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              London: 
              Old-fashioned ways of teaching like reciting times-tables and verb 
              conjugations are better than trendy new teaching methods, say 
              researchers.  
               
              Researchers believe that reciting facts shortly after learning 
              them is better than many new-style educational methods.  
               
              The "simple recall" seems to cement the knowledge "in memory" so 
              it is more permanently embedded for use later, the Telegraph 
              reported, citing a study in the journal Science.  
               
              Many modern teachers rely heavily on learning techniques like 
              concept or mind mapping to help students retain the most from the 
              texts they read, the study said.  
               
              This involves drawing elaborate diagrams to represent relationship 
              between words, ideas and tasks.  
               
              But two experiments, carried out by Jeffrey Karpicke at Purdue 
              University, Indiana, US, concluded that this was less effective 
              than constant informal testing and reciting.  
               
              Karpicke asked around 100 college students to recall in writing, 
              in no particular order, as much as they could from what they had 
              just read from science material.  
               
              Although most students expected to learn more from the mapping 
              approach, the retrieval exercise actually worked much better to 
              strengthen both short-term and long-term memory, the study said. 
              
               
  
              
                
              
                
              
                
              
                
              
                
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