[jacobolus]

It substantially comes down to the amount of language practice those students have had over the years, starting from listening to large amounts of varied material (from conversations/books read aloud) as young children, and then from reading a wide variety of material. The kids who read, and read, and read (especially those who have someone discuss with them the meaning and structure of what they are reading, hearing, or experiencing) learn these skills to great fluency. The kids who don’t, don’t.

Some kids live in households where they listen to thousands of books by age 5 or 6, including not only stories of increasing complexity but also natural history, biography, science, technology, ..., and other kids never get that kind of attention or experience, and end up far behind in those skills.

The ability to “memorize” (i.e. learn) rests on a vast subconscious structure built up by fitting together language, starting from little bits and pieces of vocabulary, and building to subtle understandings of complicated ideas.

The way to train it is by giving the little neural net of the brain as much meaningful input as possible about the relevant parts of the world, and letting the brain fit them together in a web of connections. Not by trying to practice/drill rote trivia (say, reciting state capitals or the multiplication table).

[agumonkey]

I hypothesized that after 3/4 very different languages you start to build a different, more abstract model of linguistics (syntax, phonetics, semantics) that helps absorbing more. Just like music.

[AlanYx]

>the ability to “memorize” (i.e. learn)

I don't disagree with any of what you're saying. But piecing little bits and pieces of things together is seen as a higher-level cognitive trait in most of the cognitive literature, quite distinct as a learning concept from memorization.

[jacobolus]

My point is that when someone says “the biggest differentiator between the students who scale up quickly and those who scale up a bit more slowly is their aptitude for memorization....” this is a mis-interpretation of the evidence that the “quicker-scaling” students remember facts they read more readily. What actually distinguishes these students is fluency in comprehending and associating material conveyed in writing/speech. Which may vary slightly based on inherent traits but comes down substantially to cumulative past practice listening/reading to complicated language. By high school students have more than a decade of practice, and between the most prepared and least prepared students there is probably something like 10x difference in amount and quality of past practice, most of it outside of school. Some students are barely reading the few assigned novels and textbooks while others are reading multiple (extra-curricular) difficult books per week on a variety of subjects and having extracurricular conversations where they construct and parse complicated arguments, etc. The latter group have a huge advantage.

Students’ skill at specifically remembering lists of atomized trivia (what people often mean when they say “aptitude for memorization”) is not as important, though this is also a trainable skill for anyone who really wants to do it.

Similarly, between the kids who play sports or do other physical activities all the time and have some amount of expert coaching and the kids who only play sports in PE class, there is probably something like a 10x difference in cumulative quantity/quality of past practice. Which ends up making it seem that some students are “athletic” and others aren’t.

And similarly for music, electronics, carpentry, abstract mathematics, cooking, shooter games, or whatever other skills you look at.