Cognitive Coolness includes those language learning strategies and techniques that can be, and usually ARE, under your direct conscious control. These are also most directly related, in most students' mind, with second language learning, and are FOUR Cool Cogs: Practicing, Sending and Receiving Messages, Analyzing and reasoning and Creating framework and order for input and output.
Taking these one at a time, we can start with practicing. Sounds real, as people who don't practice their newly heard word or phrase don't learn it and don't retain it. Practice makes permanent, and RIGHT PRACTICE makes perfect.
Practice consists of formally, slowly practicing with sounds and writing systems; repeating the pronunciation of a word or phrase or repeating the reading of that word/phrase; recognizing and using patterns and forms; practicing natural-seeming ways, and recombining parts into greater wholes or segments.
Next, the skills of analyzing and reasoning as applied to your second language. These mental methods express when we analyze expressions (either in the target language or in our mother tongue, as relates TO the target language); use deductive reasoning (to deduce meaning); analyze contrasts between target and mother tongue; translating; and transferring. This is part of the chewing process when we seek to digest new information in an effective, efficient way.
Sending and receiving messages is a third part of the Cognitive Coolness skillset, and is comprised of getting the idea (quickly) and employing resources for sending and receiving content for communication. Say what? Come again?
We create supportive structure for output and input when we take notes, highlight and summarize.
