Hello folks! Yes, I’m making the case for rote learning. While you may believe that learning stuff off-by-heart is empty learning, I beg to differ. There is a case to be made for learning something for the sake of knowing rather than understanding it. I have two somethings that ought to be learnt even if they aren’t understood: spelling and irregular past tense verbs.
No, you don’t need to understand why the tendency is for i before e except after c. Nor do you need to understand why in words ending with y, y changes to i +es to create a plural. While you might make the argument that in this day and age pupils and students mainly use electronic devices with auto-correct to ensure their spelling is ok, I still believe learning to spell is an essential building block of language accuracy. In my work, I frequently come across spelling errors. Here are just a few from last week:
payed (This makes me want to throw a fit because everyone should know y changes to i + d: paid.)
discreased (Clearly, this is a morphological error involving the prefix dis instead of de: decreased.)
necesarry (Here, we require double s instead of double r: necessary.)
oppertunitys (o instead of e and someone doesn’t know the y to i +es tendency: opportunities.)
manipuleted (This requires a instead of e before t: manipulated)
missused (Yes, as if it’s a person: Miss Used told us to go and learn to spell! The prefix mis has only one s: misused)
developped (This should have only one p: developed. Doubling consonants before a suffix usually only occurs in single syllable words like stop - stopped or red reddened.)
devided (Again, this is a morphological error. This should be di not de: divided.)
differenciate (While it may sound like there’s a c in here, it’s actually spelt with a t: differentiate.)
syllaby (Latin words usually take i as their plural form and while this sound can be created with y in English it is incorrect: syllabi.)
Lots, of the errors above could have been avoided with careful proofreading. However, some of them could have been avoided if my students as school pupils had been just given a list of rules to learn. Yes, I’m using the word rule here. Spelling does not call for, or require, independent thought. Spelling is either right or wrong. My students, and your pupils, will enter a world of work in which it is required that they are literate. The unfortunate trend of accepting spelling that approximates how a word might sound certainly does not encourage accuracy.
Irregular verbs are my next hobby-horse. Had the student who made spelling error 1 in the list above learnt their irregular verbs by rote, they would have known that the verb pay behaves as follows:
pay: paid: paid
There is no version of this verb which calls for y + ed ever. Every English school book I have ever seen in this country has a list of irregular past tense verbs at the back. There are about 200 common irregular verbs. Please encourage your pupils to learn them. Test them. Again, no-one needs to know why a verb is irregular just that it is.
In your capacity as educators, please see to it that your pupils learn to spell and learn their lists of irregular verbs. Rote learning will allow them to unthinkingly make the correct verb form and spelling choices. Unless you are making an argument for simplified spelling or standardised verb forms, I think you’ll find that you can agree with me that both spelling and irregular verbs can be consigned to rote learning and you can save the more exciting learning strategies for other aspects of literacy.
