Why Do I Need a Teacher When I’ve Got Google

lip and say the internationally recognized phrase for stupidity, ‘duh!’; my little finger I raise as I drink my pretend cup of tea out of a china cup to signify quality of life and I stick my thumb up happily and say, in a cod-West Country accent, ‘Oi live in a brick ’ouse now, marvellous!’
    Does rote learning work? Yes, absolutely. Repetition reinforces connections between brain cells leading to better myelination and the creation of what can be lasting long-term memories. There are two significant down sides, though. One, it is as boring as hell and demands high degrees of motivation of learners, self control and the sort of boredom threshold you would associate with train spotting or reality TV. Two, despite being
effective
it is not
efficient
. You may be achieving the results you want to achieve with your classes, so you are working effectively, but are you working efficiently? Could you, by using different memory strategies and techniques, achieve the same results by working less? Could you even achieve better results by working less?
    I have used the finger technique for ‘The Five Pillars of Islam’ just as successfully as I have used it for remembering the purpose of the skeletal system. I even used it with a group of language teachers when I asked them to describe to me the difference between a D grade and a C grade sentence. I felt that sometimes students simply forget to get a C rather than simply being incapable of it. (Although that presupposes that the student knows the difference too. Do your students know
exactly
what level each bit of work they produce is, why it is so and what they need to do to improve on it – basic
Assessment for Learning
stuff these days I think?) The French teachers came up with five factors that separated Ds from Cs, things like adding a connective, expressing an opinion, using different tenses, ‘jazzing it up’ with a ‘C’est super choutte’ type phrase. Nothing too demanding. I then drew around my left hand and ‘anchored’ each of these factors onto a finger, the idea being that, sitting in an exam and writing with my right hand, I could look at my left hand and remember what was needed to ensure that I was working at C grade level. The teachers then not only put poster versions of this around the room, they also had the students create their own version in the front of their books.
    Anyway, you get the idea – muscle memory is a powerful ally to help children remember to pass exams so, have a think about what aspect of what you teach can be memorized in such a way. Or better still, teach your learners the strategy and let them come up with their own versions. After all, you don’t have to do all the work. Homework then becomes not simply ‘Go away and learn this and we’ll see how many out of ten you get tomorrow’ but ‘Go away and work out how you are going to get ten out of ten and then tomorrow share that with the rest of the class.’
    Before I close this chapter, those of you who are paying attention will know that we have an ‘R’ dangling, the fourth in our memory equation. This is the ‘R’ that research proves can help us improve our memories by, according to some claims, a staggering 400 per cent. It is the ‘R’ that was highlighted in the research of German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus 4 over a century ago but that we still ignore in the classroom. And it is the research that led to the writing of the classic 1988 paper
The Spacing Effect; A Case Study in the Failure to Apply the Results of Psychological Research
by University of Nevada researcher Dr Frank Dempster.
    This ‘R’ stand for review.
    What Ebbinghaus proved – and Dempster proves we ignore – is that because our memories decay very quickly over time, the majority of what was supposedly learned disappearing within days, reviewing the knowledge in a systematic and periodic way will prevent us from forgetting the material. This is something called ‘spaced learning’ and simply involves revisiting the learning for a few minutes after a day, a week, two weeks, a month and then six months. It is a phenomenon used in a number of language learning software programmes, including a remarkable one called
SuperMemo
5 developed by Pietr Wozniak from Poland and featured in a fascinating
Wired
magazine article entitled
Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm
. Wozniak realized that the spaced effect worked best if the material was