than
after all reading. Recitation fixes the matter more durably. (3) The
advantage of recitation is less marked in the meaningful material than
in case of nonsense syllables, though it is marked in both cases. The
reason is that meaningful material can better be read observantly,
time after time, than is possible with nonsense material. Continued
reading of nonsense material degenerates into a mere droning, while in
repeatedly reading meaningful material the learner who is keenly
interested in mastering the passage is sure to keep his mind ahead of
his eyes to some extent, so that his reading becomes half recitation,
after all.

Whence comes the advantage of recitation? It has a twofold advantage:
it is more stimulating, and it is more satisfying. When you know you
are going to attempt recitation at once, you are stimulated to observe
positions, peculiarities, relationships, and meanings, and thus your
study {341} goes on at a higher level than when the test of your
knowledge is still far away, with many readings still to come. You are
also stimulated to manipulate the material, by way of grouping and
rhythm.

On the side of satisfaction, recitation shows you what parts of the
lesson you have mastered and gives you the glow of increasing success.
It shows you exactly where you are failing and so stimulates to extra
attention to those parts of the lesson. It taps the instincts of
exploration, manipulation, and mastery much more effectively than
continued re-reading of the same lesson can do. The latter becomes
very uninteresting, monotonous and fatiguing.

Perhaps, after all, the greatest advantage of reciting is that it
makes you do, in learning, the very act that you have later to perform
in the test; for what you have finally to do is to recite the lesson
without the book. When reading, you are doing something different; and
if it were altogether different, it probably would not help you at all
towards success in the test. But since intelligent reading consists
partly in anticipating and outlining as you go, it is a sort of half
recitation, it is halfway doing what you are trying to learn to do.
Memorizing consists in performing an act, now, with assistance, that
you later wish to perform without assistance; and recitation first
stimulates you to fashion the act conformably to the object in view,
and then exercises you in performing that act.

Spaced and unspaced repetition.

Another question on the economic