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Method of loci questions | ||
Tags: Memory | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Josh Cohen Newbie United States mnemotechnics.org/ Joined 4811 days ago 35 posts - 63 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese, Esperanto | Message 73 of 89 30 July 2011 at 10:37am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Sure -- below is a quick overview of the differences. The language method is at the bottom of this post. PEG SYSTEMS What you described is a peg system. In a peg system, you have an image for every number. In my system, it goes like this: 00 = Isis 01 = Iced tea 02 = Eisenhower 03 = tea harvester 04 = Osiris 05 - Dali (to 99, and then 000 to 999) If I wanted to use those images as pegs, I would attach the things to be memorized to the images. Sample words to be memorized: basketball tin can tree arsenic friendliness Isis is slam-dunking a basketball. Dipping a rusty can in a glass of iced tea. Eisenhower is driving a tank up the side of a tall tree. A tea harvester is picking an apple, opens it, and Arsenio Hall is inside (apple seeds apparently don't have arsenic, but there is an association). Osiris is eating a grilled cheese sandwich with the Loch Ness Monster in the sandwich. I have a personal association between grilled cheese and a US restaurant called "Friendly's", which is an example of why I think that making personal associations is important. Friendly-Ness. To recall the list, I go through the numbers and the images bring up the word. METHOD OF LOCI I think that most people don't use peg systems in competition. Instead, fixed memory journeys are created. (There are some mistakes in the Mentat Wiki regarding this, though it's still a great resource.) A sample memory journey: Front porch of house Mailbox End of street Bus stop Cash machine Cafe tables In front of library etc. The journey never changes. Each thing to be remembered goes in one location of the memory journey. A giant basketball is bouncing on the front porch, crushing it. The mailbox is a dangerous, rusty tin can. At the end of the street, a giant tree is blocking traffic. At the bus stop, Arsenio Hall is jumping out of an apple. etc. To recall your items, just walk through the journey and decode the images. In the standard Method of Loci, the number images are only used for memorizing numbers, not as pegs. If you want to remember the number 05010300, place Salvador Dali (05) swimming around in a giant glass of iced tea (01) in the first locus, then a tea harvester (03) sitting in the throne on Isis' (00) head, sipping tea. You can use this technique to memorize tens of thousands of digits. If you want to find the number of any memorized item, just say, "what was the tree doing?" You see the tree at the end of the street, and since the journey is always the same, you know that it's the 3rd locus. I mention that technique just to explain the difference between the peg system and Method of Loci. THE LANGUAGE METHOD (See also message #3 of this forum thread.) This is something like linkwords, but it uses locations to organize the words in a mental filing cabinet. Instead of creating a fixed memory journey, you create a mental town based on a town you know. Basically, you need distinct mental locations that sort words according to the grammar. If the language has masculine and feminine nouns, divide the town into two sections. Masculine nouns only go in the masculine section and feminine nouns in the feminine section. Each section of the town should probably have similar locations--they both might need a supermarket or grocery in order to place your masculine and feminine food images. The mnemonic image for apple (manzana) goes in the grocery store in the feminine-noun half of your Spanish memory town. Bread (pan) goes in the grocery store in the masculine-noun side of town. That encodes the gender of each noun. You can also create sections of the town for verbs. I posted earlier in the thread on how I used three different parks to separate Greek verbs by conjugation. If I want to find the word for "wash" in Modern Greek, I find the image--a plane washing some clothes in a basin in park #1--and it brings back the word "pleno". I know the accent is on the "e" because it's in that verb group. In the first park, a giant pear is taking something. "Perno", with the accent on the "e", is to take. "Perno" is also to cross or to pass, but the accent is on the "o" and it's conjugated differently. I know it's in verb group #2 because the giant pear that is passing by with a cross is in park #2. The mnemonics in those cases aid in getting past the tip of the tongue problem. If you repeat the word a few times, you will probably be able to recognize it or remember it if someone prompts you. The mnemonic images is that kind of prompt. In Esperanto, which has very simple, regular grammar, I'm sorting my vocabulary list by the type of word. Words for time, like days of the week, months, and asking time, go in one section of the town. Verbs get separated into locations by whether they are basically the same as in English or not. Akcepti (to accept) goes in the parking lot of a supermarket in Hadley, Massachusetts along with the other verbs that are the same as in English. If I see a mnemonic image for a verb inside that supermarket, then I know it isn't the same as in English--maybe even a false friend, like atendi (to wait).
There are different ways to do it. I like O'Brien's method because it encodes grammar. You can make a fixed journey within sections of your town and it should still work.
I think that people who have never tried it are making assumptions about it that aren't necessarily true. That is the only confusing part. :) I'm not claiming to be an expert--only sharing what I'm working on and saying that it does work much better for me than other things that I've experimented with. These techniques aren't a replacement for repetition and exercises, but just a way to quickly get vocabulary into a mental filing cabinet. Edited by Josh Cohen on 30 July 2011 at 10:38am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| jean-luc Senior Member France Joined 4895 days ago 100 posts - 150 votes Speaks: French* Studies: German | Message 74 of 89 30 July 2011 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
So which is (or are the best) ?
I disagree, here is a forum about learning languages, there is no better place for discussing about method for learning languages. And I did not find a forum/website about mnemonics with enough resources on language learning. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| jean-luc Senior Member France Joined 4895 days ago 100 posts - 150 votes Speaks: French* Studies: German | Message 75 of 89 30 July 2011 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
If I understand well this methods, word have just to be associated with a place, not a precise locations (i.e. associated to a district not placed in a journey in this district) ? And there is no need to associated the word with a feature of the place (ie no need for having a library in the place if you want to remember the meaning of book) Edited by jean-luc on 30 July 2011 at 12:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5255 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 76 of 89 30 July 2011 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
No offense, but I think that I know more about mnemonic techniques than you because unlike you I not only read about them, I actually use them.
Not really, if books like Moonwalking with Einstein are anything to go by, most "mental athletes" seem to be more interested in coming up with more efficient ways to memorize a deck of cards or memorize Pi to the umpteenth digit than in practical applications.
I like your spin on Dominic O'Brien's town language mnemonic. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| jean-luc Senior Member France Joined 4895 days ago 100 posts - 150 votes Speaks: French* Studies: German | Message 77 of 89 30 July 2011 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I agree. I did some web search on the field few month ago, and it's difficult to find informations about practical applications beside some testimonies (Josh's website has some). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Sandy Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5563 days ago 37 posts - 61 votes | Message 78 of 89 30 July 2011 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I’ve been watching the Dr Yip Swee Chooi video on Josh’s site again and I am not sure if I agree with those posters who say his technique is not relevant to language learning.
The main objection is that the extra effort to remember the page number and the page position is pointless. This extra information seems unnecessary. But when you look at Josh’s examples in the method of loci he also uses unnecessary extra information. For example, to remember a tree at the end of the street he imagines a giant tree blocking the traffic. The idea of traffic being blocked is not strictly necessary. Josh would probably say an image is more memorable if it includes action. When Dr Yip Swee Chooi is asked about a page number or page position for a word you can see that this task involves a mental effort. He is using his mnemonic technique. But when he is asked for the meaning of the word he just seems to know it. The response is automatic. Cainntear says that “Mnemonic techniques don't help you learn vocabulary, only memorise it.” Yet Dr Yip Swee Chooi seems to have learned the meaning of these words. I was annoyed by the careless way Ed Cooke turned the pages of Dr Yip Swee Chooi’s dictionary. I would not let him handle one of my books like that. Dr Yip 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Josh Cohen Newbie United States mnemotechnics.org/ Joined 4811 days ago 35 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese, Esperanto | Message 79 of 89 30 July 2011 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I am still experimenting. I'm trying to place the images in specific locations, but they don't have to be in order, and I don't make the locations beforehand. Example: in Modern Greek, I have the verbs ksero (ξέρω) and gnorizo (γνωρίζω) at a picnic table in the park. Gnorizo is a gnome eating rice off of a book (gnome-rice). The book symbolizes knowledge (know). He is crossing two arrows in a "X" shape in front of him (X-arrow). He is on the far side of a specific picnic table, interacting with the giant pear from perno (παίρνω), who is trying to take the rice from the gnome ("Pear, no!").
I'm trying to expand on his brief description of the technique through practical experimentation. Anything that needs to be organized in categories gets its own location. O'Brien doesn't talk about memorizing conjugations or cases, so I've dabbled in that. But I'm about to start an Esperanto course--a language with very simple grammar--so I've put the more complicated grammar ideas on hold for the moment.
The mind remembers unusual things. If you try to encode tree as just a tree at the side of the road, there is a greater chance of forgetting it. If you make it a giant banyan tree that sprung up out of nowhere, with a car crashing into it in a tragic accident, it will stick much better. Edited by Josh Cohen on 30 July 2011 at 5:16pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Aquila Triglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5416 days ago 104 posts - 128 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German Studies: French | Message 80 of 89 22 September 2011 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm experimenting with methods like the method of loci. I think this method works. But I find it very hard to memorize abstract words. It's very difficult to be creative and to make a funny scene with an abstract concept. How do you tackle this problem? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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