Progressing from specific to abstract is the recommended way to teach. Ignoring this typically leads to “memorizing passwords” (the student memorizes that “X is Y” and can repeat it successfully, but has actually no idea which parts of the territory correspond to X or Y) or “double illusions of transparency” (the teacher tries to say X, the student thinks the teacher said Y, the teacher believes the student understood X, both leave satisfied without noticing that the transfer of knowledge failed).
Also, stories are easier to remember for human brains.
If I tried to rewrite your article… frankly, I would remove most (not all) of the text before and after the bullet points; and then add a few specific examples, preferably from real life but modified to protect anonymity, illustrating the individual points. (Here is an example of the technique that got upvoted despite being unnecessarily long and violating a local taboo. It doesn’t have the bullet points because the whole article has only one point.)
Thanks a lot for this. When I’m explaining something hard, I do tend to start with examples but this time it didn’t trigger for me, because it felt like I’m sharing some experiences, so there’s nothing to “understand” about them.
In retrospect, I was horribly wrong.
From now on, whenever I feel like I want to share an experience, I will start with stories.
Progressing from specific to abstract is the recommended way to teach. Ignoring this typically leads to “memorizing passwords” (the student memorizes that “X is Y” and can repeat it successfully, but has actually no idea which parts of the territory correspond to X or Y) or “double illusions of transparency” (the teacher tries to say X, the student thinks the teacher said Y, the teacher believes the student understood X, both leave satisfied without noticing that the transfer of knowledge failed).
Also, stories are easier to remember for human brains.
If I tried to rewrite your article… frankly, I would remove most (not all) of the text before and after the bullet points; and then add a few specific examples, preferably from real life but modified to protect anonymity, illustrating the individual points. (Here is an example of the technique that got upvoted despite being unnecessarily long and violating a local taboo. It doesn’t have the bullet points because the whole article has only one point.)
Thanks a lot for this. When I’m explaining something hard, I do tend to start with examples but this time it didn’t trigger for me, because it felt like I’m sharing some experiences, so there’s nothing to “understand” about them.
In retrospect, I was horribly wrong.
From now on, whenever I feel like I want to share an experience, I will start with stories.