Sleep and Learning
By: Stephen M. Ryan
CEFR Level: A2+
Word Count: 861 words
The Brain in Simplified English
What do you need to do in order to learn your lessons well? Certainly, you need to pay attention and study hard, but you also need to get enough sleep. Scientists have found that sleep is very important for learning. You may be surprised that students who have more (and better) sleep get better grades in school[1].
Why is this? Many people think their brains are switched off when they are asleep. It is true that the parts of your brain that move most of your body are asleep, but the rest of your brain is very busy. What is it doing? Well, it is learning while you sleep.
[1] Here is where the scientists made their report about this: Baert, S., Omey, E., Verhaest, D., & Vermeir, A. (2015). Mister Sandman, bring me good marks! On the relationship between sleep quality and academic achievement. Social Science & Medicine, 130, 91-98. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25689666/
While you are awake, you have lots and lots of experiences. You hear things, see things, touch things, taste things, even smell things while you are at school, at home, or at work. Your brain is pretty busy helping you know what to do throughout the day. Later at night, when you are asleep, it has time to make sense of all the things you have experienced.
First, it decides which experiences are important, or might be important in the future. Did you get some new information in class? It might be on the test. It might even be useful to you in the future when you get a job. Did you notice something new about a friend of yours? That might be important because it helps you to be a good friend to them. Did you have the same food as usual for breakfast? That’s probably not important. Did you wear a red shirt or a blue shirt? That’s also not important for your future. Your brain forgets the things it thinks are not important: you probably don’t remember what colour shirt you wore last Wednesday. The important things it keeps, and it stores them in your Long-Term Memory.
That’s not all. While you are sleeping, your brain tries to make sense of your experiences. It looks for patterns in the things you have seen, heard, etc. A pattern might be something like that your teacher always writes on the blackboard new words that she wants you to remember. Knowing a pattern can help you to understand what to expect in the future. If you noticed the pattern, the next day when your teacher tells you a new word but doesn’t write it on the blackboard, you will know that she doesn’t think it is important. To know patterns like this is important.
Of course, your brain already knows some patterns from the day before and the day before that, and so on. So, another thing it does while you sleep is to try to put together today’s new experiences and yesterday’s patterns. Do they fit together well? Or will you need to change a pattern to make a new experience fit in? Sometimes trying to make experiences fit into an old pattern can be pretty funny: of course, an elephant can’t fly, but your brain might try to make it fit into the pattern of birds and, for a moment, imagine a flying elephant. Sometimes, we remember these strange thoughts after we wake up: we call them dreams.
Finding or changing patterns because of a new experience is called learning. That’s what your brain does while you are asleep that will help you to get better grades: not only deciding what to remember, but learning, too.
Of course, it does other things. It allows your body to rest. It cleans itself. It helps you feel refreshed and ready for a new day. That’s why getting enough sleep is important for your body, but now you know it is also good for your brain. If you don’t get enough sleep: you will find it difficult to pay attention the next day; you cannot be as active as you would like to be; you may even fall asleep in class; you may catch a cold or another disease because your body is not so ready to protect you from viruses; you will find it difficult to remember things; and you will not learn as much as you could.
So, how can you get enough sleep? It’s simple: go to bed early and sleep until it’s time to get up. Well, maybe it’s not so simple: some people go to bed early but can’t get to sleep soon. This can be a result of eating or drinking just before you go to bed, or of using a computer or smartphone at bedtime. To sleep well, it is best to stop eating and drinking and switch off your computer or smartphone at least an hour before you go to bed. Also, going to bed and getting up at the same time each day can help you get a good sleep.
Sleep is important. It is important for your body, and for your brain. It is also important for learning.
Sleep well!
