What is Actually Wrong with Rote Learning?

A lot of people don't like rote learning because it's not very fun. But is it effective? I explore this question with a rote learning example in learning to write Chinese characters.
0:00 An Intro to Rote Learning
1:01 Drawback 1 - Blocked Practice
2:57 Drawback 2 - Massed Practice
4:05 Drawback 3 - Skill Isolation
If you want to be the first to know about the courses I'm releasing, sign up here: forms.gle/px7ZmXkvJW26uFWp8
Sign up to my email newsletter, Avoiding Folly, here: www.benjaminkeep.com/
REFERENCES
For a recent take on spaced (or distributed) practice, including evidence from neurological studies, read:
Gerbier, E., & Toppino, T. C. (2015). The effect of distributed practice: Neuroscience, cognition, and education. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 4(3), 49-59. doi.org/10.1016/j.tine.2015.0...
If you want a more academic take, discussing theories and the available evidence circa 2006, check out:
Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354-380. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132...
For a readable piece on the advantages (and potential drawbacks) of interleaved practice, check out:
Kang, S. H. (2016). The benefits of interleaved practice for learning. In From the laboratory to the classroom (pp. 79-90). Routledge. www.taylorfrancis.com/chapter...
And a great piece on how to leverage interleaved, spaced, and skill-building practice in the classroom is here:
Hughes, C. A., & Lee, J. Y. (2019). Effective approaches for scheduling and formatting practice: Distributed, cumulative, and interleaved practice. Teaching Exceptional Children, 51(6), 411-423. www.researchgate.net/profile/...

[@MichaelFairhurst]

Hey Benjamin! I clicked because I'm a musician, and it's very common to practice a hard section of a song by just playing it on repeat for a few minutes with a metronome. Rote practice indeed! Rote practice is recommended because often the difference between an amateur and a pro is their ability to perform almost perfectly every time. Too many amateurs think, "I *can* play all these parts" but that's not really enough. So I'd love to see a video like this one, but that focuses on how musicians should train themselves to play with few mistakes, both specifically, and in general, and to mentally avoid the trap of, "I played this correctly once, so now practicing it to true proficiency is boring." Thanks Benjamin for all your amazing videos!

[@stageconvention2298]

Your channel is awesome

[@lucienkennedy1997]

Yeah I love it too. It’s like a hidden gem

[@ShubhTheOcean]

- Interleaved practice! - Very frequent systematic review/revision system before test. - Focus more on remembering and understanding than just mindlessly writing it many times. :)

[@rafaelalbertopenamungarro235]

I love your videos, man. You truly talk about the important stuff and give examples to integrate it in a useful way. Have a nice day, Benjamin!

[@maryo1065]

Wow I have been watching all your videos! Please never stop uploading. I also love you include research in the description!

[@Mysteriousmachine1]

Thank you for explaining why learning is complicated while being encouraging in the steps taken to learning!

[@senjutsu3400]

I find one practice very helpful when practicing writing kanji. I almost never study a kanji on its own but I do focus on kanji when training. I learn words and I like to write a few words that use the same kanji, preferably if I can see the connection between the kanji ethimology and the word. I use the Outlier dictionary for Japanese (It's a spinoff of the outlier Chinese dictionary). Experiencing how the kanji affects the meaning of different words is a great way to help remember.

[@NickFields4]

Hey Ben, interesting dichotomy here. Namely: I appreciate the depth, nuance, and (IMO, intelligence-driven) exploratory style of your videos and general commentary. Certainly serves as anecdote to the innumerable grifters espousing "speed learning" techniques. On the other hand, I'd be exceedingly interested in your "top" driving principals and cyclically applied tactics, synthesized from all your study, effort, calibration, etc Much love in any case ❤

[@jascha9033]

Hi Benjamin! Could you do a video about memorizing the structural information of objects for drawing? As an artist, building up what is called a "visual library" is extremely important. People like Kim Jung Gi (you can find him on KZbin) have somehow perfected the process of storing a massive amount of visual information in their head. He can draw a wide range of objects from memory without any photo reference at all. I have looked into it a bit but couldn't find any studies relating to this at all.

[@benjaminkeep]

Interesting! I really don't know anything about it. But I will add it to my (long) list of video ideas. Thanks for the suggestion!

[@guymanperson1]

@@benjaminkeep visual intelligence is particularly interesting in regard to deliberate learning via practice. There’s almost like a gatekeeping attitude of mystique. It really seems kind of anti-intellectual. It would be interesting to see it treated the same in academia as other types of cognition.

[@lazedreamor2318]

I think one of the most important takeaways about Jung Gi is that he didn't solely focus on one thing, but drew a lot of things! I think it can be somewhat tied to interleaving.

[@taonames]

Just saw this channel👍. Thanks for the concepts from the video that enhenced my previous Chinese writing knowledge. Apart from the contents, my opinion and experience, the biggest benefit of copy & copy method may not for test, memorise.... Etc, but for Calligraphy. Make the words look good, look smart, look beautiful, look article, look classical 🐉!

[@pliniotoni]

Great video, Benjamin! Congrats!

[@parkerhays2841]

Just wanted to mention that language acquisition is very different from learning other disciplines. Spaced active recall of characters is good for remembering the characters, however, activities like writing sentences with the new character can often lead to bad habits with grammar and unnatural language. Although memorization of the characters in this way might be useful for an exam in a language class, it is not the best way to acquire language. I was wondering if you know of the language acquisition hypothesis popularized by Stephen Krashen and how that could apply to your learning techniques for language-specific learning. Your techniques and advice have been very helpful for my studying (PhD student in physics), but I am concerned that the usage of language learning as the example in your videos could lead to inefficiencies in the language learning process. You mentioned in another video the importance of paying attention to experts. In language learning, every native speaker is an expert, and the importance of paying attention to them is greater than almost any other discipline, simply because of the nature and size of languages. What are your thoughts on this? Excellent content, your informed advice has been incredibly useful to me.

[@eslteacherscott4252]

I’d say that for each sentence you want to write out you should consult a dictionary and look for an example sentence that you know has correct grammar. That was you aren’t making your own sentences with bad grammar. If you didn’t want to simply copy the sentence, you could turn them into audio and try doing a dictation of the sentence. I know it is possible to make audio flashcards with Anki and the like. I think the Glossika method also uses something similar.

[@benjaminkeep]

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I probably created some confusion by doing a video on a learning method but using a language that I am not a native speaker in as an example. Nothing in this video should be construed as me advocating for any of the suggested techniques for second-language learning. If you don't already have the correct grammatical structures, you could indeed create bad habits by combining words in weird ways. I am a fan of the idea of comprehensible input.

[@Ash.Phoenix]

Hi, Benjamin! I'm a new subscriber and just wanted to leave a comment to say I absolutely love your content! It is super refreshing to see someone go beyond the 'usual' study advice that gets thrown about on KZbin. Thank you for the high-quality and informative content. I also have a quick question, if I may - could you suggest any particular advice (be it referring to a specific video or otherwise) that you could recommend to a law student? Thank you!

[@benjaminkeep]

Thanks for the support! I'll give it some thought. Won't be a video I release right away, but perhaps by the summer. : )

[@Bilal-ys6df]

Hello Mr. Keep, your videos are extremely helpful. I saw some of the principles applied in my program to memorize the Quran and I have made great progress so far. I would like to get your thoughts on my program. Your work is in any case appreciated. Thank you. One day of learning looks like this: 1. reading from memory 5 times the page we learned yesterday 2. scanning the page we are going to memorize a few times, not really reading but just getting a picture of it in our head 3. reading the new page 3 times from the book while listening to a professional reciter to figure out if we have any mistakes in intonation or misread some place 4. reading an explanation or exegesis about the page and put it into context with our other knowledge, our life and the other learned pages 5. memorizing the page verse by verse, always linking a verse to the previous one before moving to the next 6. recording ourselves 3 times reading from memory, then controlling if we made a mistake by listening to the recording and reading from the book. If we made a mistake we have to go back to 5. If not we go to 7. 7. Reading the page 40 times from memory always linking it to the last verse of the previous page 8. Reading the last 30 pages we learned from memory 9. Reading a 6th of the pages we learned before that i found that sleeping or exercising a bit between that helped me a lot in memorizing or reading the new page a few times before going to sleep the night before. Do you have any suggestions or opinion on our program?

[@fisicogamer1902]

This is actually an interesting video. I don't know if you are aware of the heisig method for learning chinese characters, but I would suspect that , while it is better than just learning them by rote, it can be as boring as learning by rote(or worse). In your opinion , how we could improve upon it?

[@bakeral-sheyab546]

Watching you in my break 🫡

[@SearchingForPixels]

Would love to hear your thoughts on E-learning and self-guided programs. There has been a big shift towards that during Covid. How can we use E-learning and self-guided to best effect?

[@ettahadpanto3363]

Hey, Why you are not making a video on learning mathmatics. Trigonometry is feeling so hard that my head is tearing off. All of it is feeling useless and rote learning. I am talking about class 12 higher mathmatics. Love you, Bro

[@eslteacherscott4252]

When I was seriously studying the characters to pass the HSK, I would use an Anki deck with the meaning and pronunciation on one side, and try to test my memory for the character. I would then try to write it out by hand, then I would check to see if I was correct. Occasionally, I would write an example sentence, but I was reviewing far too many characters and it would have taken forever if I tried to write a sentence for each one. All my characters were self taught and nobody corrected my ugly misshapen characters, so if a Taiwanese person saw them they would often say they were ugly. Something else that I found was helpful, was using the functions on Pleco Dictionary to check the components that make up the character and see whatever similar characters also had the same components. This helped to stop me from confusing similar characters. But I also learned to speak and read at an upper intermediate level before I started bothering to learn how to write which means I already knew most of the words I was learning to write. So I guess it was a little different for me. Unfortunately, after I passed the test I completely stopped writing characters at all. Now, I can barely remember how to write any except the most basic and common ones. It feels like a bit of a waste of time to spend all that effort and then not have maintained it. 😅

[@benjaminkeep]

Pleco is definitely great - seeing related characters and words I've always found helpful.

[@Mysteriousmachine1]

@@benjaminkeepPleco armboi

[@GustavoSilva-ny8jc]

0:00 My music teacher made me do that with some notes when i was forgetting too much (50x, i guess), smfh, today i do a sad smile when remembering

[@GustavoSilva-ny8jc]

3:52 The craziest thing is that for a test is better to randomize everything and this give anxiety to a brain that was used to the idea of learning by creating cohent connection. The way we learn better is weird!!! From outside feels like setting yourself to failure. But the essence is: make it harder, make it confusing, make it effortful and mindful, and get feedback quick. It's learning a video game how we mostly are designed to do: through analysis, hypothesis, trial and error, but with the twist of being randomized (more like F&H than your regular game). It's the missing bit that game designers who learned through experience miss.

[@sedansearz5349]

Hey Benjamin , love your videos . Do you have any research papers or books you would reccommend ?

[@benjaminkeep]

Reading recommendations here: benjaminkeep.com/?page_id=1326

[@sedansearz5349]

@@benjaminkeep thank uu

[@tullochgorum6323]

Hi Benjamin! I'd be very interested in your views on the wider issue of self-studying a language as an adult. This is the one area of learning where I have failed multiple times, so this time I'm making a more serious attempt and I've also surveyed some of the literature and reviwed the KZbin gurus. And it really does seem that the whole field is a mess. Much of the research is of surprising poor quality, gurus push diametrically opposed methods as the One True Way, and much of what is proposed seems to fly directly in the face of modern research into skill acquisition. Can you offer any science-based tips that can help sort out the confusion? This might be a popular subject for a video!

[@benjaminkeep]

I am only a little bit familiar with the literature on language learning (and most of the stuff I can think of right now are about second-language instruction, not self-taught language learning). But totally agreed that there is a lot of misinformation and confusion out there. One of the problems with relying on personal experience as a basis for learning advice is that your knowledge changes as you go along. So it can seem like, "all of a sudden this seems to be working for me!" when that same technique or approach wouldn't have been as helpful earlier on. And, even though there are standards for language fluency, many language learners don't have a good sense of how good they actually are, which leads to an inflated sense of the efficacy of certain techniques. This might be a good topic for a learning challenge video: take a language I have never attempted to learn and try my best to learn it and see what happens, with a brief survey of the research literature beforehand. Anyhow, thanks for the suggestion!

[@knw-seeker6836]

Could you make a video about your time studying in college or university and in retrospective what you would do differently?

[@benjaminkeep]

Perhaps I could - I'll add it to the list.

[@knw-seeker6836]

@@benjaminkeepgreat, what my intention is about learning techniques to what you know now It would be very interesting like this was very effective and this I would do differently Thanks for the super content

[@douglashill4567]

I am ignorant in this area, so take this with a grain of salt! It may be that finding a flow for drawing a given character that works well for you takes some experimentation, the way we all experimented with making our signatures when we were younger. It may be that what appears to be rote learning in this case contains an element of exploration.

[@mijaelmarcelovillarroelchu6513]

Hello, I am writing to say that I read your comment on the previous video and I thank you very much, one thing, which video would you recommend for me to study for my high school exams since the exams are generally 2 or 1 subject and there is no way to do practice exams, that is, they don't seem very difficult but even so I didn't get 35/35 in all my subjects, maybe I'm a hypocrite or maybe I'm egotistical

[@benjaminkeep]

Can you imagine the kinds of questions that would be asked on a test and answer those? Or come up with questions with classmates? Using free recall is a decent fallback technique. If they don't seem difficult but you're not doing well, that suggests you might not be judging your own knowledge/skills that accurately. But there's a difference btw not doing well and not doing perfectly - depending on the test there can be a fair amount of variance in the outcome.

[@AidanMmusic96]

Brilliant! Frantically trying to transfer this video into the context of musical instruments as I start a teaching job in the next couple of weeks! Do you know if there are any studies on interleaved practicing with younger students?

[@benjaminkeep]

Perhaps these will give you some ideas. Don't know if these are all with younger students or not, though - just read the abstracts. Carter, C. E., & Grahn, J. A. (2016). Optimizing Music Learning: Exploring How Blocked and Interleaved Practice Schedules Affect Advanced Performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 7. www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01251 Wong, S. S. H., Low, A. C. M., Kang, S. H. K., & Lim, S. W. H. (2020). Learning Music Composers’ Styles: To Block or to Interleave? Journal of Research in Music Education, 68(2), 156-174. Google Scholar currently directs to: profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/psylimwh/wong,%20low,%20kang,%20&%20lim%20(2020).pdf Wong, S. S. H., Chen, S., & Lim, S. W. H. (2021). Learning melodic musical intervals: To block or to interleave? Psychology of Music, 49(4), 1027-1046. Google Scholar currently directs to: ap5.fas.nus.edu.sg/fass/psylimwh/wong,%20chen,%20&%20lim%20(2021).pdf Simones, L., Rodger, M., & Schroeder, F. (2017). Seeing How It Sounds: Observation, Imitation, and Improved Learning in Piano Playing. Cognition and Instruction, 35(2), 125-140. doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2017.1282483 (sadly, this is one that's not freely available, but you can see from the abstract how they set things up).

[@AidanMmusic96]

@@benjaminkeep Thanks so much for this! Will read these over the next few days. My teaching will be exclusively with beginners to start with, and I'll explore how I can bring in interleaving ideas early! Thanks again!

[@jamesstramer5186]

Hey man, do you have any advice on how to learn practical processes? I have just started a new job in accounting and am taught how to prepare certain deliverables by my seniors at work. This involves a lot of number crunching and using tools like Excel, SQL and BI. Each deliverable has a specific way to do it. How would you recommend taking notes and mastering the preparation? I know that I have to practice repeatedly but is there some way to optimize the process and reduce mistakes? Am feeling a bit overwhelmed and would appreciate your input.

[@benjaminkeep]

This is probably not exactly what you're dealing with, but one idea would be to organize things in your head a little bit better. From memory, try to figure out: The different kinds of deliverables What makes them that kind of deliverable (like how would you know?) What are the processes and tools for each deliverable you've identified Why use those processes and tools. Any tricky parts and how to make sure you do them right. Any resources you have available can help fill in the gaps. You can add to your understanding as you practice. You might do this reflective exercise at the end of each day or after doing a bunch of tricky ones or something. Good luck!

[@jamesstramer5186]

@@benjaminkeep Got it. Thanks for the suggestions. Will definitely try this exercise out.

[@Prince-op7lp]

I don't understand why is your channal so underrated

[@nikhilgill]

Does this only work with chinese character i want to remember huge paragraphs but there is so much i can't remember all that

[@Agastya_9]

Sir can you please make a video on learning physics and being able to solving physics problems

[@benjaminkeep]

That'll probably come down the road. Because the last time I learned physics was in high school and I've always meant to dive back into it. Thanks for the suggestion!

[@ZupaTr00pa]

To springboard off of that last point: how would you integrate 'forgetting and remembering' into a skill like darts where the only way to improve your throw is to throw? It's not like you can throw a different way for 10 minutes because that's just going to surely confuse the brain?

[@benjaminkeep]

Well, the first thing to do is to space out your practice sessions. Another thing to do which would probably improve performance is to add contextual variation into the practice: throw at slightly different distances. This is analogous to bean bag throwing and free throw shooting. I describe an experiment focusing on that idea here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f6jCameIgdd1eZo

[@nicolasceron3222]

Hi do you have any top books recommendations for learning

[@benjaminkeep]

Recommended reading here: benjaminkeep.com/?page_id=1326

[@nicolasceron3222]

@@benjaminkeep thanks

[@Joeyppeterscorp]

Hello Dr. Keep. Thank you for the videos they are actively changing my life. When I was a young kid at age 5 I scored low on an IQ test and was placed in the mentally retarded category. With your videos and study methods I am making more progress than I ever thought possible and am even learning subjects that no one thought I could like math and programming albeit slower than smarter people. From the bottom of my heart thank you for this. I may never be a genius, but now I feel like some avenues have opened up! Also, I'd like your opinion on something how do you feel about "copywork?" A method writer and painters have used to practice by just copying the masters of the field. There was a famous method of this employed by Benjamin Franklin that he claimed helped transform him into a great writer, which was essentially copywork combined with active recall. Do you think this type of practice is valuable at all?

[@waneagony]

From watching this video and the one on interleaving, it seems that you think that not knowing what comes next in the practice is important for some reason. Is that true? If it is true, why is it important? It’s unclear to me. Thx.

[@sonGOKU-gy7rg]

How could I rote memorize 😢

[@cwola]

This might be slightly out of topic but what are your thoughts on learning 2 languages at once?

[@benjaminkeep]

I don't have strong opinions, but my instinct would be to learn one to a basic level (~A2-B1) before beginning a second.

[@luiscruz5556]

@@benjaminkeep Just as an anecdote, I am learning (improving) two romance languages simultaneously. I speak my L2 at a C1 level and my L3 at a roughly B1/B2 level. I often think of it as a form of interleaving practice. I will do 15 minutes of anki vocab study in my L2, take a break, then come back and do 15 minutes in my L3. I follow a similar pattern through the day with my reading/listening/speaking interaction with the languages, too. I make no effort to separate the two into certain days or what not as some others say they do. I integrate both in somewhat "random" fashion into my day to day activities and (again, anecdotally) I do not feel much interference at all. When I'm operating in my L2, I don't speak my L3. And probably most telling of all, when operating in my L3, I don't use my L2. Even under live, rapid face to face real time conversations (IMO the most demanding form of spontaneous active recall one can perform within the language sphere), my pronunciation, conjugation, etc in my L3 stays completely in my L3. no interference. although, I'm sure reaching A2-B1 in at least one of the languages first is critical for this to be helpful, as I was already at a B2 in my L2 before beginning my L3.

[@luiscruz5556]

Sorry, that longwinded comment I made was actually made for you, but I replied to Benjamin instead.

[@deersakamoto2167]

Oh no, terrible memories of 'kanji drills' from my childhood... You should look into Prof Victor Mair and his writings on 'character anmesia'. It's a tragedy that some people focus too much on remembering characters while gaining no practical skills when they learn Chinese or Japanese.

[@uchuuseijin]

I know you're using Chinese as an example of a more general concept, but wouldn't Comprehensible Input hit all of these (except for writing) at once, with a diary helping with writing? It would be interleaved, in a variety of contexts, with a mix of newer and older characters

[@benjaminkeep]

I think comprehensible input is great. But it's also a question of what skill you want to develop - writing Chinese characters is just a different skill than recognizing them in context.

[@uchuuseijin]

@@benjaminkeep Of course. I know from experience that input at most gives a few hundred clumsily written freebies here and there. If I wanted to be able to write all of the kanji I know cleanly, I know I would have to practice writing. I guess to rephrase what I wanted to say: a lot of linguists treat comprehensible input as if it is totally in opposition to skill-building, but doesn't the efficacy of CI come from these same concepts? Like, when reading or listening to different forms of content, you are getting spaced, interleaved exposure to vocabulary in a variety of different contexts.

[@GustavoSilva-ny8jc]

4:20 AAAAAAAAA So that's why if i practice batting the same swing 20 is ineffective!!!!?? Sure, i need to fix my technique a little bit everytime and that's why i still progress but im in robot mode, im not thinking much in what im doing. Now the great question is when i should change to interlieved, there's a lot of "putting the reps in" in training, "so that's why you struggled with curveballs!!! You practice them just 20x! And look chaotic your training is!!! You will hit 100 of them straight now". And yet the most chaotic is the most effective even if you practice much, much, less because of how youre more exherted, enganged physically, psychogically and strategically and this TYPE of struggle makes you grow better.

[@edroth7612]

to pass tests today you MUST reason out the answer on each question. Rote is spherically the opposite of reasoning. In almost cases the answer to the question is IN the the words of the question. SOOO read the answers first, then the actual question.......the answer jumps out at you. What is the question asking EXACTLY? What EXACTLY is the question asking? EXACTLY what is the question asking?

[@cherubin7th]

Yes but it is less complicated.

[@thatskums]

It is less complicated but it is also very very time consuming. It's okay at middle school or even high school level but at a university level - mugging information doesn't really work because there is so much of it. You'll also get more out of understanding the concepts than just marks. If you really, truly want to become a master in your field, you'll have to learn about how to learn efficiently!

[@LittleBobbyHasTables]

You talk about learning or keeping in memory and your name is Keep 😅

[@EricTsai]

2:36 I see you need more practice XD

[@benjaminkeep]

Haha! I am just waiting for someone to be like "Your characters look terrible! How can you make a video like this?!?"

[@EricTsai]

@@benjaminkeep I meant the one misprinted character on the first row. I can tell because of all the rote learning I did as a kid XD

[@x2Brandon]

Hey love the video but I was wondering if you have an twitter account

[@benjaminkeep]

Nope.