Accelerated learning

Accelerated learning combines practical methods intended to make learning faster, deeper and more enjoyable. British writer, trainer and educational consultant Colin Rose synthesized ideas from several educational researchers during the 1980s. The central practical message is to become an active learner, use more than one form of engagement and connect new knowledge with action. Preferences can help you choose varied activities, but they should not be treated as fixed learning types.

When to use it

• Apply accelerated-learning techniques whenever you are acquiring new knowledge or developing a skill.

Origins

Accelerated learning grew from twentieth-century efforts to make education more active, multisensory and emotionally engaging. Georgi Lozanov's suggestopedia attracted international interest during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in language teaching, although its stronger claims were disputed. Colin Rose brought together a wider group of ideas in Accelerated Learning (nineteen eighty-five). In corporate training, Dave Meier developed a whole-person, activity-centred approach through the Center for Accelerated Learning, founded in nineteen eighty.

Modern use should emphasize practices with stronger support—active retrieval, practice, elaboration and feedback—rather than assume that matching teaching to a supposedly fixed learning style improves results.

What it is

People receive information through sight, sound and physical sensation, and may prefer some modes in particular situations. Involving several senses can create more routes for attention and recall. Drawing, speaking, movement, music and hands-on practice are therefore possible learning tools, provided they support the material rather than distract from it.

How to use it

Traditional education can become a passive consumer process in which learners receive facts and ideas. Accelerated learning asks the learner to produce, test and use knowledge:

• Turn factual material into a poem, song or game when the transformation forces you to retrieve and reorganize it.
• Build a mind map, trace its branches and explain them aloud. The combination of visual, physical and verbal processing creates several connections to the same idea.
• Imagine the decisions behind a non-fiction work. Ask why the author chose the structure, language and emphasis rather than reading only for conclusions.
• Practise a new skill as soon as possible after learning it.
• Distinguish learning about an activity from being able to perform it. Description is not competence.
• Divide study into manageable chunks and take deliberate breaks that allow consolidation.
• Link new material with existing knowledge and use it to reinterpret familiar ideas.
• Collaborate and teach the idea to someone else. Explanation strengthens recall and reveals gaps that silent familiarity can conceal.
• Use metaphor and simile. When learning sales, for example, compare it with fishing: generate what you know about finding, attracting and landing fish, then test which relationships illuminate selling and which do not.
• Set learning goals and measure progress against observable performance.
• Deconstruct a complex skill into components and build them progressively rather than attempting everything at once.
• Place abstract knowledge in context. Decide where it applies and use it during learning or immediately afterward whenever possible.

Final analysis.

Children learn through play, experimentation and questions, using their bodies and senses. Adult learning can become narrow, passive and dominated by memorization and reproduction.

Accelerated learning restores curiosity, activity and varied engagement. Many techniques require little additional time, but novelty alone is not evidence of learning. The useful test is whether the learner can retrieve, explain, transfer and perform the material more effectively.

Top practical tip

Use a metaphor to reorganize the idea, then explain where the comparison works and where it breaks down. That second step turns a memorable image into genuine understanding.

Top pitfall

Do not confuse an enjoyable, sensory-rich activity with durable learning. Verify progress through retrieval, application and feedback, and do not label people with fixed learning styles.

Further reading

Best, B. (2011) Accelerated Learning Pocketbook, 2nd revised edition. Alresford, UK: Teachers’ Pocketbooks. Rose, C. (1985) Accelerated Learning, 5th edition. Aylesbury, UK: Accelerated Learning Systems Ltd.