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Method of loci questions

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Cainntear
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 Message 65 of 89
29 July 2011 at 4:23pm | IP Logged 
Sandman wrote:
As an outsider that hasn't used these techniques I do think that those of us who have found our own methods we like (including myself) tend to be dismissive of those that do things differently. To dismiss other methods allows us to carry on happily doing what we wanted to do anyway. We all have a vested interest in arguing against methods that are not our own.

This is true, and I always try to be mindful of this when criticising others.

Quote:
There are very likely things we can learn from those that memorize things as a living to help us in our studies. To think otherwise is to be as arrogant as those amateurs that claim global warming doesn't exist, those that claim the earth is only a few thousand years old, or those that claim humans and dinosaurs co-existed. There is a SCIENCE to memorizing things that we as amateurs CANNOT immediately know.

Actually, you've put that back to front.

Accussing me and Iversen of "arrogance" in our criticisms of memorisation is analogous to supporting young Earth creationism on the grounds that "science doesn't know everything". We (humanity in general) do not yet know everything about how language works in the brain, but we certainly know a great deal.

The importance of morphemes to the processing of language is beyond doubt. I have already highlighted how many mnemonics completely ignore the morphemes, even disrespecting morpheme boundaries. This makes these mnemonics inherently problematic. Individuals may learn adequately from them in spite of these problems, but success is certainly not guaranteed, and as far as I'm concerned, failure is more likely than success.

Quote:
There are those that practice memory as a profession, and to dismiss them because we find following their practices inconvenient or difficult is an insult to the field of "memorization". Obviously as language learners we do more than pure memorization, but to say it is not a major part of what we do is deceitful. To claim the techniques we have all come up with on our own is the "best" way to learn and incorporate words or grammatical structures is insufferably naive.

There's a difference between "principles" and "techniques". I'm happy to say that the techniques I use may not prove to be the best, but I subscribe to certain principles. I will use these principles to argue for the techniques I use, but people are free to argue against my techniques using those same principles.

I do not dismiss professional mnemonicists because I find their practices "inconvenient". I do, however, find them difficult to follow, in the sense that it is very difficult to see what they actually mean. We are prompted to come up with good mnemonics, but there is precious little practical advice as to what a "good" mnemonic is. What advice we do have is actually impossible to follow, because a mnemonic must be "personal", which means we are to make it up ourselves, but as I have already pointed out, that means that the mnemonic is written by someone who is not a subject matter expert, therefore could be wrong.

It is not "naive" to criticise mnemonics, because the very idea of mnemonics is itself naive. It swings between being a party trick and a moderately useful skill, but it's no way to learn a language.
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Iversen
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 Message 66 of 89
29 July 2011 at 5:02pm | IP Logged 
I can't really see whether I'm among those criticized by Sandman for being arrogant, but as a matter of fact very few of the memorization techniques discussed in this thread makes any use of linguistical structures, and I have yet to understand why techniques that primarly have the goal of remembering things in a certain order should be relevant to language studies - why should it be relevant that a certain word stands on page 678 in a certain dictionary in a certain edition? This doesn't diminish my belief in the efficiency of the techniques used by professional memory artists, but I just want to see that they not only are efficient, but also relevant for the activity we are discussing here, namely language learning.

Edited by Iversen on 31 July 2011 at 7:13pm
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Josh Cohen
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 Message 67 of 89
29 July 2011 at 7:48pm | IP Logged 
Icaria909 wrote:
However, I find it takes a lot of time to construct mnemonic devices to explain every new vocabulary word.


I think it gets really fast with practice.

slucido wrote:
It might be useful if you already have the memory skill developed. If not, it can be a waste of time.


I think the amount of time required to learn memory techniques to a useful level is overstated. It's not as difficult as might sound.

Doitsujin wrote:
If you replace playing cards with words, this would mean that you could learn to memorize the correct order of 52 known, immutable 2 word collocations/binary facts.
I seriously doubt that Simon Reinhard could perform the same trick in the same time-frame if he were given card decks with markings unknown to him, e.g. Tarot decks, decks used for role-playing games etc.


The card technique is entirely different.

In the memory championships, the record for memorizing random words is over 100 words in 5 minutes.

Iversen wrote:
Someone mentioned the word "comida" in Spanish. OK, "comida" is based on the participle of "comer" which I just as well can learn while I'm at it. But how do I remember the meaning of "comer" (or "comida")? Well, I could imagine somebody come running with a bib, spoon and a fork to get his supper. I don't need to include "-er" or "-ida" in the vision, the common element "com" is enough to remind me of the two Spanish words.


That is basically what I'm talking about, except focusing on the visual aspect, and using locations to sort words by grammar rules.

Cainntear wrote:
The importance of morphemes to the processing of language is beyond doubt. I have already highlighted how many mnemonics completely ignore the morphemes, even disrespecting morpheme boundaries. This makes these mnemonics inherently problematic.


Like I mentioned, from practical experience, good mnemonics don't affect the memorization of morpheme boundaries at all. :)

Iversen wrote:
...and I have yet to understand why techniques that primarly have the goal of remembering things in a certain order should be relevant to language studies - why should it be relevant that a certain word stands on page 678 oin a certain dictionary in a certain edition?


You're talking about the Method of Loci which is different from the mnemonic technique I've described. What I've described is almost the same as the mnemonic technique that you said you used, but with a couple of additions.

You don't need to be a "professional" memory artist to use this kind of mnemonic techniques any more than someone needs to be a professional mnemonist to use the linkwords method. I'm not sure why people are assuming that. :)


Edited by Josh Cohen on 29 July 2011 at 8:07pm
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slucido
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 Message 68 of 89
29 July 2011 at 9:27pm | IP Logged 
I don't understand the problem here.

If you have some memory training, you can learn a huge amount of words and review and reinforce them by heart. That's a FACT.

Is this skill useful for language learning? That's the question.


P.S.: Memory and Mental Calculation World Records


http://www.recordholders.org/en/list/memory.html



Edited by slucido on 29 July 2011 at 9:28pm
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Doitsujin
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 Message 69 of 89
30 July 2011 at 7:26am | IP Logged 
slucido wrote:
I don't understand the problem here.
If you have some memory training, you can learn a huge amount of words and review and reinforce them by heart. That's a FACT.

Had you looked closer at the description of each discipline you would have noticed that even the memorization of 300 random words in 15 minutes is just a variation of the old "memorize the order of a given number of facts" discipline, because the competitors need to memorize only the word and its number, not its translation, which makes this feat not directly applicable for language learning.
Also most other memorization disciplines are little more than amusing parlor tricks with little practical use.

BTW, here's a link to the Mentat Wiki, which contains a nice summary of memory techniques, some of which I use myself.
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Josh Cohen
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 Message 70 of 89
30 July 2011 at 7:36am | IP Logged 
Doitsujin wrote:
Had you looked closer at the description of each discipline you would have noticed that even the memorization of 300 random words in 15 minutes is just a variation of the old "memorize the order of a given number of facts" discipline, because the competitors need to memorize only the word and its number, not its translation, which makes this feat not directly applicable for language learning.


It's only a variation of vocabulary learning. Instead of attaching the word to a fixed location in a memory journey (generally not a number), the word gets attached to an image of a definition, and then gets places in a non-fixed location in a memory palace (not in order). It's very similar.

Edited by Josh Cohen on 30 July 2011 at 7:44am
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Doitsujin
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 Message 71 of 89
30 July 2011 at 9:00am | IP Logged 
Josh Cohen wrote:
It's only a variation of vocabulary learning. Instead of attaching the word to a fixed location in a memory journey (generally not a number), the word gets attached to an image of a definition, and then gets places in a non-fixed location in a memory palace (not in order). It's very similar.

Could you please explain this method in more detail?
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slucido
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 Message 72 of 89
30 July 2011 at 9:13am | IP Logged 
Doitsujin wrote:
Josh Cohen wrote:
It's only a variation of vocabulary learning. Instead of attaching the word to a fixed location in a memory journey (generally not a number), the word gets attached to an image of a definition, and then gets places in a non-fixed location in a memory palace (not in order). It's very similar.

Could you please explain this method in more detail?


Josh, You can use a set fixed locations and recycle them over and over until you fix the words. O'Brien technique is only one, but it is not the best.

Doitsujin,It is much better to find references and start learning and training yourself. Then, it is much better to find mnemonic's forums and look for support there.
This forum is a bad place to learn about this topic. You will only find confusion.















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