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Genders and the method of loci

  Tags: Gender | Memory
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
10 messages over 2 pages: 1
Bao
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5
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2256 posts - 4046 votes 
Speaks: German*, English
Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin

 
 Message 9 of 10
08 February 2013 at 12:00am | IP Logged 
Arekkusu described very well what I experience as well. But, in my experience using externalizing strategies to recall specific kinds of information means that I do not practice and develop my use of those strategies that make is possible to acquire the same information using the context they are presented in. In the short term, memorizing paradigms and gender and tone in isolation seems to be more efficient, but doing so means that I never really learn to recognize and remember those as a natural part of the word and the way it is used in a well-formed sentence. Which means that I have to use the same isolated strategy for all new words to come.

Edited by Bao on 08 February 2013 at 12:05am

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s_allard
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Canada
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 Message 10 of 10
08 February 2013 at 1:22am | IP Logged 
I would like to briefly add to my previous post about thinking in terms of morpho-syntax and not in terms of isolated words. Consider the following two sentences in French where the headword is 1. feminine and 2. masculine:

1. Cette femme n'est pas celle à qui (à laquelle) j'ai rêvé la nuit dernière.
This person is not the one I dreamed of last night.

2. Cet homme n'est pas celui à qui (auquel) j'ai rêvé la nuit dernière.
This man is not the one I dreamed of last night.

These two phrases are not that far-fetched as they might seem. Even if you don't know French that well, you can see the various morphological changes necessary as part of the gender agreement system. And there is a little complication due to the fact that "homme" starts with a silent h.

As I pointed out in my previous post, deciding whether femme and homme are masculine or feminine is only the beginning of your troubles. The real challenge is to get all the agreements right. And this is exactly where English-speakers tend to trip up. With some educated guessing, you could probably get at least 90% of noun genders right but most people mix up the subsequent elements. For example the à laquelle and the auquel are the really tricky elements here. The best strategy is, of course, to use à qui.

Edited by s_allard on 08 February 2013 at 1:25am

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