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Memory Palaces +other tech for Memorizing | ||
Tags: Memory | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4085 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes  Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 1 of 11 12 February 2014 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Anybody use memory palaces or other classical memory boosters for memorizing vocabulary
or for use in language learning? Came across this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0092HDTZA 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5323 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 2 of 11 12 February 2014 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I dabbled with it, but the only techniques that I use on a regular basis are the Linkword technique and a peg list based on the Major system.
For some ideas, check out the Method of loci questions thread and Josh Cohen's forum. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 11 12 February 2014 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Memory palace technique and others like it operate with a fixed, prelearned set of locations or other items. My guess is that such techniques are excellent if you want to remember a list of wellknown things, but I could see some problems if the things you want to remember are unknown words in a weak language.
I have seen fairly convincing research reports that indicate that liberal use of association techniques generally works better than simple repetition, and maybe you somehow can mix a host of prelearned palace locations into the formation of your associations, but I'm not sure that this will function better than 'free' association - after all you will never be required to recite a wordliste (or anki set) in the correct order, and the composition of each individual list is not very important - only the sum of all the words on all your wordlists or anki sets is relevant. On the other hand my personal experience is that there isn't time to make very elaborate associations (of the type 'silly stories') while you memorize large amounts of vocabulary so I just make fairly simple associations based on parts of the words or the situation where I saw them or other things. Edited by Iversen on 12 February 2014 at 6:18pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5769 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 11 12 February 2014 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'll tell you a short anecdote.
Last year, during a train ride, I played the Japanese game shiritori with my friend. We'd been talking in German and Japanese, and he knew how much I struggle with speaking. He'd thought it was a matter of vocabulary, so he suggested this game, which goes like: One player says a word, the next player uses the last syllable of the word to come up with a new word, and whoever says a word ending in -n loses, because there are no Japanese words beginning with the syllabic -n in Japanese witing. We played, he checked for every word he said if I understood it. After a while he said out loud what he'd obviously been thinking for a while: But you know so many words, and so many diffcult ones! Why can't you speak? Because knowing the meaning of a word is not enough. You have to know how it works in a sentence. Which kinds of sentence it is used in. Which one of the translations applies to which situation. Whether it sounds 'right' to say it in this situation, or whether you should rather pick one with similar meaning. If it's taboo, funny, old-fashioned. If people will understand it at all. And that you don't learn by memorizing words by meaning. Which, incidentally, I don't even do. I just tend to remember words better than anything else. And I'm under the impression that most other people forget words not because they don't memorize their meaning, but because they never learn how and when to use them. Maybe I'm wrong in that, or this just doesn't apply to you. Maybe you have many words you could use perfectly well, but you forget them for some odd reason. That's only for you to know. But, what I do when I want to learn words is to cram thematic word lists, Iversen style. And then the next day I work with a lesson, a text etc I had made that word list from. (It worked wonders for French class. I'll start using this with my language exchange partners, too.) Oh, and I think there are good vocabulary books available for German that explain word formation and things like compound verbs. Edited by Bao on 12 February 2014 at 7:15pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 5192 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 5 of 11 13 February 2014 at 4:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Have used the Method of Loci, aka Journey technique, aka Memory Palace, for memorising phone numbers or tricks like a deck of cards (not that hard, anyone can learn it in a day).
I don't see much practical value in it for language learning though. If you're going to memorise anything, memorise phrases and collocations, not individual words. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 11 13 February 2014 at 4:19am | IP Logged | ||
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My memory city is Grimsborough where the game Criminal Case takes place. That's the closest I get to this kind of thing. Edited by Serpent on 13 February 2014 at 4:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6154 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 7 of 11 13 February 2014 at 9:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I’ve found association memory techniques can be useful when dealing with false friends in French. The French word confection can be used to refer to the clothing industry, so I imagine a factory making suits our of brightly coloured sweets. I start with the image of the sweets and then zoom out to see the clothes been manufactured. I don’t use the technique unless it’s a faux amis.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 11 13 February 2014 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
That's also what I recommend. I use the source texts for repetitions if I have got them and a second wordlist round (as decribed in the Wiki article) if I have made lists directly from dictionaries - which I often do when I'm sick and tired and disgusted by wasting my time at looking words up all over my dictionaries and start dreaming of a set buffet. But the active use of a language is important because it stimulates your recall in general - and not just the recall of words you just have memorized a short while ago. So wordlists based on dictionaries are best left until you already have learnt to read without looking every second word up. Actually I began thinking about wordlists because I calculated that my Romanian vocabulary returned faster than my cramming and reading combined could explain - and I had just made some word counts to check my progress, nothing dramatic. I still use Romanian far too rarely to avoid silly errors and lacunes, and I still need to do something about the purely autochtonous part of its vocabulary (the loan words are not a problem except as pushy 'false friends'). However the situation would have been far worse if I hadn't tried to think and write AND read in Romanian. Cramming is useful, but not if it is the only thing you do. Edited by Iversen on 13 February 2014 at 5:21pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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