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Mnemonics: Good or Bad? | ||
Tags: Memory | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4844 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 17 of 27 08 September 2011 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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My Hebrew teacher gave us a set of mnemonics for about 300 items of vocabulary. He never intended us to use them for every one of the words. The idea was that you learn most of the vocabulary directly, but when there is one of those words that is just difficult (or if you can't remember if it's spelled with an aleph or not), you use the mnemonic. That gets you through vocabulary tests, etc. Once you're actually using the language, it does slow you down initially, but not as much as looking the word up in the dictionary. After a few uses of the word in context, you no longer need the mnemonic.
Personally, I only used the mnemonics to learn about 6-7 of the words, but I was glad I had them available. 18 years later, I still remember:
(Edited spellings) Edited by Jeffers on 08 September 2011 at 7:56pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| oldearth Groupie United States Joined 4830 days ago 72 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 18 of 27 09 September 2011 at 3:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't say whether a method is "harmful" or not, especially since
some people find them useful, but I have never used mnemonics as a primary tool. Making them up is too much work to do it all the time. I prefer to just brute force repetitions in Anki until I learn a new word and only resort to mnemonics when I feel that two young cards are interfering significantly. E.g. when similar-looking words like sentir and sentar show up in Anki around the same time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5701 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 19 of 27 09 September 2011 at 4:02am | IP Logged | ||
See, I'd be stuck on something in my soup - kill it, kill it! - and then, on the image on having a dead elf in my matzah ball soup (and a lot of the soup on the table), and then a whole array of 'waiter, there's something in my soup' jokes would fight for my attention and then I'd start wondering if the elf is only unconscious, and if you shouldn't call it elf soup now, and whether elves are poisonous, or maybe even tasty, maybe similar to mushrooms, and then I'd think of smurfs and of Gargamel and I'd wonder if Gargamel ever tried to eat smurf soup and ... I could go on forever. The thing with mnemonics is that they tell a story, and in my mind at least, those stories tend to spin themselves further and further, once I allow them to start. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4969 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 20 of 27 09 September 2011 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, Jeffers. That made me remember the kind of memory tricks learned in English, such as "There's a rat in separate." It helps me remember to spell it correctly. So yes, I have a few of those tricks after all. I just didn't realize they were considered mnemonics.
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| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 5029 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 21 of 27 09 September 2011 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | ||
I think they can indeed start to get in the way, if something has already started to take root in your memory, but then you try to add a mnemonic. It can interfere with the way your mind has already started to organize and remember things. For instance, I stopped doing Heisig's Remembering the Kanji because of this kind of interference. I knew some Japanese by the time I started the book, so the primitives and English keywords interfered with the way I had already started to remember kanji based on their radicals and associations with Japanese words. I had different associations in my head and it drove me crazy. I still think it's a good book and mnemonic system, but it probably works best if you are starting from scratch with it. Edited by starrye on 09 September 2011 at 8:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Michel1020 Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4952 days ago 365 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch | Message 22 of 27 09 September 2011 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think they could be usefull to write.
I remember one for a few french words ending in OU that make their plural with X in stead of S. Mes choux venez sur mes genoux je chasserai ces hiboux pleins de poux avec ces cailloux Two for the past time of regular dutch verbs that end in TE in stead of DE François Kope Prend Son Thé CHaud (for french speaking students) 'T KoFSCHiP (for all - this word does not exist but sound a little dutch) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4844 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 23 of 27 10 September 2011 at 12:30pm | IP Logged | ||
Mnemonics are any thing you use to remember something. Some people think mnemonics are the complicated things like, to remember that French for horse is cheval, I think of a man (because the word is masculine) on a horse carrying a shovel. However, if remember a word because it sounds like another word, that's still a mnemonic. For example, I learnt vous avez and nous avon because they sound like a French person would say "have" (dropping the h). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6020 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 24 of 27 10 September 2011 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I view them as temporary place-holders. Ideally speaking, once you've gathered enough experience with the languages these mnemonics get replaced by familiar patterns. I use them quite often in the beginning of learning a language when everything is still so "foreign". After time they become less of a tool. I agree with some posters that they are most useful for triggering spelling or pronunication. I absolutely can't imagine using them to recall words out of the blue, but students do it all the time for tests.
They're not very efficient if you latch on too hard, but they can certainly help get you over any sort of brain-lapse during a test. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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