> you’d want to interleave serves, backhands, volleys, smashes, and footwork — not serves, synchronized swimming, European capitals, and programming in Java.
So if I want to learn European capitals I interleave it with what? The tennis/serve example is obvious, the rest is not.
>So if I want to learn European capitals I interleave it with what? The tennis/serve example is obvious, the rest is not.
In principle it should be another piece of knowledge which makes "European capitals" useful, in the same way that having a good backhand gives you more opportunities to serve. Examples would be "European systems of government", "European political movements", "European international politics and diplomacy", "European countries", etc. It's a little harder to think of, perhaps, because "European capitals" per se seems to many people to be an almost useless piece of knowledge.
I agree. A simple strategy for the "European capitals" would be to learn the size of them in conjunction. I guess the key is to search for something useful that you can relate to easier? For Example: London, 8.3 Mil; Berlin 4.3 Mil and so on...
I can think of a million things. The problem is where to draw the line. For tennis it's obvious since you need both the serve and the backhand. Compare that to European capitals and European architecture. When is it related in a sense that it's effective to learn interleaved?
Respectfully, the problem (I believe) is seeing it as a line.
Interleaving, isn't a "right" or "wrong", "black" or "white"... Think of it as, this topic is "less" or "more" effective.
What do I mean? Well, as someone else mentioned, studying "European Nation States" might be a good option for you. Certainly a better option than, say, Swan Diving. You should accept that "European Nation States" is the best you can do right now.
One of the hallmark traits of intelligence is the ability to "relate" unrelated things. In this way, you could - theoretically - interleave ANYTHING, you just need to think abstractly enough about it.
There isn't a line. We're talking about the human brain, these things are fuzzy. Some things will work better than others, and it'll surely vary between people, and you'll have no idea which are which until you try it. But it seems like the theme is association: Find the common information between the things you're studying.
Context here is important. Your hypothetical leaves out why. If you just need to learn a skill for no reason other than to catalogue it as a line-item in your accomplishment list it will be hard. If what you are learning is relevant there will be a bunch of similar data streams or skills that you can practice in parrallel.
It probably depends on why you're learning this. If I understand the concept correctly, the idea is to interleaving complementary skills. i.e. you stay within the same broad skill/activity domain.
So if learning this to prepare for a quiz show, I'd probably interleave it with specific trivia-esque facts about each capital city's culture, history, etc. That way you both learn the names of the capitals, and you attach varied bits of context to each name.
If I needed to know them because I'm moving to somewhere in Europe and I want to have a "lay of the land," I might interleave other useful tips and tricks I would need to know. Any quirks in how they drive over there, how to order food in whatever languages I need to know, the different new social customs I need to be aware of, how to translate in my head between English and metric measurements perhaps, etc ...
So if I want to learn European capitals I interleave it with what? The tennis/serve example is obvious, the rest is not.