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ERIC Number: EJ1023269
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013
Pages: 4
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1740-4622
EISSN: N/A
Why Should You Use a Clear Pattern of Organization? Because it Works
Slagell, Amy
Communication Teacher, v27 n4 p198-201 2013
Decades of research in psychology, education, and communication stand behind the claim that chunking information and providing connections among those chunks helps students learn (Bodiea, Powers, & Fitch-Hauser, 2006; Cowan, Chen, & Rouder, 2004; Gabriel & Mayzner, 1963; Miller, 1956). Informative speakers, who aim to help audiences understand and retain new information, will be well served by recognizing and applying this fundamental concept. This activity vividly demonstrates the power of organizational structure to students. Allowing students to experience how organizing information helps retention offers strong motivation for them to move from declarative toward procedural knowledge and use clear patterns of organization in their presentations. The memory activity described in this article can be completed in 10-15 minutes and can be used to launch a class session devoted to learning about patterns of organization. Before class, the instructor should prepare a series of slides with images. One slide should be a picture of 16 items. The other four slides each have pictures of the same 16 objects in groups of 4 at a time. The exercise works best if each set of four objects is related. For example, there might be four different tools, four different kitchen items, four different computer items, and four different kinds of candy. Teachers may want to experiment and use items related by shape, size, or color rather than theme. There can be a group of four round things, four rectangles, four long straight things, and four triangles or pyramids. The instructor will also need a stopwatch for this activity. Students will be persuaded of the strategic advantage in using recognizable patterns of organization to help audiences make sense of and retain information in their informative speeches.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A