Rote Is Not Right - Three Reasons To Give It A Skip

Which one are you?

You’re most likely a rote learner with a bit of concept learning and last-minute miracle seeking thrown in. Simply put, rote learning is the practice of memorising study material by repeating it multiple times. It has its short-term advantages but to take your learning potential further, you need to take the effort to actually understand what you’re repeating to yourself.

Three Reasons To Give Rote Learning A Skip:

1. You’ll Forget What You Learnt If You Don’t Understand It

If you want to ace your prelims and final exams, you have to completely grasp what you’re reading to get out of the “rote loop”.

2. Studying Gets Too “Mechanical” When Only Learning By Rote

“Most Indian youngsters (about 80-85%) are not trained suitably for any job. Our education system which focuses on learning by rote is not good for becoming entrepreneurs.”

- Infosys founder, Narayana Murthy ^[1]

Rote learning makes your studying pattern more mechanical which can make you feel disinterested towards it. This can go two ways - you’ll either leave studying for your exam until the very last minute or get bored while making your notes. The solution for this is to add some variation!

You can try Ted Talk videos and Google Scholar to mix up your study pattern.

3. It Gets Difficult To Connect Concepts To Real Life

“The three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, veins, and caterpillars.”

Clearly whoever wrote this has confused capillaries with caterpillars without realising its actual meaning! This is why it’s pivotal for you to understand what you’re learning to remember it much longer after the exam.

Want to learn more about blood vessels? Check out this PC resource: https://study.com/academy/lesson/blood-vessels-arteries-capillaries-more.html 

Besides subject-specific websites, there are several PC tools to help you with every aspect of the study process. Right from watching the experiments mentioned in the textbook to efficiently organising all your notes in a way that enables you to master your subject material - with a PC you have an option to skip rote learning for exams.