Friday, 14 March 2014

dogme and emergent language pt 1

The 'dogme' method or approach to teaching languages has been with us for about ten years now:

Dogme language teaching is considered to be both a methodology and a movement.^[1] Dogme is a communicative approach to language teaching that encourages teaching without published textbooks and focuses instead on conversational communication among learners and teacher. It has its roots in an article by the language education author, Scott Thornbury.^[2] The Dogme approach is also referred to as “Dogme ELT”, which reflects its origins in the ELT (English language teaching) sector. Although Dogme language teaching gained its name from an analogy with the Dogme 95 film movement (initiated by Lars von Trier), the connection is not considered close.^[3]

Dogme has ten key principles.^[4]

Interactivity: the most direct route to learning is to be found in the interactivity between teachers and students and amongst the students themselves.
Engagement: students are most engaged by content they have created themselves
Dialogic processes: learning is social and dialogic, where knowledge is co-constructed
Scaffolded conversations: learning takes place through conversations, where the learner and teacher co-construct the knowledge and skills
Emergence: language and grammar emerge from the learning process. This is seen as distinct from the ‘acquisition’ of language.
Affordances: the teacher’s role is to optimize language learning affordances through directing attention to emergent language.
Voice: the learner’s voice is given recognition along with the learner’s beliefs and knowledge.
Empowerment: students and teachers are empowered by freeing the classroom of published materials and textbooks.
Relevance: materials (e.g. texts, audios and videos) should have relevance for the learners
Critical use: teachers and students should use published materials and textbooks in a critical way that recognizes their cultural and ideological biases.

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Conversation-driven teaching

Conversation is seen as central to language learning within the Dogme framework, because it is the “fundamental and universal form of language” and so is considered to be “language at work”. Since real life conversation is more interactional than it is transactional, Dogme places more value on communication that promotes social interaction. Dogme also places more emphasis on a discourse-level (rather than sentence-level) approach to language, as it is considered to better prepare learners for real-life communication, where the entire conversation is more relevant than the analysis of specific utterances. Dogme considers that the learning of a skill is co-constructed within the interaction between the learner and the teacher. In this sense, teaching is a conversation between the two parties. As such, Dogme is seen to reflect Tharp’s view that “to most truly teach, one must converse; to truly converse is to teach”.^[5]

Materials light approach

The Dogme approach considers that student-produced material is preferable to published materials and textbooks, to the extent of inviting teachers to take a ‘vow of chastity’ and not use textbooks.^[4] Dogme teaching has therefore been criticized as not offering teachers the opportunity to use a complete range of materials and resources.^[6] However there is a debate to the extent that Dogme is actually anti-textbook or anti-technology. Meddings and Thornbury focus the critique of textbooks on their tendency to focus on grammar more than on communicative competency and also on the cultural biases often found in textbooks, especially those aimed at global markets.^[7] Indeed, Dogme can be seen as a pedagogy that is able to address the lack of availability or affordability of materials in many parts of the world.^[8] Proponents of a Dogme approach argue that they are not so much anti-materials, as pro-learner, and thus align themselves with other forms of learner-centered instruction and critical pedagogy.^[3]

Emergent language

Dogme considers language learning to be a process where language emerges rather than one where it is acquired. Dogme shares this belief with other approaches to language education, such as task-based learning. Language is considered to emerge in two ways. Firstly classroom activities lead to collaborative communication amongst the students. Secondly, learners produce language that they were not necessarily taught. The teacher's role, in part, is to facilitate the emergence of language. However, Dogme does not see the teacher's role as merely to create the right conditions for language to emerge. The teacher must also encourage learners to engage with this new language to ensure learning takes place. The teacher can do this in a variety of ways, including rewarding, repeating and reviewing it.^[9] As language emerges rather than is acquired, there is no need to follow a syllabus that is externally set. Indeed, the content of the syllabus is covered (or ‘uncovered’) throughout the learning process.^[10]

Pedagogical foundations of Dogme

Dogme has its roots in communicative language teaching (in fact Dogme sees itself as an attempt to restore the communicative aspect to communicative approaches).^[11]Dogme has been noted for its compatibility with reflective teaching and for its intention to “humanize the classroom through a radical pedagogy of dialogue”.^[8] It also shares many qualities with task-based language learning^[12] and only differs with task-based learning in terms of methodology rather than philosophy.^[13] Research evidence for Dogme is limited but Thornbury argues that the similarities with task-based learning suggest that Dogme likely leads to similar results. An example is the findings that learners tend to interact, produce language and collaboratively co-construct their learning when engaged in communicative tasks.^[12]

Dogme as a critical pedagogy

Although Thornbury notes that Dogme is not inherently seeking social change and therefore does not fulfill generally held criteria for a critical pedagogy, Dogme can be seen as critical in terms of its anti-establishment approach to language teaching.^[3]

Dogme, technology and web 2.0

Although Dogme teaching has been seen to be anti-technology,^[6] Thornbury maintains that he does not see Dogme as being opposed to technology as such,^[14]rather that the approach is critical of using technology that does not enable teaching that is both learner centered and is based upon authentic communication. Indeed, more recent attempts to map Dogme principles on to language learning with web 2.0 tools (under the term “Dogme 2.0”) are considered evidence of Dogme being in transition^[15] and therefore of being compatible with new technology. However, although there is not a clear consensus among Dogme teachers on this issue (see discussions on the ELT Dogme Yahoo Group), there is a dominant view that the physical classroom will be preferable to attempts to substitute physical presence with communication via digital technology.^[3]

Criticism of Dogme

Dogme has come under criticism from a wide range of teachers and educators for its perceived rejection of both published textbooks and modern technology in language lessons. Furthermore the initial call for a ‘vow of chastity’ is seen as unnecessarily purist and that a weaker adoption of Dogme principles would allow teachers the freedom to choose resources according to the needs of a particular lesson.^[6] Maley also presents Dogme as an approach that “[increases] the constraints on teachers”.^[16] Christensen notes that adoption of Dogme practices may face greater cultural challenges in countries outside of Europe, such as Japan.^[17] Questions have also been raised about the appropriateness of Dogme in low resource contexts and where students are preparing for examinations that have specific syllabi.^[18]

Dogme language teaching - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Teaching Unplugged: Amazon.co.uk: Luke Meddings, Scott Thornbury: Books
http://www.deltapublishing.co.uk/content/pdf/teaching-unplugged/TU_TEFL_review.pdf
Dogme ELT: Teaching Unplugged - YouTube
teaching unplugged | An A-Z of ELT

Dogme: nothing if not critical | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC
Dogme in Action - Humanising Language Teaching

Dogme Is an Elitist Anti-Construct
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Thursday, 13 March 2014

oxford graded reader and bbc film: hard times by charles dickens

Oxford have their own set of graded readers
Graded Readers | Oxford University Press
- challenging the market leader Penguin:
Welcome to Penguin Readers

This is a particularly good story from Charles Dickens, simplified by Oxford and including two CDs:

Dominoes: Three: Hard Times Pack: Amazon.co.uk: -: Books
Hard Times - Charles Dickens - Google Books

Dominoes Three Hard Times Pack

Second EditionCharles Dickens
Text adaptation by Susan Kingsley

Format:

Mixed media format

Thomas Gradgrind believes that facts and money are more important than feelings and imagination. After Cissy Jupe - a circus child - is left alone in the world, Gradgrind takes her into his house, looking after her and teaching her facts with his own children Tom and Louisa. Some years later the Gradgrind family meets hard times. Louisa becomes a prisoner in a loveless marriage, and Tom has problems at work.

In the end, Thomas Gradgrind learns the importance of feelings and imagination.

Part of: Dominoes
Level: Dominoes Three

Dominoes Three Hard Times Pack | Oxford University Press

The photos are taken from the BBC Schools production:

hard times أوقات عصيبة by copyfac - YouTube
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pause and think: or, how to improve your language skills

A very useful way to improve the quality of your spoken language comes from the website antimoon - which was the subject of an earlier blog entry
Jay Doubleyou: antimoon
but which is so useful, here it is again:

How to get the most out of English texts

by Tomasz P. Szynalski

Reading for content

Normally, when reading a text, people use a strategy that I call “reading for content”. The goal of this strategy is to get the main idea of the text as quickly as possible and with as little effort as possible. To accomplish this goal, your brain will try to read as few words as possible and spend only a fraction of a second on each word.

For example, when reading the following passage, you don’t really see it like this:

Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing. In the book it said: “Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion.”

I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing.

To your brain, it looks more or less like this:

when I was six years old I saw magnificent picture in book, called True Stories Nature, about forest. picture boa swallowing animal. Here copy drawing. book said: “Boa swallow prey whole, without chewing After they not able move, and they sleep six months need digestion.”

I pondered deeply adventures jungle. And after work with colored pencil I succeeded making my first drawing.

Here are some characteristics of “reading for content”:

Not seeing “grammar words” like a, the, in, of, through, that. The eye only stops at content words (main nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs).
Not seeing word forms: Was it look or looked? Has looked or had looked?
Not noticing the exact spelling. It is well known that the brain recognizes whole words — it does not analyze them letter by letter. Native speakers see the word piece all the time, but many of them still misspell it as peice, because the two spellings have similar shapes.
Ignoring difficult words that are not essential to understanding the meaning (here: primeval, constrictor). Who has the time to use a dictionary?

An extreme example of “word blindness” is the rather well-known puzzle where you’re asked to count how many times the letter F occurs in the following passage:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

Click here for answer:

Reading for content is a great, time-saving way to extract information from written content. The problem is that you may not need grammar words tounderstand a text, but you do need them to produce a text. If you skip overgrammar words while reading, you may have difficulty using them correctly in your own sentences.

Here’s an illuminating passage posted by Maya l’abeille at the Antimoon Forum:

I believe that seeing correct and typical English sentences helps a lot to learn how to use English properly. It is also important to read and read again every structure that is new to you, so that you can remember them. If you only read the book without taking any pause to think carefully about the “new” sentences, you will hardly remember any of them.

I’ve read all Harry Potter books straight myself, and when I opened them again, I realised I had viewed loads and loads of useful structures whithout remembering them — which was such a shame! I’m reading The Full Monty (Penguin Readers collection) using the “pause and think” method at present. Now after a few days of daily reading, when I take a look at an English text, many structures are familiar to me — “hey, I remember reading this one in The Full Monty!”.

Therefore, I believe this method is efficient and I would advise it to all learners.

Sometimes, we don’t realise how wealthy a single book can be — loads to learn just in one of them.

Pause and think

I agree with Maya about the “pause and think” method. Here’s the process that I recommend for dealing with sentences in texts:

Stop at interesting (not obvious) things: a new word, how a word was used, a grammatical structure, a preposition, an article, a conjunction, the order of words, etc. For example, spend a while to think about the fact that the sentence contains the preposition at, and not on. Perhaps the sentence uses the present perfect tense where you would have expected the past simple. Perhaps the word order is different than in your first language.
If the sentence contains a useful phrase, ask yourself: Could you produce a similar phrase yourself? Would you use the right tenses, articles and prepositions? Would you use the right word order? If you’re not sure, read the phrase again. Practice saying it (or a similar phrase) aloud or in your mind. The idea is to program your brain with it.
If necessary, or if you feel like it, use your dictionary to find definitions of words in the sentence and get more example sentences. This will help enrich your “feel” of the word.

Important notes

You don’t have to use “pause and think” all the time. Reading in this mode can be quite exhausting, so don’t do it when you’re tired after a long reading session.

How to get the most out of English texts | Antimoon

And some discussion:
Is “pause and think” worth it? « The Antimoon Blog
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Tuesday, 11 March 2014

internet privacy

The subject has been dealt with on the BBC's "words in the news" section:
Learning English - Words in the News - Internet privacy

And the subject is really hotting up. From today:

10 March 2014 Last updated at 18:41

Snowden: Surveillance is 'setting fire' to the internet

COMMENTS (248)

By Anthony ZurcherEditor, Echo Chambers

Edward Snowden: Surveillance is 'setting fire' to the internet

Spy leaks

Global mass surveillance conducted by the US and other governments is "setting fire to the future of the internet", Edward Snowden told a packed auditorium of technology innovators via video link in Austin at the South by Southwest Interactive conference on Monday.

He said: "You guys are all the firefighters, and we need you to help us fix this."

The former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, who fled the US last year after leaking thousands of documents that revealed his employer's extensive surveillance programmes, spoke to the audience through a choppy Google Hangout video connection running through multiple proxy servers to conceal his location.

Although Mr Snowden has granted a handful interviews to the media since his revelations made global headlines and led to his seeking asylum in Russia, it was one of his first live appearances before a general audience.

During his one-hour session moderated by his lawyer, Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Mr Snowden urged internet and computing experts to design and produce encrypted communication technology that the average user can use.

“Start Quote

I saw the constitution was violated on a massive scale”

Edward Snowden

Often delving into the technical details of internet security, calling it "defence against the dark arts in the digital realm", he said the systems currently available, if used by the general public, would make NSA bulk surveillance programmes much more difficult.

Mr Snowden also denounced what he saw as a change in US priorities since the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, focusing on breaking communication security rather than protecting information.

"When you are the one country in the world that is sort of a vault that is more full than anyone else, it doesn't make sense for you to be attacking all day rather and never defend your vault," he said.

He also criticised the NSA's mass data collection system as being ineffective and a waste of resources. Instead, he said, the agency should be focusing on the type of people who present a threat.

Fugitive Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks via Skype at the South By SouthWest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, on 8 March 2014

Fugitive Wikileaks founder Julian Assange spoke to the festival at the weekend, calling the NSA a "rogue agency"

He cited Boston Marathon bombing suspects Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan as individuals the government might have been able to catch if they had directed resources in the right areas.

"We spent all this money, we spent all this time hacking into Google's and Facebook's back end to look at their databases," he said. "What did we get out of that? We got nothing."

Mr Snowden received a warm reception from the audience, and the question-and-answer session included words of praise in an email from internet pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who said his actions were "profoundly in the public interest".

The former NSA contractor's appearance was not without critics, however. US Congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas wrote an open letter to the conference's organisers on Friday, urging them to deny the NSA leaker a public platform to air his views.

Mr Snowden's "only apparent qualification", he writes, "is his willingness to steal from his own government and then flee to that beacon of first amendment freedoms, the Russia of Vladimir Putin".

At the start of the session, Mr Wizner, who serves as Mr Snowden's legal adviser, replied that although freedom of expression protections are generally stronger in the US than in Russia, "if there's one person for whom that's not true, it's Ed Snowden".

If Mr Snowden were still in the US, he said, he'd probably be held by the government in solitary confinement.

Mr Snowden's session is the latest event in a technology conference that has been dominated by talk of internet security, government surveillance and privacy rights.

On Saturday, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, also speaking via video, called the NSA a "rogue agency" that "has dirt on everyone".

Later on Monday, journalist Glenn Greenwald - who has worked with Mr Snowden to report on information contained in his secret NSA documents - will also have a video session.

In his final question, Mr Snowden was asked to assess the importance of his revelations.

"Regardless of what happens to me, this is something we had a right to know," he said.

"I took an oath to support and defend the constitution, and I saw the constitution was violated on a massive scale.

The interpretation of the constitution had been changed in secret from 'no unreasonable search and seizure' to 'any seizure is fine, just don't search it'. That's something the public ought to know."

Your comments (248)

Comments

BBC News - Snowden: Surveillance is 'setting fire' to the internet
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conversation gambits

An excellent book to practice conversion:
Conversation Gambits: Amazon.co.uk: Eric Keller, Sylvia T. Warner: Books
Conversation Gambits: Real English Conversation Practices by Eric Keller — Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists
Conversation Gambits - EFL CLASSROOM 2.0

Here are the first chapters:

Another interesting list of such phrases:
ENGLISH CORNER: CONVERSATION GAMBITS
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Monday, 10 March 2014

common european framework

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment,^[1] abbreviated as CEFR, is a guideline used to describe achievements of learners of foreign languages across Europe and, increasingly, in other countries...

The CEFR adopts an action-oriented approach that can be traced back to theoretical proposals made by philosophers of language such as Ludwig Wittgenstein in the 1950s and sociolinguists such as Dell Hymes.^[3] The approach regards language users as social agents who develop general and particular communicative competences while trying to achieve their everyday goals.

Common European Framework of Reference for Languages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Task-based language learning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What is particularly interesting is not so much the 'grading' from A1 to C2 - or that there is absolutely no 'grammar' - but the fact that we have not four skills but five. Now speaking takes up 40% of the curriculum - and is divided into the 'subskills' of spoken interaction and spoken production - both very different.

This will have profound effects on the way language is taught in the classroom - and on how teachers are trained. Students and teachers will not be able to rely on 'grammar exercises' and 'word lists' - which in the past provided a very simple method of 'quality control' with tests and 'right answers'. Now there will have to be much more speaking - which is much more difficult to teach, to control and to test - but which will provide so much more opportunity for 'authentic practice'.

The challenge will be for the 'non-native' language teacher - but there are so many resources on the internet, that both teacher and student will be able to listen to tons of stuff, practice good pronunciation, try out 'shadowing' techniques, chat on-line and so on.

So, what's there to worry about - just let go and practice speaking!

COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK REFERENCE FOR LANGUAGES

Sunday, 9 March 2014

rote learning

Following on from the OECD/PISA report comparing education internationally
Education - OECD
OECD education report: subject results in full - Telegraph
... there have been calls to follow the example of 'rote learning' as practised in the Far East:

Rote learning will bring pupils 'on par with peers in Far East'

There's a strong resistance to traditional teaching methods among many in the educational establishment, says Nick Gibb, former Schools Minister

The way maths is taught in the UK contrasts with the approach taken in countries such as China and Singapore Photo: Rex

By Nick Gibb MP

4:40PM GMT 18 Feb 2014

61 Comments

Yesterday’s reported findings from the OECD show that children of manual workers in the Far East are at least a year ahead in mathscompared to the offspring of professional parents in this country.

It’s not the class issue that is important, however, it’s the stark reality of our expensive education system performing so poorly in an area that is so crucial to the long term economic prosperity of our country.

>> OECD education report: subject results in full

The William’s Formula One team struggles to recruit apprentices who know how to calculate 7,713 ÷ 9 or 11 percent of 250. Sir Terry Leahey, the former CEO of Tesco, laments the large number of talented people who fail to progress in business because they are confused by simple percentages.

The way maths is taught in the UK contrasts sharply with the approach taken in countries such as China and Singapore that top the international educational league tables.

I saw this first hand when, as Schools Minister, I visited schools in Hong Kong where 10-year-old primary school pupils are able to calculate - in their heads some of them - 1/7 + 1/8 to come to the correct answer of 15/56.

We all know about the “Reading Wars”, the battle of ideas over how children should be taught to read. The battle ground in the “Maths Wars” forms along similar philosophical lines.

On one side of the argument are those who believe that primary school teachers should put more emphasis on the teaching and understanding of mathematical concepts and less emphasis on the techniques or algorithms of calculation.

Traditionalists, on the other hand, believe that by being taught the algorithms (for example vertical addition and subtraction, long multiplication and division) with a lot of practice children not only become fluent and confident in calculation they also develop an understanding of the concepts underlying those calculations as familiar patterns emerge from practice.

Rote learning will bring pupils 'on par with peers in Far East' - Telegraph

There is quite a debate internationally:
Focus on rote learning causes problems for Leaving Cert students - Education News | Primary, Secondary & Third Level | The Irish Time - Tue, Mar 04, 2014

The Wikipedia entry on rote learning has been written by someone who isn't a fan:
Rote learning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's a discussion on the BBC learning english pages:
BBC World Service | Learning English | Ask about English

And here's a very nuanced, intelligent discussion:

Rote Memorization: Overrated or Underrated?

Justin Snider

Posted: 02/ 3/11 06:53 PM ET

Among the countless catchphrases that educators generally despise are "drill-'n-kill" and "rote memorization." In keeping with their meanings, both sound terrifically unpleasant. To learn something "by rote," according to the Random House dictionary, is to learn it "from memory, without thought of the meaning; in a mechanical way."

The fear is that we're turning our children into automatons by force-feeding them useless bits of information -- facts that can be found instantly on Wikipedia, like the dates of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) or the equation for calculating the area of a circle (πr²).

But is it possible that memorizing things is actually underrated in modern American society? Could one make a convincing case that it's not just useful but vital for people of all ages to memorize things?

The answer to both of these questions, I believe, is yes. And a recent discussion on the BAM!Radio Network in which I participated focused on this very topic -- the value of rote memorization. The conversation, hosted by Rae Pica, featured Daniel Willingham (a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia), Joan Almon (executive director of the Alliance for Childhood) and me.

Because "rote" learning and "memorization" have negative connotations for most people, it might be better to speak of learning things by heart. And, as Willingham points out in our discussion, learning things by heart is something children automatically do. That is, it comes naturally to them -- whether it's being able to recall all the words to a nursery rhyme or knowing the plot of a story (if not the story itself, word for word) before one is actually able to read. Willingham says that the key is engagement: "If you're really engaged, memory comes pretty automatically."

Learning things by heart can be useful for any number of reasons, some of which we discuss in the radio show. As an English teacher, I've often made my students memorize poetry -- and just as often some have pushed back, accusing me of assigning meaningless "busy work." I love that accusation because it provides me the perfect opportunity to explain why memorizing a poem is, in fact, a worthwhile activity. And here's a little-known secret: learning things by heart isn't as hard as many people imagine.

For inspiration on the memorization front, check out the video below of a three-year-old reciting Billy Collins' poem "Litany." This serves as a lovely reminder of what the human brain is capable of. (Notice what the young child's intonation on certain lines reveals: he hasn't learned this poem "without thought of the meaning; in a mechanical way" -- Random House's definition of "rote" learning. He's wiser and more aware of what he's saying than many of us might initially think.)

3-year-old recites poem, "Litany" by Billy Collins - YouTube

Here are some of the reasons I give skeptical students for why learning things by heart is worthwhile:

First, it's a challenge, and one in which those who succeed can take pride.

Second, it's good exercise for your brain. Many people these days seem to believe that our digital devices will remember everything for us -- and they will, but they're not much help when we can't find them, or they're broken, or they've been left at home. How will you call your best friend to reschedule that lunch appointment -- you don't even know her phone number! And she's your best friend?

Third, and most importantly, new insights are gained in the process of memorization. You see things to which you were previously blind; you uncover a play on words, assonance, alliteration, analogies. It is for this reason, I believe, that the great Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov declared that there's actually no such thing as reading -- there's only re-reading. ("Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader," Nabokov wrote in hisLectures on Literature.)

The same holds for T.V. shows and movies: you see so much more on a second, third and fourth viewing. You don't truly see anything the first time you watch it. And this applies no less to music: hearing something for the first time is more akin to hearing it not at all than to truly hearing it. The work is too new, too unknown, to us; we can't make heads or tails of it because we suffer from sensory overload.

It's only with multiple readings, viewings and hearings that we actually begin to understand, see and hear. We're deaf and blind in our first encounters with things.

And this is why practice matters so much as well. It's our chief hope for transcending mediocrity.

We say "practice makes perfect" in English but this, I think, is somewhat misleading because perfection is rarely attainable. There's no such thing as a "perfect" performance of a Beethoven sonata. And while perfection in sports isn't inconceivable -- I suppose a tennis player could win a match in straight sets without dropping a single point -- it's highly unlikely. Thus, I prefer the German version of the saying: "practice makes the master."Those who are the best at things typically become so through nonstop practice. It's not the only factor, of course -- natural ability matters hugely, too -- but it does seem to be a necessary ingredient. As Amy Chua, of "Tiger Mother" fame, says in her new book: "Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America."

Why are rote repetition and memorization underrated in America? As I say on the radio show, they've gotten a bad rap in part because they lend themselves too well to standardized testing. It's much easier -- faster, cheaper -- for me to determine whether you know when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) than whether you can convincingly explain how and why the Treaty of Versailles set the stage for World War II. Yes, the curriculum has narrowed (even Arne Duncan admits it!), the "what-gets-tested-is-what-gets-taught" phenomenon is very much alive, and there's a lack of critical-thinking skills among today's young people.

These sad facts, however, are more the result of our over-reliance on multiple-choice tests than anything inherently evil about repetition or memorization.

Justin Snider: Rote Memorization: Overrated or Underrated?
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