
You can write a few sentences on this or the phrase of verb take off. You can write a few sentences about that as well and use Grammarly or any kind of app that allows you to test or check your grammar so that you know your writing correctly. Now, I think the downside of this or one of the downsides is that it's not so structured, OK? And the context from micro lessons isn't as strong. And I think context is king with a lot of these things that we're
talking about. And what I mean by context is the context of the this sentence. OK, so how do you use this sentence? Who uses this sentence and when do you use it? Because you might be learning some slang, let's say, but without the real context of who uses this. And it can be quite nuanced, which means it can be quite tricky to know exactly when to use it, quite hard to know when
to use it exactly. So you might learn some slang and then you realise only young kids use this and maybe you're older and it doesn't seem quite right to use it. Or maybe you learn a phrasal verb and it just doesn't work in the right situation. So I think that there is a downside to using the social media, these lessons because of
the context. But at the same time, if you're getting enough natural input, if you're reading, if you're listening to long form content and you're also just doing the general things to improve your English, then you should be able to realise that the context of it. And the more English you know, the more you do this over time, the more you'll understand, OK, that we use this phrasal verb in
this situation. Oh, I've heard that before and therefore I know how to use it. So that's quite nuanced. It's quite complexed here, but just to give a quick summary, micro learning is becoming a thing. And I think part of this is just the the attention span and that the way that the social media websites, they're putting out shorter form content. And this is driven by people and how they engage with the content. So I think it is user generated. Now there are many ways you can
use this to your advantage. And I've talked about this, the sentence method, get sentences and repeat them. However, you're going to do this, get sentences and repeat them. And if you can get sentences from strong context, for example, this podcast, then you're going to have a better idea of how to use it.
And then on the other hand, we can also use social media micro lessons that teachers are putting out and also just regular social media videos from people who aren't teaching English. So just like the the natural content, and then you can save them and repeat them and write your own sentences using them. So then we're introducing that element of repetition. But always be careful about the type of language you're using or learning, sorry, and where the
context comes from. So those are my thoughts on micro learning and what what it means for you as an English learner. Now, if you've enjoyed this episode, then you can do two things. Firstly, subscribe to my lessons on whichever platform you're using, whether you're on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Podcasts or a different podcast app, just click that subscribe button so then you don't miss a lesson. And then also if you found it useful, then please share it
with a friend. So just click that share button and send it to somebody who you think will benefit from this. OK, so thanks again for being here. Again. My name is Jack from to fluency. I'll have all the links in the descripcion for you and I will speak to you soon. Bye, bye for now.