The art of memorization

For Chinese students, a significant slice of the pie called education involves recitation. They start with simple poems and stories and move on to more advanced literature, eventually memorizing English works as well. That’s what my Chinese university friends told me this summer over a delicious family-style dinner. They were shocked -- their exact reactions were sharp gasps followed by giggles -- that I had only been asked to memorize something twice in my academic career. Both times involved Shakespearean monologues that I performed in English class as acting exercises.

We generally regard memorization with disdain, especially at American universities. It is a strategy for lazy educators, it is pointless and we forget as easily as we memorize. Even the Chinese have a term for it, "tianyashi," meaning “stuff-the-duck” strategy. It is the hallmark of the Chinese education system, culminating in the "gaokao," the college entry test that makes millions of students’ lives miserable halfway across the globe.

The vaguely familiar concept of memorization returned into my life with full force this past summer in China. Every Friday, we were asked to present an essay written in Mandarin, that we had handed in, of course, on Wednesday night. On the day of my first presentation, my palms were sweaty, and I frantically awaited my turn. I fumbled and stumbled and, in the process, turned an imperial red. As my teachers gave me pity compliments, I resolved that I would master this test, which was undoubtedly the most difficult part of every week.

On Thursday nights, I could be found pacing my room and talking to myself. I started by marking the tones of words that I usually missed. Then I would read through the essay again and again, ironing out the pronunciation. Even though I might've know a character all by itself, I still could say it entirely wrong when I put it into context. Once that process was done, I started stringing together the lines paragraph by paragraph with all the difficulty of threading mosquito-size beads onto a floss-like piece of string, like I did at summer camp when I was 10 years old. And when I turned off the lights and slipped under the covers, I would see my essay scrolling, movie-credits style, behind closed eyes.

There were certainly times -- and by this I mean every Thursday night -- that I viewed this experience as an unnecessary pain and a waste of my time. It wasn’t until finals week that my appreciation for everything increased, that I began to notice certain tendencies in my own writing. Some phrases could be worded more eloquently; others made me proud because they precisely expressed my meaning. Not only that, but I was more likely to remember the expressions I used in my essays and bring them up in conversation. What I had approached as a stressful and pointless exercise was deepening my understanding of the language and of my own writing.

So when my Chinese friends told me that they regularly memorized texts for class, the benefits became apparent. Could it actually encourage greater appreciation and deeper analysis? It is easy to miss a great deal of meaning after reading through something only once. Upon the second read, one can glean more details and discover alternate connotations. Memorizing, though, goes beyond familiarization. One must acquaint oneself with the shape of every word so it slides smoothly into the next. One must follow the cadence to attain the correct spoken rhythm. One must understand why the author chose to follow one word with the next. Only then can we truly memorize.