So for context, I went to first grade in mainland China before immigrating to the United States, in China, they teach kids this weird trick that’s basically like reciting a “poem” thing, which I didn’t remember what it was called until I recently googled it. Its apparantly called the “九九乘法口诀表” or 9x9 Song / “The Nine-nine song” (Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_multiplication_table#The_Nine-nine_song_text_in_Chinese).
So like… in 2nd grade, for which I was in the US, multiplication was very easy for me, well… at least up to 10x10. Like idk how to explain it to someone who’s doesn’t speak a variant of Chinese, and even the rhythm only works for me in Mandarin somehow, when I try to use Cantonese, which is the language I speak at home in the US, I cannot replicate the rhythm to make thay thing work, this “Poem”/“Song” is only available to me in Mandarin, like when I think about multiplying together any 2 single digit number, I instictively use the “九九乘法口诀表”.
Like its goes from 1x1 then next lines are 1x2, 2x2, then next are 1x3, 2x3, 3x3, then its 1x4, 2x4, 3x4, 4x4, etc… you get the idea, mutiples of 1, then 2, then 3. So if I need to multiply something by 7, I can start from the line where multiples of 7 are. Sometimes I can remember the exact phrase of it like for example 3x7, without starting from 1x7, then 2x7, then 3x7.
Like I never thought too hard about it, it kinda just became the “normal” way I do multiplication. But someone asked a question on Lemmy about reading analog clocks and I probably didn’t answer their question correctly but that was when I kinda was like: oh wow I forgot that my way of multiplication is probably different from everyone else in the west.
Like if you told me to teach a English-Only speaker on how to do multiplication tables, I… um… I don’t know how I would teach that, the “九九乘法口诀表” doesn’t have the rhythm in English so I doubt converting the it to English would work.
Like even though I speak English as my primary language now, and I barely have any fluency in Mandarin or even Cantonese which I speak at home (and never learned any vocabulary beyond the basics), the “九九乘法口诀表” multiplication thing is always done in mandarin somehow, like its always been stuck in my brain even after all these years in the US.
TLDR answer to my own question. I do it using “九九乘法口诀表” which takes me 1-2 seconds to recall a specific line, so basically, anything up to 10x10 takes about 2 seconds for my brsin to process, 11x11x to 12x12 takes about 5-10 seconds, anything bigger and I just giveup using my brain and pull out a calculator. I memorized 10x10 since first grade, then 12x12 probably by like 2nd grade or maybe first half of 3rd grade.
How do y’all do it, is it easy or hard?
Edit: Okay so the best way for me to explain “九九乘法口诀表” is that: Think of PEMDAS (order of operations), but its for the entire multiplication up to 9x9.
I grew up watching Square One TV as a kid so it was drilled into me before I hit second grade.
We briefly touched it in primary school in Australia, but ROTE isn’t really learning anything so it wasn’t a big emphasis.
I remember before I move to the US, in China, they tried to make kids memorize a whole story (some children’s story I think, forgot what that was about) and kept kids after school if they didn’t memorize it (like a “detension” basically).
In the US, I had to memorize the Preamble of the US Constitution, I promptly forgot it after the test lol. (I mean considering current US political climate, that went out the window so it doesn’t even matter anymore lol)
But the “九九乘法口诀表” stuck around with me somehow, sometime rote memorization do work, sometimes.
ROTE can help you memorise stuff, but it’s like trying to memorise the shape of every word instead of learning how to read the letters.
Better use of time was learning how to multiply and be able to work out any number.
Never bothered to learn them. Learned to compute rather than memorize, based on numerical relationships. Ex: 73 * 13 = 75 * 13 - 2 * 13 = 975 - 26 = 949.
My dad played a kind of patty-cake growing up where I practiced doing times tables in rhythm. My dad would pick the addend and set the pace, and we’d alternate left and right hand high fives while saying say multiples of four. 4 8 12 … 36 40, then we’d just switch to 7’s, slightly slower pacing 7 14 20~ … if i made mistakes - 21, let’s try again: 7 14 21 2…8 35 … no reprimand for error - we had a beat to keep, just take a downbeat and try again. Of course simpler numbers were taken further 3s were occasionally done out to 300, and 2s were done as fast as I could spit out the words. 5s were often the rest set, done at a basic pace.
The madlad had me polishing my 13×13s before school ever even mentioned the existence of multiplication.
That sounds like a fun way to learn.
I don’t remember if it was 2nd or 3rd grade, but I just memorized them. My grandmother bought flash cards and drilled them with me every day until I had memorized them all.
I was only taught up to 10×10 in primary school, and learned mostly by rote (and also, “skip counting”). I’ve also heard of some techniques like matching fingers to do one-digit multiplication, but I never really learned how to do that. By that point, I’ve mostly memorized the multiplication table up to 10.
For 11, it’s absurdly easy once I got the technique, just double the number (up until 9). 11×10 is just appending a zero, and 11×11 I just memorized.
For 12, I actually didn’t bother that much? 12×N = 10×N + 2×N. Thus, 12×11 = 110 + 24 = 134 and 12×12 = 120 + 24 = 144 (which I got memorized for some reason).
I still have some trouble with the 6, 7, and sometimes 8 multiplication tables, but I can usually recall it with a bit of effort. Not much, but not without some awkward pause.
Now, for how I got to memorize it. The process was hard at first. I had to recite the multiplication tables as a drill almost everyday. We also had long quizzes (hundred items) of one-digit multiplication and two-digit division (by the fourth grade), so there’s an incentive to memorize the tables if only to be able to get through those quizzes with minimal pain. There’s also a social stigma for being the last person to get done with those quizzes (or worse, running out of time), so there’s that pressure too.
Most I just know instantly since I need them for work from time to time and just memorising them is quicker than a calculator.
I struggled learning them but that was in part due to me not wanting to learn them. I got by, barely. Currently, I’m pretty good with some of them but no expert.
Rural US in the 1980s and we learnt it starting at I think like 8-9 years old. At the time 9x9 was all we learnt and we were just expected to memorize our “times tables”. I don’t recall any song or anything.
I was born in 97, also expected to just “memorize” the tables. I never did, and despite my teacher in 3rd grade insisting we would never have a calculator on us at all times, I do in fact have a calculator (phone) in my pockets at all time to do menial math for me.
I was out doing parking lot and road striping doing all the math in my head or on paper to make fit things in, make sure we were square to the curb occasionally, etc. as a young adult. IIRC, the spots were 7-8 feet wide (depending upon what the client wanted, but I think our normal was 8) so knowing your times tables (or, more accurately, multiples of 8) when running down the tape measure made things easier. Pythagorean theorum for checking square to the curb or some other fixed point. More fun math (that I now forget) for doing things on curves.
This would have been 2001, I think, and we probably had a calculator bouncing around somewhere in the truck, but we never used it. No smartphones or tablets in those days.
I still sometimes just go wherever without my phone (more often on accident, but occasionally on purpose), but I definitely don’t find myself doing math on the fly too much, heh. Imma go be old somewhere else now.
I do in fact have a calculator (phone) in my pockets at all time to do menial math for me
Except it gives wrong answers for order of operations expressions, because it was written by a programmer who didn’t make sure he was doing the Maths correctly.
I never learned it. We had specific tests just for them i 3rd grade and I just could never be bothered to actually learn them. I just did the calculations every time and even with the really short time limit I could get over 90% right. So I thought why bother.
Just a lot of writing them down and memorizing them from 1st to 3rd grade ish.
There is a few tricks like using your fingers for the 9s https://www.wikihow.com/Use-Your-Fingers-to-Do-the-9s-Times-Tables
But other than that, it was basically brute forced lol.
I think they start doing it in second grade but I’m not positive on that.
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I did it in Cantonese, probably similar to the Mandarin poem.
I think my mom started making me memorize it in the last year of kindergarten (I was 5yo). By the time multiplication becomes the main topic in primary 2 (2nd grade) maths, I didn’t really have much problem doing them. It was really useful to have it recited.
I think we had up to do up to 12 times tables by 3rd or 4th grade. I remember starting in 1st at school but really I learned them from Schoolhouse Rock. In the states Schoolhouse Rock was on Saturday Mornings between regular cartoons and they had such great songs.
