Memorising improve your brain functioning?

[pivoxa15]

Does memorising improve your thinking abilities?

I think that problem solving is the best way but would spending a little bit of time memorising things that you find interesting and may prove to be useful in the future be a good thing to do? Or Would it tarnish your creative thinking abilities?

I am thinking of memorising Chinese characters. I can speak it and understand it (because I spent the first 8 years of my life in China) but can't write or read because just by looking at the characters won't give you a clue to how to they sound, unlike English.

 

[Evo]

It may improve your memory, but I can't see it improving other parts of the brain. I can't see how creativity, inventiveness, or even logical thinking would be improved, for example. Any activity would be better than none, although I think that overall mental acuity would benefit more from problem solving.

 

[verty]

I would say a much better thing to do would be to learn about the subject. If you wish to learn another language, learning about linguistics or perhaps even the philosophy of language can surely make it easier.

The challenge is to think smarter, not harder. Perhaps you can come to a higher level of thinking by yourself but others have gone before and it is more efficient to learn from them.

 

[pivoxa15]

I would say a much better thing to do would be to learn about the subject. If you wish to learn another language, learning about linguistics or perhaps even the philosophy of language can surely make it easier.

The challenge is to think smarter, not harder. Perhaps you can come to a higher level of thinking by yourself but others have gone before and it is more efficient to learn from them.

I often wonder why learn beignners-intermediate Chinese when I pretty much have 0 theoretical knowledge of my natural language, English. Someday I should learn the linguistics of English but that is a lot of work.