Education

Memory tricks dazzle students

By Wang Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-13 10:12

Liu Jing teaches students how to memorize English words at private school Tangtech. [Photos by Zou Hong / China Daily]

It takes Huang Jingu, a Grade 4 primary student, 30 minutes to memorize 80 English words and 44 seconds to read and comprehend a 16-page newspaper. The 9-year-old student of Baiyunlu primary school is not exceptional; she is attending a short private training class that promises outstanding memory and speed-reading skills.

The eight-day course costs almost 4,000 yuan and has Huang sitting classes on memory, English, study interests and speed-reading.The school is also not exceptional.

Pan Jianchao, president of Tangtech, a school that focuses on improving the skill set, said Beijing had five training schools like his last year. That number has climbed to 15 this year.

And there is demand to go with supply, with Tangtech receiving more than 300 students this year for summer vacation classes in Beijing and 4,000 nationwide - a 50 and 80 percent increase respectively, compared with last year.

Huang's father Huang Jin'e is pleased with his daughter's performance.

"She remembers things much faster than before. It used to take her forever to memorize a few English words," he said.

"China's education system places a lot of emphasis on recitation, so this method will help a lot."

Rapid memory recall has gained popularity among parents after a primary school girl recited The Book of Family Names at the 2010 Spring Festival Gala.

He said the World Memory Championships, which will be held in Guangzhou this year, also contributes to popularizing the skill.

"Rapid memory recall and speed-reading are ways to save and access details. They are powerful abilities, especially in the era of information explosion," he said.

"Once students grasp these methods, they will benefit for their whole life."

But this type of study is not a new phenomenon - in the late 1990s, kids were into mental arithmetic.

Again, the interest was sparked by an outstanding performance

at the Spring Festival Gala, this time in 1999, when a girl displayed a dramatic grasp of number puzzles.

Three years later, the market surrounding mental arithmetic was valued at 200 million yuan in Hebei province alone. However, the fad soon faded because students sought out quick results without understanding the process.

Pan believes rapid memory recall will be different, because it helps logic and image development.

"Attaining a quick memory is not magic, it's a science," he said.

Pan said the idea behind rapid memory recall is to utilize logical thinking on the left side of the brain, and image processing on the right. Techniques are used to match, associate and oppose.

Take English vocabulary as an example, the image reverse of the letter b (in the word "best") is p, so "pest" is also opposite to "best".

For the word "scarf" (s-car-f), an s symbolizes a snake while an f looks something like an umbrella. Students can create a story for the words, such as a snake gripping a scarf in a car, which can only be removed with an umbrella.

"With the correct method and constant practice, a student can recall a set of cards, or several English words, in a blink of an eye," Pan said.

A broad look at the courses on offer shows they typically recruit students aged 7 to 15, with tuition fees ranging from 4,000 to 10,000 yuan for eight to 10 days' study.

However, parents and education experts are questioning whether the high fees are justified.

Zhang Jianhong, the mother of a primary school second grader, said she saw many ads claiming that students can memorize circumference ratios, or 100 numbers, in two minutes, after taking part in an eight-day program.

"If it was as wonderful as it claims, everyone would grow up to be a genius," she said.

Huang Jingu (middle) raises her hand before answering a question at an English class at Tangtech. [China Daily]

"My boy is quite naughty and I doubt he would be patient enough to sit down and memorize circumference ratios. And even if it does work, how can he apply it to his studies?" she asked.

Wang Xuming, a former spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, said there is no short cut in education.

"Studying is a process of accumulation and one cannot expect to memorize and understand everything in a very short period of time," Wang said.

In his blog, Wang also commented on the reciting of The Book of Family Names, undertaken in the Spring Festival Gala.

He said the show opposed the law of education and the principal of education authorities to stimulate creativity.

"Memorization is of no use when nurturing a talent with the spirit of creativity," he said.