Why repetition or practise is important.
Repetition is practising a task many times, whether it be learning to spell words, playing a musical instrument or improving your sporting prowess.
You cannot learn to play a sport or musical instrument by just reading a manuals on technique. Hundreds of hours of practice are still needed to develop your muscle memory.
Champion tennis players and golfers hit hundreds of balls each day. They practise, practise, practise! Practice is essential for brain development and memory. The practise develops the pathways and linkages in the brain – that is developing the brain. The repetition helps to transfers the new knowledge into the long-term memory. Writing, typing, saying and hearing all help to place the knowledge in the long-term memory. This is a slower process than with a computer where you type in the answer and then simply, ‘save’ it.
Repetition of bad habits also ingrains that behaviour as it too, becomes dictated to us by our brain.
Rote learning is often used in a pejorative sense – mindless repetition. Rote learning is important in non-logical tasks such as learning the alphabet, and counting to ten.
Repetition is important in learning sounds and rules in literacy, when there are processes and facts that assist the learning and understanding concepts. (e.g., learning jingles, etc.)
The Kitehawk Spelling and Literacy Program relies heavily on repetition or practise. Every Unit involves the repeated writing of the List Words. Most of the activities ask students to type or identify list words – the aim is to learn the concepts, the spelling and the meaning – permanently.