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Is this normal? Vocab recall question. | ||
Tags: Memory | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Ojorolla Diglot Groupie France Joined 4965 days ago 90 posts - 130 votes  Speaks: French*, English | Message 9 of 13 12 January 2013 at 3:27am | IP Logged |
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In my case some words (whether English or in my native tongue) always trigger certain scenes (which can emotionally bother me a lot in some cases), but with some others I just recall their meanings and understand them. But if I ponder on a word long enough (like 5 seconds) it seems that it always triggers a certain scene or memory in the past and I think this is pretty normal. For instance, for the word 'maths' it doesn't immediately triggers a scene, but with time I recall a scene in which a middle-school friend of mine asks another guy if we had maths assignments, and a scene of young myself reading the book 'Men of Mathematics'.
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| kaptengröt Tetraglot Groupie Sweden Joined 4338 days ago 92 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic Studies: Japanese | Message 10 of 13 12 January 2013 at 7:55am | IP Logged |
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I don't have this at all, I am kind of disappointed in myself... On the other hand I seem to be extremely good at memorising the pronunciation of a word the first time I learn it (it seems to be much harder for me to remember words I have only read). I also recently realised that I had "memorised" the sounds of words as a "phrase-melody" when I was idly listening to a dialogue CD - two years later I randomly thought of the "melody" in the shower and was shocked that I now knew the meanings of all the words in it, better yet that I somehow memorised all the correct pronunciations of the words without having known their meanings before and only having listened to the CD a couple times (remembering the entire CD is a different matter).
Now as I just wrote that paragraph I remembered another sentence just like that, from about a year ago, which I somehow memorised by sound from just watching a short recipe video a couple times in a row, and at the time the speaking was too fast for me to get anything but one word, but just now I remembered the "melody" and now I can actually understand that she was saying "and now we shall start the dessert". By melody it is like sentence-melody I suppose. Has this been going on throughout your language-learning life, or did it only appear eventually? Does it happen when you learn a new word in your native language? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Enki Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5833 days ago 54 posts - 133 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written), English*, French, Korean Studies: Japanese | Message 11 of 13 12 January 2013 at 8:18am | IP Logged |
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The connection between memory and location is a very old one. Quintilian said that
when we remember places, we also tend to remember what we did there. Hugh of St. Victor insisted that students, in order to remember what they've learned, should also remember the place where they've learned the information, what they saw, were feeling, ect. From Mary Carruther's Book of Memory: All mnemonic advice stresses the benefits to be gained from forming memories as “scenes” that include personal associations. Hugh of St Victor, for instance, stresses the need to impress the circumstances during which something was memorized as part of the associational web needed to recall it: the sort of day it is, how one feels, the gestures and appearance of one's teacher, the appearance of the manuscript page, and so on.” It's the logic behind most memory tricks like the method of loci. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci#Spatial_mnemonic s_and_the_ hippocampus Edited by Enki on 12 January 2013 at 8:21am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Presidio Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4581 days ago 39 posts - 150 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, German Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Gulf) | Message 12 of 13 12 January 2013 at 8:42am | IP Logged |
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For me, the strangest part about remembering vocabulary is that when I attempt to recall a specific word while I am speaking, a snapshot sometimes comes into my mind of what that word looked like when I first saw or studied it.
- As I try to recall it mid-conversation, I will see that word in my mind as I had first written it in a vocab list on a yellow legal pad with a mechanical pencil. - Another I will see as it was written on my mirror with a dry-erase marker. - I will see another as I had written it on the inside of my wrist with a pen when I wrote it down to look up the meaning later. - I will see another in the font of the online new article I first saw the word in. - Another I will see in my own unique "serial killer" handwriting as I had scribbled it on one of the yellow or gray or white colored flashcards I use. - And yet another, when I recall it, I see in the white-lettered subtitles of a certain scene of a movie where I first saw it. When I use other words, I sometimes get an immediate image of someone else I know saying them. Like when my old German girlfriend said 'Kiss me,' or when one of my Russian instructors laughingly called another guy an 'idiot.' Simple words that you can remember and easily use after hearing them once, but still bring the image of the first time to your head every single time you use them. Strange, I know. But also comforting. Edited by Presidio on 12 January 2013 at 8:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| wv girl Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5239 days ago 174 posts - 330 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 13 12 January 2013 at 11:59am | IP Logged |
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I don't get that with vocabulary words, but I do remember where I read books! This one was when I was living in a
certain place, that one was in the backseat on the way to the beach, another I bought as a souvenir ... I think one of the reasons I keep my books after I've finished them, rarely rereading anything, is that they momentarily bring back memories of past days. 30 years worth of "old friends" is hard to part with, but takes up a lot of space. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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