“ACT-R” = “ACTOR”

According to Anderson, there are some devices called “ACT-R” (Adaptive control of thought - rational), whose function is not only to explain how people remember and manage cognition, but also to recreate this process on computational skills, and which have been used in “accelerated learning” (originally “Suggestopedia”). Their most important assumption is that human knowledge can be divided into declarative and procedural representations. In plain words, learning takes place in Modules, which contain chunks, and which are accessible only by “buffers”. Thus, modules produce cognition, and if we go step by step (in modules) constructing knowledge, we’ll take information from one kind of memory to the next, and we’ll yield “productions” of what we learn.


I agree with the notion that we learn in chunks, because humans usually process one thing at a time, especially when learning something new. I do believe that once we have acquired certain skills, observed the competent users of those abilities, made associations to our previous knowledge, and formulated and proved our own hypotheses, we can make effective use of those skills overtime, even to the point where we do things automatically, as ‘procedural knowledge’.

I guess that I have already taught my students by resorting to modules. Whenever I have to teach what I call the “magic formula” for Conditionals, I go from the factual conditional to the unreal past one, and I focus a lot on the one for second conditional: I start telling my students a sad or funny story using their classmates, and I start writing a good example on the board. I usually choose one couple in class (with opposite hair and eye color) and I write: “If Camilo and Lorena had a baby girl, she …”. Students must think of genetics and dominant factors before giving me a complement. Then I go on with the formula: I tell students that they have three possibilities; I write a big “WILL”, a medium sized “can”, and a very small “may” so that they can see their likelihood. It has always been very effective, despite teaching explicit grammar terms, as we must do where I work, perhaps because this step by step process goes along with loads of practice, and humoristic explanations and examples in which the teacher becomes an actor; an entertainer.