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Method of loci questions | ||
Tags: Memory | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 33 of 89 24 July 2011 at 1:12am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Sorry, but every explanation of mnemonics that I've seen fails to address natural memory, and as such they all teach techniques that are too far removed from natural memory to be effective scaffolding mechanisms. If this means that mnemonics are merely "badly taught" rather than inefficient, then that's still the mnemonicist's fault: bad teaching is the sign of a bad teacher, and doesn't say anything about the teacher's own competence in the skill in question.
You're going to need to explain that, because right now it means precisely nothing.... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Josh Cohen Newbie United States mnemotechnics.org/ Joined 4878 days ago 35 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese, Esperanto | Message 34 of 89 24 July 2011 at 10:31am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Do you mean that you think mnemonic techniques don't work? Visual memory and association are natural memory... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 35 of 89 24 July 2011 at 11:27am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
No, I mean that mnemonic techniques are about memorisation, not learning. Yes, visual memory is natural memory, and associations are natural memory, but the visual pattern and the pattern of associations used in mnemonic techniques are not the appropriate visual or associative patterns for vocabulary learning, because you are visualising things that are not related to the target vocabulary, and you are associating the vocabulary with things that are not naturally associated with it. In the Russian ponimat', the ending is a standard infinitival ending -- nothing to do with rugs. In martillo, the "o" is a masculine noun ending and nothing to do with bread. In both examples, the mnemonic encourages an incorrect segmentation of the word, creating false morphemes. The ending of ponimat' is -at', not mat, and the ending of martillo is -o, not -lo. This will interfere will your ability to generalise morphology across the language. Another example of a bad mnemonic comes from the commercial course by Tony Buzan, Collins' Spanish Language Revolution. The course is basically mindmaps applied to language, and he says to make a vivid image, so for example relating food with some thing lovely and tasty and colourful, like a big cake with lots of icing. The problem is that comida isn't just food, it's also meal in general, and more specifically lunch. Sorry, but I don't have big cakes at lunch. He's associating the general word with a specific sub-instance of one of its senses, which increases the potential for confusion. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6677 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 36 of 89 24 July 2011 at 11:44am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Cainntear, the answer to your questions is only one: memory training. Everything is explained for free in the Internet, but all those explanations and examples are useless if you do not have the training and you do not develop the skill. With Synesthesia I mean when you are INSIDE your visualizations, all your senses are interconnected and you go faster and faster doing this. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Josh Cohen Newbie United States mnemotechnics.org/ Joined 4878 days ago 35 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese, Esperanto | Message 37 of 89 24 July 2011 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Learning requires memorization one way or another. They are different, but aren't independent. There has been a backlash against memorization in education during modern times, but I think it went too far to the point where many people have an aversion to the word, "memorization".
If you practice these techniques in a dedicated way, I think you will find that that is not the case at all. There is never a problem confusing hammer with bread or not understanding that "-o" makes it masculine. The techniques ensure the understanding that it's masculine, because the mnemonic image is stored in the masculine section of the memory palace. The mnemonic images eventually fade away.
I don't know about that course, but if a cake doesn't remind you of the correct definition of food, just use a different image, like a giant plate of lunch. Or just add a burrito on top if the cake to add a second meaning to your definition. EDIT: Also, if many mnemonic systems for learning languages are bad, it doesn't mean mnemonic techniques are bad in general--they are just examples of non-effective application of the techniques. Edited by Josh Cohen on 24 July 2011 at 12:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6677 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 38 of 89 24 July 2011 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Cainntear, I have a lot of mnemonic examples in different languages from other people. One out of twenty examples is useful. Most of them are useless for me.
Examples are very useful to get the idea about how the techniques work, but if you want to take advantge of this methods, you need to work your socks off and build the skill. You need to understand the basic principles and apply them in a consistent basis. That is to say, you need to apply the basic principles to create your OWN techniques. The problem I see is that this is not practical for the average people. You have to be into mnemonics. If anyone want to know more about this, you can join the "Art of Memory" forum: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/art_of_memory/?yguid=140526551 Edited by slucido on 24 July 2011 at 1:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6677 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 39 of 89 24 July 2011 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I forgot something important. If you want to learn the spoken words, you need to learn the IPA and the phonetics of your target language. You need a concrete image for every phonetic sound.
If you have the memory skill, it's easy. If do not have it, it is a nightmare. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 40 of 89 24 July 2011 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I almost agree with you. The backlash went too far, but the reason that it went too far is that people have confused "rote memorisation" with "repetition". You need to repeat something to learn it, but you don't have to memorise it.
If the initial segmentation encouraged by the mnemonic is wrong, you are learning it the wrong way. I cannot see how this can be more effective than learning with the word and the morphology of the target language.
The problem is that if there are so many bad applications of the technique, it suggests that people generally don't know how to use the technique correctly... including the biggest "experts" in the field. And making your own mnemonics is a dangerous thing to do, because as a learner you don't know the full meaning of a given word. When teaching new vocabulary, we should follow the principle of "progressive differentiation" -- start with a very high-level view of a concept and then slowly refine it. "Comida" = "food" is about as high-level description of the word as you're going to get. You can then start introducing the more specialised senses. But if you start with an example of food -- any example of food, sweet or savoury -- then you don't invoke the full concept. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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