Multiplication tables are one of those things which everyone has to learn. multiplication tables are traditionally things that have been learnt a certain way over the years. People know they can learn their Multiplication Times Tables, but these are taught to us in a rote fashion, and to get them right takes a long time and a lot of effort.

This means learning a multiplication table is slow, unproductive, and involves too much thinking, as we are taught them in a linear fashion, for example–

Schools still learn as

1 x 2 = 2
2 x 2 = 4
3 x 2 = 6

By reading or saying your times tables out loud repeatedly, or using some another form of repetition.

You can learn it that way and most of us do, however, the problem is that as you are learning multiplication tables in an auditory fashion, this means you can only read each multiplication table in a linear way – from 1 x …to 10 x… and therefore they are stored in your brain in the same linear way, and their recall is also linear i.e you end up going through each multiplication table to get to your answer. If you ask a child having learnt it this way what 6 x 6 is they will often go through the Times tables 3 x 6, 4 x 6 to get to the answer – I know that my 7 year old daughter does! If the effort to recall is too much for her, she will simply stop.

If you do that you can get the right answer but as you can imagine, it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. Now you would think that if you did that 20 times you should know answer to 7 x 9 instantly – but it does not work like that. If it took you more than a fraction of a second to come to the answer of 63, then you have used the linear way learned the multiplication times tables to extract the answer – you had to think about it

A child will usually go through the same process repeatedly to get the right answer. This is not using your memory in the most productive way to use your memory. This will not give you an instant answer.
Your memory far greater potential then this, and there are better techniques to learn your multiplication tines tables which better utilise the way you memory works. As grown ups, we have already learnt them, however, we can make a difference to our children. Stop Rote Learning of Multiplication tables – Stop holding your children back.

Copyright Tony Lazar. Writer, speaker, former teacher/ tutor of 20 years experience and creator of specialised learning products.  www.timestablesmaths.com www.thelearningwell.com