In short, the latter. In my mind there is a contradiction on how Asians are taught, and as a result, learn, and how might be best to give young people the skills needed to succeed at certain tasks. Memorizing is as you might know, is very prevalent in Asia. Certainly it has its role to play, especially in taxonomy and anatomy etc. As you said it would depend on the desired outcome. Keep in mind the age bracket for college here is 16-20. Most are still concrete thinkers and not given to abstraction. So with that under consideration I would think task based learning might be better especially for jobs as medical transcription, call centers, and technical jobs, etc .
