[signal11]

Because where I come from, we use the English equivalent of "into" rather than "times". "5 into 3" roughly translates to "5, 3 times".

The meta-point here is that English (or any other language) is crap for math, which is why we use mathematical notation. And this bullcrap syllabus is trying to redefine the "x" operator, which gets my goat.

[chris_wot]

The syllabus does nothing of the sort. The addition technique is a way of teaching very young children in a way they can grasp. However, it relies on using concrete objects and so far as I can see, should be used as a technique to aid understanding, and only then should the multiplication notation be introduced.