Memorization has always been seen as an important part of the learning process. Starting from memorizing the spelling of one’s name, one’s address, and a lot of other information without which human life does not seem possible, one constantly practices his or her memorization skills. Education plays an important role in this process, as one of the main teacher’s tasks is to encourage students to exercise their brains. Teachers are empowered to supply the students with the tools that will help them to memorize things better and, consequently, succeed in their studies and in life as a whole.
No one would deny the fact that abilities to analyze and think critically are equally important abilities that the students should develop. But memorization is as significant as other parts of learning, or, to be more exact, this is a step for other learning to happen, and it never loses its value at every level of education.
It is a common practice for modern schools to emphasize many facts and few skills. Students are expected to memorize a large amount of information that often does not seem very appealing to them. But practice shows that teachers simply give their students the task to memorize this or that piece by the next lesson without proper guidance that should go along with the assignment. As a result, students often have to bear the burden of memorization, seeing it as a daunting task they have to cope with.
To change this situation, a teacher should either work out one’s own approach to developing memorization skills with the students or benefit from the existing ones. The key to success here is to combine several memorization methods depending on the material learned, the students’ interests and abilities, and the time at the teacher’s disposal.
The debate around the problem of rote learning as a way to memorize things will never find a unanimous solution with the teachers. There exist both critical and supportive views on this problem. On the one hand.
Rote learning is the process of acquiring material as discrete and relatively isolated entities that are relatable to the cognitive structure only in an arbitrary and verbatim fashion, not permitting the establishment of meaningful relationships (Brown et al., 1983, p.132).
This definition implies that learning by rote is meaningless, as the newly learned material has little or no association with the previously acquired knowledge. According to this view, rote learning does not have much potential for retention. Meaning learning, on the contrary, is “a process of relating and anchoring new material to relevant established entities in cognitive structure.” (Brown et al., 1983, 137) Through meaningful learning, a student resorts to the knowledge he or she once acquired and managed to establish the interconnections that help him, or she memorize the material easier and for a long time. As for rote learning, material memorized in such a way enters short-term memory and gets low chances for retention. Brown (1983) claims:
Human beings are capable of learning almost any given item within the so-called ‘magic seven, plus or minus two’ units for perhaps a few seconds, but long-term memory is a different matter (13).
Developing the students’ long-term memory, therefore, becomes the goal of primary importance for a teacher. To achieve this goal, he or she should have a clear-cut system of rules to keep to while teaching memorization. For instance, Marlow Ediger (2000) suggests the following set of principles for a teacher to be ruled by when encouraging students’ memorization:
- Use of higher levels of cognition together with a recall of information;
- Memorization of what tends to be highly utilitarian, such as the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts; basic sight words in developing a reading vocabulary; and essential science and social studies content;
- Memorization should become an enjoyable activity for students. They should clearly see the reasons for memorization. Thus they might feel inclined to memorize;
- Games in the classroom contribute to better memorization;
- Software for student interaction emphasizes memorization of what is important;
- Discussion groups reinforce relevant items committed or should be committed to memory;
- Planning and assessing with students selected items to be memorized increases students’ desire to remember the material needed (503-505).
When a teacher strives for a student’s long-term memory, he or she should give special consideration to the problem of marks in this process. Students should be encouraged to memorize things not because of the purpose of getting an excellent mark but because of the value that the knowledge has in itself. It often happens that students work for marks, as the school itself values them so highly.
Though getting a positive mark often serves as a driving force for the student’s remembering this or that thing, the material retained in this way will never enter the student’s long-term memory. Therefore, teachers should not rely on marks as the dominant factor in the teaching of memorization. To foster in students the burning desire to know and not to simply get a good mark – this should be the final goal of a teacher, and fostering in them the burning desire to remember things for a long time, if not forever, this is a significant factor in achieving this goal.
Making the students involved in what they are memorizing, a teacher will soon observe the results of his or her work. One of the best ways to do it is to encourage the students to reinforce the material in their brains by seeing, hearing, feeling, and even smelling it. For instance, visual prompts turn to be a helpful tool for reinforcing and remembering information. Internal (emotional) or external (tactile) feelings also help to reinforce the material. Sound is also commonly used by teachers as an effective tool for memorization. There exist numerous ways of incorporating sound into the student’s memorization skills.
In general, ways of reinforcing information through the student’s senses are rather diverse. The teacher’s role is to choose the techniques that are appropriate for the specific task the students have to cope with. The more successfully the techniques are combined by the teacher, the more information his or her students are able to retain.
In conclusion, we should say that the students’ success much depends on the teacher’s desire and ability to help them while striving for it. Teaching memorization as an important part of the learning process requires much knowledge and skills from the teacher. The latter should be in constant search of the appropriate techniques to rely on in this process. The results of using the appropriate ones will never keep them waiting.
References
Brown, A. L., Bransford, J. D., Ferrara, R. A., & Campione, J. C. (1983). Learning, Remembering, and Understanding. In P. H. Mussen (Ed.), Handbook of psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 77-166). New York: Wiley.
Derbyshire, J. (2001). Thanks for the Memories: Rote Is Right. National Review, 53.
Ediger, M. (2000). Choosing Evaluation Procedures. Education, 120 (3), 503-505.
Weinert, F. E. & Perlmutter, M. (Eds.). (1988). Memory Development: Universal Changes and Individual Differences. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Westreich, G. (2002). Dance, Mathematics, and Rote Memorization. JORD–The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 73(6), 12+.