Three empirical studies concerning reflective and rote learning in Finnish schools are described. In the first, a questionnaire given to school beginners reveals that during their first 12 weeks of school the children's estimates of the excitement and pleasure of learning and their conception of the role of understanding in learning decrease. The second study compared the achievement of high school students learning either a normal text or a text with paragraphs in random order. Results suggest that a text requiring greater effort at the reading stage may result in better delayed recall even if a less demanding text results in better immediate recall. The third study concerns performance on the Finnish school-leaving examination. Students who used their memory in a reconstructive way to answer essay questions appeared to do better in all of the subtests when compared with pupils who reproduced portions of their textbooks from memory. Based on these findings, some classroom instructional activities that could increase learning effort in the foreign language classroom are suggested. A brief bibliography is included. (MSE)