Stages in the Process of Learning:

There are three stages in the process of learning; namely, acquiring, synthesizing and applying new information knowledge. There are different skills or a set of skills required in accomplishing each stage and each of these functions requires specific skills to do it effectively.

(1) Acquisition:

Acquiring new knowledge/information is one of the most important pre-requisite of the learning process. We acquire most of our knowledge through reading, listening and observation. While one interacts with text, listens to someone or observes certain event, a number of new concepts, new ideas, new words and new symbols come all along in the way. The act of analyzing these concepts, ideas, symbols etc. is to find out their underlying meaning and making sense out of them, is known as acquisition.

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(a) Reading:

It is one of the major means of acquiring new knowledge. It is a constructive process which involves both reconstructing an author’s message and constructing one’s own meaning using the print. The process of reading requires the use of complex thought procedures to interpret printed symbols as meaningful units and comprehend them as thought units in order to understand a printed message.

(b) Listening:

It is another important means of acquiring new knowledge, it is a “selective process of attending to hearing, understanding and remembering oral (and at times visual) symbols”.

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(c) Observation:

It is similar to listening, except that in observation, interpretation and understanding are based on the visual symbols unlike in listening; where it is essentially based on the aural symbols. It is a process of perceiving visual symbols, interpreting them, understanding the meaning and relating it with prior knowledge.

(2) Synthesizing:

It requires the student to make sense out of the information acquired and relate it to the previous knowledge. While synthesizing the ideas, the learner categorizes, organizes and combines the newly-learned ideas and creates, devises, designs, explains, generates, modifies the ideas to totally new situations to be able to see a set of abstract relations among them.

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(3) Application:

It is an important and final step in the process of learning. Most of what we learn is intended for application to problem situations in real life. Application refers to the use of the abstraction of theory, principle, concept, idea or information correctly in an appropriate situation.