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Comment by TomSwirly | Hacker News Reader

> t's somewhat amusing to see someone write a lengthy rant against testing because memorizing information is archaic, when the ability to write, at least at the start, is learned this way.

Writing is a skill. It is NOT memorization. It is not taught or learned that way, even at the beginning, unless you are talking about handwriting.

No one says, "Memorize this phrase, and now write it out again."

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I mean you are just wrong. You memorize what sound (well sounds) the letter "a" makes, which is of course fundamental to being able to write because English uses an alphabet. You might argue that reading isn't writing, but the two are interdependent (or at least writing generally dependent on reading).

Not to mention memorizing how to physically write (i.e. what you're talking about with handwriting)...

I assume you think I mean composition or something, which is of course extremely obviously not what I meant... But to develop that skill of "writing" that you're talking about requires memorization of the fundamentals... Which applies quite broadly to other disciplines...

It's not memorization, it's pattern recognition that really counts. What sound "a" mkes is irrelevnt if you're recognizing the relevnt pttern. So it's you who's in the wrong.

You cannot reasonably intuit the sounds that letters make, or the meaning of combinations of letters without some underlying phonetic information. Your ability to recognize those patterns is built upon learning the meaning of words and letters as I described (not to mention whether what you're doing is pattern recognition or pattern memorization).

You are just wrong in every possible way.

there is qualitative difference between simple memorization and generalized pattern recognition. You fail to distinguish the two very distinct things, one of which admittedly is the base of the other, but the other one is very much required for higher cognitive function.

Memorization can be done on a cellular level, generalized pattern recognition - not so much.

Lol. Ignoring the general absurdity here, none of this has to do with the basis of reading/writing, which in English is a set of phonetic letters. I've described why these must be memorized.

Welp. We are in a dead-end.

Lol.

Not everything IS memorization, but lots of things HAVE memorization. You don't write by regurgitating exact phrases, but your ability to write will be significantly impeded if you need to constantly look up word definitions, spellings, word order, syntax rules, and orthographies. There are certain fundamentals that need to be automatic, and it's fair to require internalization as part of acquiring mastery.

> No one says, "Memorize this phrase, and now write it out again."

No they say "Write this word 10 times to memorize it" then give spelling tests.

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