英語資源頻道為大家整理的china daily英語點津：學習方法之多睡眠多重復，供大家閱讀參考。
I still remember the boy who, on his first day of school, had to be carried bodily into class by a phalanx of teachers and parents. As the other six-year-olds sat brightly at their desks, he sobbed: “I don't want to go to school!”
至今我仍記得一個小男孩第一天上學的情景——在一群老師和家長連拖帶拽下，他被弄進了教室。其他六歲的孩子都高高興興地坐在桌前，他一邊哭，一邊喊：“我不想上學!”
Looking back decades later, he was quite right. My 12 years at school were boring and mostly pointless. I barely remember a thing I was taught after learning to read and count.
幾十年后再想一下，他說得太對了。從小學到中學，我上了12年學，那段生活無聊透頂，而且沒什么意義。除了識字和數數，我?guī)缀醪挥浀脤W校還教會了我什么。
I learnt more about how to write from George Orwell's 14-page essay “Politics and the English Language” than in all my school years. Nor was I taught much by way of reasoning (which may, of course, be why I've ended up a columnist).
我從喬治•奧威爾(George Orwell)那篇14頁的文章《政治和英語》(Politics and the English Language)里學到的寫作技巧，比我在學校里學到的都要多。我也沒有學到多少推理的方法(當然，這可能正是我最終成了一名專欄作家的原因)。
I wasted the years when my brain was still fairly porous. This experience is probably common but it might all have been different if only someone had taught me one crucial skill: how to learn. Now that my daughter is seven, and setting off on the long slog, I'm planning to issue her with the crucial information beforehand.
我把大腦吸收能力還比較強的那些年都荒廢掉了。其他人或許也有相似的經歷，如果那時誰要是教會我如何學習就好了，現在的我很可能就完全不同了。我女兒今年7歲，就要開始多年求學的苦旅，我打算提前把這項至關重要的技能傳授給她。
Schools, like offices, are structured around the notion of facetime. The easiest thing to measure is that you are there, and so they measure that. In my day, 30 kids of different abilities and concentration spans were crammed into a room with sealed windows, while a teacher wrote things on a blackboard. We were taught stuff every day - but never how to absorb it. And yet the basics of how to learn are so simple that they can be transmitted in an 800-word column.
學校就像公司一樣，考勤是重心。最容易衡量的就是你是否在場，所以學校就衡量這個。我上學的時候，30個天資與注意力各不相同的孩子都擠在一個房間里，窗戶是封死的，老師則在黑板上寫寫畫畫。老師整天都在向我們傳授知識，但從沒教給我們如何吸收知識。然而，關于如何學習的基本原理其實非常簡單，用一篇800字的專欄文章就可以說清楚。
The main study tool I learnt as an adult is: nap. Scholars of sleep agree that a brief nap can recharge the brain. “A nap as short as 10 minutes can significantly improve alertness,” says Maurice Ohayon, director of Stanford University's sleep epidemiology research centre. Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Albert Einstein all knew this.
我成年后掌握的主要學習技巧就是小睡片刻。睡眠研究方面的學者一致認為，小睡一會兒能給大腦“充電”。斯坦福大學(Stanford University)睡眠流行病學研究中心主任莫里斯•瓦永(Maurice Ohayon)表示：“只要睡上10分鐘，就會精神很多?！睖厮诡D•邱吉爾(Winston Churchill)、瑪格麗特•撒切爾(Margaret Thatcher)和阿爾伯特•愛因斯坦(Albert Einstein)都明白這一點。
Unfortunately, I didn't find out until I was grown up. As a teenager you need oodles of sleep, and many school mornings I was too tired to learn (especially aged 16, when I decided I could train myself to cope on four hours' sleep). The lesson I never had was, “Instead of trying to do two hours of homework now, sleep for 15 minutes and then do it all in an hour.”
遺憾的是，我長大之后才明白這個道理。人在十幾歲的時候，需要多睡覺，好多個早上，我到了學校已經累得學不進東西了(尤其是在16歲的時候，我以為自己能做到每天只睡4個小時)。我從來也不知道的是，“現在不要馬上做作業(yè)，那得花上兩個小時，你先睡上15分鐘，然后只消1小時就能全部寫完?！?BR> In my work flat in Paris today, my key pieces of office furniture are my sofa and blanket. But I grew up in countries where naps were considered proof of laziness instead of productivity boosters. The ignorance persists: according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management in 2010, only 5 per cent of American employers had an on-site “nap room” (often probably just a couple of sticky mattresses lying side by side).
現在，我在巴黎的工作室里主要的家俱就是沙發(fā)和毯子。可我從小到大呆過的每個國家，人們都認為小睡是懶惰的證據，而不是效率提升手段。這種無知的觀點到現在仍很流行：美國人力資源管理學會(SHRM)2010年完成的一項調查顯示，只有5%的美國雇主在工作場所提供“小憩室”(通?？赡懿贿^是并排放置了幾條黏膩的床墊)。
Years after leaving school, I made my second belated discovery about learning: how to remember. (Memorising is another skill that becomes almost pointless after school but, again, it's easy to measure, so schools measure it.) My breakthrough came at a picnic in Central Park, New York. My then girlfriend was complaining to a friend that whenever she mentioned a past quarrel to me, I couldn't remember it. She always had to tell me what we'd quarrelled about, before explaining why I'd been wrong. The friend, who was a brain surgeon, asked the girlfriend: “Do you keep a diary?” “Yes,” said the girlfriend. “That's why you remember,” said the brain surgeon. The girlfriend engraved the experience on her memory by repeating it.
畢業(yè)多年以后，我才發(fā)現了另一項遲來的學習技巧，那就是記憶方法。(記憶也是一項畢業(yè)后就沒什么用的技能，但是這也是一項容易衡量的指標，所以也被學校采用)。讓我茅塞頓開的是在紐約中央公園(Central Park)里的一次野餐會。我當時的女朋友向一位朋友抱怨道，每次她向我提及兩人過去某次吵架的事，我總是一點都沒有印象。每一次，她都告訴我之前兩人吵架的原因，然后再解釋我錯在哪里。這位身為腦外科醫(yī)生的朋友問她：“你是不是記日記?”她回答：“是的。”腦外科醫(yī)生說道：“這就是你能記住的原因。”我那位前女友把過去的事情寫進日記里，經過這么一重復，事情也就印入了腦海。
It turns out you remember things through periodic repetition - and not through one night's frantic cramming just before the test. For instance, if you want to remember that the Battle of Hastings was in 1066, revise the fact for one minute every evening for a week, instead of for 10 minutes on the last evening. Periodic repetitions imprint it on your brain. This is the “spacing effect”, which the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered in 1885. I discovered it too late.
事實證明，人是通過周期性重復來記住東西的，而不是像在考試前一晚那樣，通宵達旦地死記硬背。比如說，你想記住黑斯廷斯戰(zhàn)役(the Battle of Hastings)爆發(fā)于1066年，那就每天晚上花1分鐘復習一下這個知識點，而不要在最后一晚上強記10分鐘。周期性重復會加深大腦的記憶。這被稱為“間隔效應”，德國心理學家赫爾曼•埃賓豪斯(Hermann Ebbinghaus)早在1885年就發(fā)現這條原理。我發(fā)現得就太晚了。
Tej Samani, founder of Performance Learning, a British company that helps students to learn, has a favourite technique that uses the spacing effect. To remember the date 1066, for instance, write it on a Post-it note on your bedroom window. You will see it every day - and through repetition you will come to associate “1066” with “window”. If you think “window”, you remember 1066. Samani's students have facts and formulas stuck up around their bedrooms. “I'm a huge believer in learning without putting too much effort in,” he says. “People judge success based on, 'I did 15 hours of revision this week.' Brilliant. How much of it do you remember? Maybe an hour.”
Performance Learning是英國一家旨在幫助學生學習的公司，其創(chuàng)始人Tej Samani最喜歡一種利用間隔效應的記憶技巧。比如說，要想記住1066年這個時間，把它寫在一張便利貼上，粘到臥室的窗子上。你每天都會看到那張便利貼，經過不斷的重復，你就逐漸把“1066年”與“窗子”聯(lián)系到一起。一想到“窗子”時，自然就會聯(lián)想到“1066年”。Samani的學生們把知識點和公式貼滿了臥室。他說：“我特別推崇輕松地學習。人們認為考出好成績取決于‘我這周復習了15個小時’。太棒了。你記住了其中的多少內容?也許只有1小時的內容?！?BR> You often make the best discoveries in one sudden cognitive leap. I still remember the moment, aged 14, when I finally grasped, after months of exhausted incomprehension, that the third line on the graph represented the third dimension. Perhaps my daughter will have that same “Eureka” feeling when I make her read this column.
人們經常在突然的認知飛躍中獲得的發(fā)現。我仍舊記得一件事：14歲那年，在幾個月苦苦思索無果之后，我終于明白，圖形中的第三條線原來代表第三個維度。當我讓女兒讀這篇專欄文章時，或許她也將有跟我一樣的“恍然大悟”的感覺。
I still remember the boy who, on his first day of school, had to be carried bodily into class by a phalanx of teachers and parents. As the other six-year-olds sat brightly at their desks, he sobbed: “I don't want to go to school!”
至今我仍記得一個小男孩第一天上學的情景——在一群老師和家長連拖帶拽下，他被弄進了教室。其他六歲的孩子都高高興興地坐在桌前，他一邊哭，一邊喊：“我不想上學!”
Looking back decades later, he was quite right. My 12 years at school were boring and mostly pointless. I barely remember a thing I was taught after learning to read and count.
幾十年后再想一下，他說得太對了。從小學到中學，我上了12年學，那段生活無聊透頂，而且沒什么意義。除了識字和數數，我?guī)缀醪挥浀脤W校還教會了我什么。
I learnt more about how to write from George Orwell's 14-page essay “Politics and the English Language” than in all my school years. Nor was I taught much by way of reasoning (which may, of course, be why I've ended up a columnist).
我從喬治•奧威爾(George Orwell)那篇14頁的文章《政治和英語》(Politics and the English Language)里學到的寫作技巧，比我在學校里學到的都要多。我也沒有學到多少推理的方法(當然，這可能正是我最終成了一名專欄作家的原因)。
I wasted the years when my brain was still fairly porous. This experience is probably common but it might all have been different if only someone had taught me one crucial skill: how to learn. Now that my daughter is seven, and setting off on the long slog, I'm planning to issue her with the crucial information beforehand.
我把大腦吸收能力還比較強的那些年都荒廢掉了。其他人或許也有相似的經歷，如果那時誰要是教會我如何學習就好了，現在的我很可能就完全不同了。我女兒今年7歲，就要開始多年求學的苦旅，我打算提前把這項至關重要的技能傳授給她。
Schools, like offices, are structured around the notion of facetime. The easiest thing to measure is that you are there, and so they measure that. In my day, 30 kids of different abilities and concentration spans were crammed into a room with sealed windows, while a teacher wrote things on a blackboard. We were taught stuff every day - but never how to absorb it. And yet the basics of how to learn are so simple that they can be transmitted in an 800-word column.
學校就像公司一樣，考勤是重心。最容易衡量的就是你是否在場，所以學校就衡量這個。我上學的時候，30個天資與注意力各不相同的孩子都擠在一個房間里，窗戶是封死的，老師則在黑板上寫寫畫畫。老師整天都在向我們傳授知識，但從沒教給我們如何吸收知識。然而，關于如何學習的基本原理其實非常簡單，用一篇800字的專欄文章就可以說清楚。
The main study tool I learnt as an adult is: nap. Scholars of sleep agree that a brief nap can recharge the brain. “A nap as short as 10 minutes can significantly improve alertness,” says Maurice Ohayon, director of Stanford University's sleep epidemiology research centre. Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Albert Einstein all knew this.
我成年后掌握的主要學習技巧就是小睡片刻。睡眠研究方面的學者一致認為，小睡一會兒能給大腦“充電”。斯坦福大學(Stanford University)睡眠流行病學研究中心主任莫里斯•瓦永(Maurice Ohayon)表示：“只要睡上10分鐘，就會精神很多?！睖厮诡D•邱吉爾(Winston Churchill)、瑪格麗特•撒切爾(Margaret Thatcher)和阿爾伯特•愛因斯坦(Albert Einstein)都明白這一點。
Unfortunately, I didn't find out until I was grown up. As a teenager you need oodles of sleep, and many school mornings I was too tired to learn (especially aged 16, when I decided I could train myself to cope on four hours' sleep). The lesson I never had was, “Instead of trying to do two hours of homework now, sleep for 15 minutes and then do it all in an hour.”
遺憾的是，我長大之后才明白這個道理。人在十幾歲的時候，需要多睡覺，好多個早上，我到了學校已經累得學不進東西了(尤其是在16歲的時候，我以為自己能做到每天只睡4個小時)。我從來也不知道的是，“現在不要馬上做作業(yè)，那得花上兩個小時，你先睡上15分鐘，然后只消1小時就能全部寫完?！?BR> In my work flat in Paris today, my key pieces of office furniture are my sofa and blanket. But I grew up in countries where naps were considered proof of laziness instead of productivity boosters. The ignorance persists: according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management in 2010, only 5 per cent of American employers had an on-site “nap room” (often probably just a couple of sticky mattresses lying side by side).
現在，我在巴黎的工作室里主要的家俱就是沙發(fā)和毯子。可我從小到大呆過的每個國家，人們都認為小睡是懶惰的證據，而不是效率提升手段。這種無知的觀點到現在仍很流行：美國人力資源管理學會(SHRM)2010年完成的一項調查顯示，只有5%的美國雇主在工作場所提供“小憩室”(通?？赡懿贿^是并排放置了幾條黏膩的床墊)。
Years after leaving school, I made my second belated discovery about learning: how to remember. (Memorising is another skill that becomes almost pointless after school but, again, it's easy to measure, so schools measure it.) My breakthrough came at a picnic in Central Park, New York. My then girlfriend was complaining to a friend that whenever she mentioned a past quarrel to me, I couldn't remember it. She always had to tell me what we'd quarrelled about, before explaining why I'd been wrong. The friend, who was a brain surgeon, asked the girlfriend: “Do you keep a diary?” “Yes,” said the girlfriend. “That's why you remember,” said the brain surgeon. The girlfriend engraved the experience on her memory by repeating it.
畢業(yè)多年以后，我才發(fā)現了另一項遲來的學習技巧，那就是記憶方法。(記憶也是一項畢業(yè)后就沒什么用的技能，但是這也是一項容易衡量的指標，所以也被學校采用)。讓我茅塞頓開的是在紐約中央公園(Central Park)里的一次野餐會。我當時的女朋友向一位朋友抱怨道，每次她向我提及兩人過去某次吵架的事，我總是一點都沒有印象。每一次，她都告訴我之前兩人吵架的原因，然后再解釋我錯在哪里。這位身為腦外科醫(yī)生的朋友問她：“你是不是記日記?”她回答：“是的。”腦外科醫(yī)生說道：“這就是你能記住的原因。”我那位前女友把過去的事情寫進日記里，經過這么一重復，事情也就印入了腦海。
It turns out you remember things through periodic repetition - and not through one night's frantic cramming just before the test. For instance, if you want to remember that the Battle of Hastings was in 1066, revise the fact for one minute every evening for a week, instead of for 10 minutes on the last evening. Periodic repetitions imprint it on your brain. This is the “spacing effect”, which the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered in 1885. I discovered it too late.
事實證明，人是通過周期性重復來記住東西的，而不是像在考試前一晚那樣，通宵達旦地死記硬背。比如說，你想記住黑斯廷斯戰(zhàn)役(the Battle of Hastings)爆發(fā)于1066年，那就每天晚上花1分鐘復習一下這個知識點，而不要在最后一晚上強記10分鐘。周期性重復會加深大腦的記憶。這被稱為“間隔效應”，德國心理學家赫爾曼•埃賓豪斯(Hermann Ebbinghaus)早在1885年就發(fā)現這條原理。我發(fā)現得就太晚了。
Tej Samani, founder of Performance Learning, a British company that helps students to learn, has a favourite technique that uses the spacing effect. To remember the date 1066, for instance, write it on a Post-it note on your bedroom window. You will see it every day - and through repetition you will come to associate “1066” with “window”. If you think “window”, you remember 1066. Samani's students have facts and formulas stuck up around their bedrooms. “I'm a huge believer in learning without putting too much effort in,” he says. “People judge success based on, 'I did 15 hours of revision this week.' Brilliant. How much of it do you remember? Maybe an hour.”
Performance Learning是英國一家旨在幫助學生學習的公司，其創(chuàng)始人Tej Samani最喜歡一種利用間隔效應的記憶技巧。比如說，要想記住1066年這個時間，把它寫在一張便利貼上，粘到臥室的窗子上。你每天都會看到那張便利貼，經過不斷的重復，你就逐漸把“1066年”與“窗子”聯(lián)系到一起。一想到“窗子”時，自然就會聯(lián)想到“1066年”。Samani的學生們把知識點和公式貼滿了臥室。他說：“我特別推崇輕松地學習。人們認為考出好成績取決于‘我這周復習了15個小時’。太棒了。你記住了其中的多少內容?也許只有1小時的內容?！?BR> You often make the best discoveries in one sudden cognitive leap. I still remember the moment, aged 14, when I finally grasped, after months of exhausted incomprehension, that the third line on the graph represented the third dimension. Perhaps my daughter will have that same “Eureka” feeling when I make her read this column.
人們經常在突然的認知飛躍中獲得的發(fā)現。我仍舊記得一件事：14歲那年，在幾個月苦苦思索無果之后，我終于明白，圖形中的第三條線原來代表第三個維度。當我讓女兒讀這篇專欄文章時，或許她也將有跟我一樣的“恍然大悟”的感覺。