Teaching Technical Concepts

---
name: teaching-technical-concepts
description: Explain a technical idea by starting from what the learner knows, one concept at a time, with a concrete example before the abstraction. Use when teaching, mentoring, or writing an explanation.
---

# Teaching technical concepts

Experts explain badly because they cannot remember not knowing. The
result is an explanation that is accurate, complete, and useless to the
person who needed it.

## Method

1. **Establish what they already know.** The explanation builds from
   there, and getting this wrong is why most explanations fail (see
   audience-adaptation).
2. **Give the concrete example first.** A specific case then the general
   rule, since abstractions are only meaningful once there is something
   to abstract from.
3. **Introduce one new concept at a time.** Each explained in terms of
   things already established, because two unknowns in one sentence
   loses everyone.
4. **Name the thing after describing it.** Terminology attached to an
   understood idea sticks; terminology first is noise.
5. **Say why it exists.** What problem it solves makes the design
   memorable, where the mechanism alone does not.
6. **Check understanding by asking them to apply it.** Nodding is not
   comprehension, and a small exercise reveals the gap (see
   skill-assessment).
7. **Say what it is not.** Boundaries and common misconceptions prevent
   the confident wrong understanding that is worse than none.

## Boundaries

Simplification loses accuracy, and the simplified version must be
correct as far as it goes rather than a falsehood to be unlearned.
Explanation cannot substitute for practice in developing skill (see
deliberate-practice). Some concepts genuinely require prerequisites.