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By: Tony.L Lazar

About the Author

For more information on times tables, go to www.timestablesmaths.com.

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Article Source: – What Does Gladwell Say About Times Tables

Malcolm Gladwell is an author and journalist. He is best known for his several bestselling books including; The Tipping Point and Outliers. Amazingly he has a lesson for parents in regard to times tables.

Gladwell has written several books including ‘Outliers’ which focuses on what makes people a success.

In this article we shall focus on what makes children a success in maths and the times tables.

Gladwell’s view is that a person’s upbringing and circumstances have a major impact on their abilities rather then their inborn qualities.

So, what insights can we take with respect to someone’s background and the learning of times tables for children?

Well, he compares the number systems of Western and Eastern countries and comes to a startling conclusion.

The number systems are very different and affect how easily children learn maths.

For example the number system in English is highly irregular. This is not the case for countries such as China, Japan and Korea. They have a logical counting system.

Look at the following to get some sene of this;

In Engish speaking countries the number 11 is identified by saying eleven, 12 by saying twelve, 13 by saying thirteen. 20 is twenty, 22 is twenty two, 24 is said as twenty four. In Eastern nations these numbers are expressed as ten one (10), ten two (12), ten three (13), two tens two, two (22), and two tens four (24).

Do you see the difference? What would a number such as forty seven be? The answer following the Eastern method is four tens seven. Easy and in fact much easier and more logical than the Western method.

A consequence of this situation is the Eastern children learn to count properly much earlier than those from the West.

Can this be shown to be the case? One simple fact – American children learn to count to 15 on average by the age of four. By the age of four Eastern based children using the Eastern number system can count to ……. 40. What a difference.

The Eastern number system makes addition and subtraction much easier than in the West.

The result of all this is that Eastern children tend to have a much more positive experience and therefore attitude to maths than Western children.

Because the number system makes it easier to follow, Eastern children can find the patterns in maths.

Eastern children can therefore understand earlier in age what is happening in a maths problem than Western children.

It will therefore come as no surprise to learn that Western children learn the times tables later than Eastern children.

The amazing thing is this. Even though a Western child has a disadvantage in numbers compared to an Eastern child the balance in learning times tables can be hugely addressed.

The answer is pretty easy and involves the use of colourful images to embed the times tables and their answers in your children’s minds so that they remember the them esily.

This improves maths and times tables learning by focusing the learning on use of memory rather than having to learn numbers by rote. It is what the world memory champions do.

Images and location are two key ingredients to learning times tables really well.

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Tony.L Lazar – About the Author:

For more information on times tables, go to www.timestablesmaths.com.

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By: Tony.L Lazarl Educationl Oct 06, 2010 Author NavigationMy Home Publish Article View/Edit Articles View/Edit QA Edit your Account Manage Authors Statistics Page Personal RSS Builder My Home Edit your Account Update Profile View/Edit QA Publish ArticleAuthor Box Tony.L Lazar has 4 articles online Contact Author Subscribe to RSS Print article Send to friend Re-Publish article Articles Categories Need Help? Contact Us FAQ Submit Articles Editorial Guidelines Blog Site Links Recent Articles Top Authors Top Articles Find Articles Site Map Webmasters RSS Builder RSS Link to Us Business Info Advertising Use of this web site constitutes acceptance of the Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy User published content is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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