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About this drill
Ten-row columns are the standard unit of assessment in abacus training, and they measure something the shorter drills do not: whether a learner can hold procedure and attention together for twenty consecutive seconds. The arithmetic is easy — two-digit addition, no subtraction — and yet accuracy on these is consistently lower than on much harder short problems.
That gap is the whole point. If your accuracy drops on long columns while staying high on short ones, the problem is not technique and more rule practice will not fix it. Practise the length itself.
How to practise it
1Sit properly and clear the desk before you start — this drill punishes fidgeting.
2One row per beat, and never break the beat.
3Do not verify the running total at any point.
4Log the score; long-column accuracy improves visibly week over week.
Questions
Why is my accuracy worse here than on harder problems?
Because length, not difficulty, is what these test. Twenty seconds of unbroken attention is a separate skill from knowing the rules.
Should I write down intermediate totals?
No. The abacus holds the total; writing it down reintroduces exactly the dependency the method removes.
How many should I do at once?
Eight is a full set. Accuracy on long columns falls off sharply with fatigue, so a longer session mostly produces bad data.
Is there a time limit?
In examinations, yes. For practice, no — build accuracy at a steady pace first and let speed follow.