Chunking

What is a chunk?

Chunking is the mental leap that helps you unite bits of information together through meaning and use. The new logical whole makes the chunk easier to remember, and also makes it easier to fit the chunk into the larger picture of what you're learning.

Just memorizing a fact without understanding or context doesn't help you understand what's really going on or how the concept fits together with other concepts you're learning

Chunks are pieces of information, neuroscientifically speaking, through bound together through meaning or use. You can take the letters P-O and P and bind them together into one conceptual easy to remember chunk, the word pop.

Chunks are best built with focused, undivided attention, understanding of the basic idea. And practice to help deepen your patterns and to help you gain big picture context.

Learning to speak a language

The best programs for learning language, such as those of the Defense Language Institute where I learned Russian, incorporate structured practice that includes repetition and rote focus mode learning of the language along with more diffuse-like free speech with native speakers. The goal is to embed the basic words and patterns so you can speak as freely and creatively in your new language as you do in your native language

As it turns out one of the first steps towards gaining expertise in academic topics is to create conceptual chunks, mental leaps that unite scattered bits of information through meaning.

Focused practice and repetition, the creation of strong memory traces, helps you to create chunks. The path to expertise is built little by little, small chunks can become larger, and all of the expertise serves to underpin more creative interpretations as you gradually become a master of the material.

Language learning. In the beginning, often just saying a single word with the proper nuance, tone, and accent involves a lot of practice. Stringing extemporaneous sentences together involves the ability to creatively mix together various complex mini chunks and chunks in the new language.

How to form a chunk?

Getting an initial sense of the pattern you want to master for yourself is similar for most subjects or skills. You often have to grasp little bits of songs that become neural mini chunks which will later join together into larger chunks. For example, over several days you might learn how to smoothly play some musical passages on the guitar, and when you've grasped those passages, you could join them together with other passages that you've gradually putting everything together so you can play the song.

Learning math

When you're learning new math and science material, you're often given sample problems with worked out solutions. This is because, when you're first trying to understand how to work a problem, you have a heavy cognitive load. So, it helps to start out with a work-through example. It's like first listening to a song before trying to play the song yourself.

Most of the details of the worked out solution are right there and your job is simply to figure out why the steps are taken the way they are. They can help you see the key features and underlying principles of a problem. One concern about using worked out examples in math and science to help you in starting to form chunks, is that it can be all too easy to focus too much on why an individual step works and not on the connection between steps. That is on why this particular step is the next thing you should do. So, keep in mind that I'm not just talking about a cookie cutter, just do as you're told mindless approach when following a worked-out solution. It's more like using a roadmap to help you when traveling to a new place. Pay attention to what's going on around you when you're using the map and soon you'll find yourself able to get there on your own.

The steps of chunks formation

The first step on chunking is simply to focus your undivided attention on the information you want to chunk. If you had the television going on in the background or you're looking up every few minutes to check or answer your phone or computer messages, it means you're going to have more difficulty in making a chunk.

The second step in chunking is to understand the basic idea you're trying to chunk, whether its understanding a concepts such as continental drift, seeing the connection between the basic elements of a plot for a story, grasping the economic principle of supply and demand, or comprehending the essence of a particular type of math problem. Understanding is like a super glue that helps hold the underlying memory traces together. It creates broad encompassing traces that can link to other memory traces. Can you create a chunk if you don't understand? Yes, but it's often a useless chunk that won't fit in with or relate to other material you're learning.

That said, it's important to realize that just understanding how a problem was solved for example, does not necessarily create a chunk that you can easily call to mind later.

That's part of what you can grasp an idea when a teacher presented in class, but if you don't review it fairly soon after you first learned it, it can seem incomprehensible when it comes time to prepare for a test.

In math and science related subjects, closing the book and testing yourself on whether you yourself can solve the problem you think you understand will speed up your learning at this stage.

Only doing it yourself helps create the neural patterns that underlie true mastery.

The third step to chunking is gaining context, so you can see not just how but also when to use this chunk. Context means going beyond the initial problem and seeing more broadly, repeating and practicing with both related and unrelated problems, so that you can see not only when to use the chunk but when not to use it. This helps you see how your newly formed chunk fits into the bigger picture.

Ultimately, practice helps you broaden the networks of neurons that are connected to your chunk, ensuring it's not only firm but also accessible from many different paths

Learning takes place in two ways. There's a bottom-up chunking process where practice and repetition can help you both build and strengthen each chunk, so you can easily access it whenever you need to. There's also a top-down big picture process that allows you to see what you're learning and where it fits in. Both processes are vital in gaining mastery over the material. Context is where bottom-up and top-down learning meet.

Context means learning when to use that technique instead of some other technique.

Protip for learning

Doing a rapid two-minute picture walk through a chapter in a book before you begin studying it, glancing at pictures and section headings can allow you to gain a sense of the big picture, so can listening to a very well-organized lecture.

Learn the major concepts or points first, these are often the key parts of a good instructor or on book chapters, outline, flow charts, tables, or concept maps. Once you have this done, fill in the details