The following is a guest post from Anthony Metivier, the man behind the Magnetic Memory Method. I really dig his adult-friendly approach to vocabulary acquisition and have applied much the same techniques to learn Japanese and Mandarin.
Enter Anthony.
As language learners, we’re often told that we need to memorize new words followed immediately by memorizing a phrase that uses the word. There’s no disagreeing with the important of seeing new vocabulary in context, but this method does not tell the full story of context and its power.
Some of what follows may seem a bit brainy and conceptual, but stick with me for a moment because understanding context more fully can change how you study your dream language. First off, it’s important to realize that learning words out of context is technically impossible. There is always context and you cannot learn even your first word of foreign language vocabulary without it.
Why? Because whenever you learn a new word, you’re learning it in the field of your mother tongue. Your mother tongue is a very important context because it’s like a comparative software database that sits in your brain pumping out computations every time you learn. “Maintenance” in French is like “maintenance” in English, only the sounds are different.
Or there may be limited or “false cognate” associations between two words. “Attendre” in French looks like “attend” in English, but the meaning of the words are quite different (the difference between waiting for something or someone and showing up at a concert). Either way, whether you are comparing or contrasting new vocabulary words, your mother tongue is the ultimate context in which the process of learning occurs.
Why does this matter?
Because the context of your mother tongue and understanding that this primary language is a kind of “software” installed into the foundation of your mind is where the power lies when it comes to quickly learning and memorizing new vocabulary.
Hacking Context
The language – or languages you already know – is a primary basis for association when learning foreign vocabulary. At some level your mind will always make associations, but you can hack this natural impulse by self-consciously guiding the natural capacities of your imagination using mnemonics or “memory tricks.”
A lot of people resist memory techniques for language learning because they think there’s too much work involved. Index cards and spaced-repetition software seem more concrete and direct and rote learning-based drills are deeply familiar to us from years of school.
However, what if I were to tell you that you could “download” new vocabulary words and phrases so that you can see them immediately in context quickly, reliably and even addictively?
That would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?
Here then is an example of how you can use the context of your mother tongue to quickly learn and memorize a new word.
“Der Zug” is the German masculine noun for “train” in English. “Zug” sounds like “zoo” with a “g” at the end, so to help you memorize this, you could see a gorilla installing a “g” at the end of the word “zoo” at your local wildlife park. You would make this image large, bright, colorful and filled with zany action.
In other words, the gorilla wouldn’t just be putting the “g” at the end of “zoo” in a calm and polite manner. He’d be doing it in a frenzied manner, perhaps because the zoo police are after him (and ideally they’re about to arrive using the zoo’s train to help compound the meaning that you’re trying to associate the sound zoog/Zug with the meaning of “train”).
All of the images in this example rely upon using English, not German, as a primary context. We are playing with the foreign language word in the sandbox of my mother tongue, and if you’re playing along, you’re integrating and absorbing “der Zug” into your mind using imaginative play.
Dealing with Gender in Context
I mentioned that “der Zug” is a masculine noun. How on earth are you going to memorize this important aspect of the word with so many other images already going on?
Simple.
Put a pair of boxing gloves on your gorilla. Or anything you associate with masculinity. Maybe he’s got a cigar in his mouth, a moustache or some other stereotype (I’m sorry, but memorizing foreign language vocabulary is not place to be politically correct …)
The best part is that once you’ve chosen an imaginative indicator of gender, you can stick with it and use it again and again for every masculine word you encounter and want to memorize using a mnemonic strategy.
For some people, this might seem like a lot of work and I’ll admit that what I’m suggesting certainly isn’t a magic bullet.
But with a small amount of practice, mnemonics work gangbusters for learning and memorizing foreign language vocabulary. And if you actually found yourself using your local zoo to generate the image I’ve suggested for memorizing “der Zug,” then you will experience an interesting side-effect that you can exploit whenever you are memorizing foreign language words.
Location, Location, Location
When you try to recall the meaning and sound of this word, your mind actually knows where to go to look for images you created. This is the mnemonic principle of using a familiar location. There are ways to get even more systematic with mnemonics so that it’s even easier and more effective to memorize massive amounts of vocabulary in a very short period of time based on the principle of location, so it’s well worth looking into these special methods.
Zoog/Zug in a Phrase
Now let’s look at “der Zug” in the context of a phrase. Although you’re now going to see and memorize the word in the context of German, you will still be consciously using the context of your mother tongue to “encode” the phrase into your mind.
And let’s stick with the local zoo so that we also have the “context” of a location that will allow us to visit the mnemonic imagery we’ve created, substantially increasing our chances of recalling the sound and meaning of the phrase with ease.
“Der Zug ist abgefahren” means that the train has left the station. You can use the phrase literally or your can use it to mean that someone has “missed the boat” or that an opportunity has been missed.
You’ve already memorized “der Zug,” so it’s now just a matter of memorizing “abgefahren” (to depart). I suggest that you practice the principle of “word division” here by splitting “abgefahren” into “ab” and “gefahren.” Just as you can use a figure like boxing gloves to always remember when a word is masculine, you can repeatedly use a certain figure to remember how certain words begin.
In this case, lets use Abraham Lincoln for “ab.” The first thing that comes to my mind for “gefahren” is an image of Forrest Gump running far with the letter n tucked under his arm like a football because he’s late for the train. And Abraham helps him out by throwing the train from the zoo(g) at him so that he won’t miss it (remember, zany and weird images work best because they stand out in your mind).
Abraham Lincoln + Gump + running far with an n = abgefahren.
Der Zug ist abgefahren.
Got it.
In conclusion, I’m suggesting that you combine contexts: the context of the language itself by following up your memorization of a new word with the memorization of a phrase, but also the primary context of your mother tongue. Instead of thinking of new language learning as a process of “addition,” we can think of it as “embedding” new words like seeds into a field of rich dirt that already understands how to connect, differentiate and absorb. All we need to do is consciously manipulate our natural powers of association to bring a massive boost to our language goals.
As a final note, I’ve suggested to you some images in this article that are meant as a guide to making your own mnemonics. Because you serve as the best possible context (the movies you like, the places you’ve been, the specific ways you use your mother tongue), it’s important to draw upon your own inner resources. Relying on yourself will not only make new vocabulary words and phrases stick out like a sore thumb in the context of your mind, but drawing upon your own life will also make you more creative. The more creative you are, the more readily you can make images for memorizing more vocabulary words and phrases. Used well, context is a truly perfect circle.
This is an excellent introduction to using mnemonics and associations to remember vocabulary.
I find it especially helpful both at a beginner level and also for words that I’m having trouble remembering (at any level). I’ve noticed amazing results with the latter. Words that have been plaguing me suddenly become easy to recall when you have an image and association to bring to mind.
I completely agree, Ruth. Mnemonics needn’t be limited to beginners. In fact, when I go back to review Japanese or Mandarin vocabulary, I often add in new mnemonics to shore up words, phrases, or characters that didn’t stick (usually because I failed to create a good enough mnemonic the first time around).
Glad you like the article, Ruth.
The next level is to use Memory Palace journeys to store large numbers of words. It’s pretty easy to get started using your home or the place you work. You can also use your favorite movie theatre, library, etc. but locations with rooms tends to work the best. You can use the four corners of a room, for example, and place one word in each corner by creating a dynamic image or short, image-based vignette.
Now, imagine if you had one Memory Palace for each letter of the alphabet. It takes a bit of setup, a process I describe in full in other writing in books and on my website, but the essentials are to spend between 2-5 hours creating a network of Memory Palaces and then populating these with vocabulary. It’s possible to experience massive boosts in vocabulary (which greatly impacts fluency) using such a technique in a very short period of time.
Many thanks for drawing attention to the importance of context.
It’s just I don’t quite understand some of your ideas, so I’ll try to ask.
“Zug” does not sound anything like “zoo” with a ‘g’ attached to it to me. But even if we agree on that, what does the train have to do with gorillas? I’m just afraid that if I start memorising all those crazy stories (the crazier, the better, they say), I will just waste considerable amount of memory for useless data which does not have any real connection with what I wanted to memorise in the first place. Ok, that probably works for 1 word only, but after I memorised 1000 words, I’m afraid that all those gorillas in my head will just start eating my brains. Or is this only an baseless fear, what do you think?
Thanks for this feedback, Demian.
I would not say that your concerns are baseless. However, personal experimenting and experience with the methods I propose will undoubtedly prove to you that mental clutter is not a nasty side effect. In fact, when practiced in the best possible manner, it’s a clean and efficient path to the words you want to memorize. The trick is to create the images in a state of relaxation and really focus on the vibrancy and colors and sizes, taking care to exaggerate these and vivify the action. The clarity comes from the imaginative invigoration, and done well, you’ll often find that you breeze over the image to get to the word, and often don’t need the images at all. This is because mnemonics are a means of paying attention to the words and phrases in completely different ways, giving your mind several different ways to revisit them (locations plus images) rather than just blunt-force rote learning. Again, personal experimentation, practice and the spirit of play will get you results.
As I point out in the final paragraph of my post above, it’s important to understand that the examples I’ve given here are representative examples only. The examples I give may well work for you, but the real power comes from creating your own. It’s a point of controversy in the world of mnemonics that I’ve written about a few times, so feel free to search my name along with the phrase “why mnemonic examples rarely work.” I’m a pretty no-nonsense thinker when it comes to mnemonics, so do be sure to invent your own images if you want to use mnemonics to memorize foreign language vocabulary and take any and all descriptions you read as guidelines and inspiration for creating your own.
In addition, it’s important to realize that we are not always shooting for a one-to-one correspondence in our mnemonic images. You’re right that zoo + g doesn’t sound exactly like “Zug” in German, but for people struggling to remember words through traditional methods like rote learning, the image is enough to trigger the word and point them in the right direction. One could create a pronunciation mnemonic in addition, and that is certainly an option, but if you’re standing in Germany or Switzerland or Austria (all of which have slight pronunciation variations and several of them within different regions of each country), I’d rather that people can at least say “zoog” when they want to ask about the train, a pronunciation that virtually every German speaker will instantly understand. (They’ll also likely be touched and doubly helpful that the person is trying to communicate in their language).
Additionally, the one-to-one correspondence issue is minor given that one still needs to rehearse the words by speaking them in order to train the muscle memory of the mouth. What we are looking for in mnemonics are triggers that bring back the words in ways that are easily created, super-effective, elegant and fun.
And if you have any more doubts about the methods I teach, there’s a wonderful article you can read by someone who memorized 200 words in just 10 days. She gives a very balanced view of the challenges and benefits she experienced in an article that is enlightening, elucidating and deeply inspiring:
//anthroyogini.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/learning-an-aboriginal-language-a-quick-dirty-guide-to-learning-vocabulary/
There are truly no magic bullets here, but if there is magic in the world of language learning, mnemonics are the closest thing to it.
Thank you very much for a comprehensive explanation! I shall now try putting that into practice. I shall let you know if I have more questions.
I love mnemonics and they can be very useful! One of the exercises I always do with my students is to give them a sheet of unknown vocabulary words along with a limited amount of time to memorize them (in class). I explain the basic principles of mnemonics and how they work and then let them tackle the list, trying to come up with some mnemonic for each word. Then there’s a quick, not-for-credit quiz at the end. The interesting part comes during the discussion. Some learners associate sounds. Some learners associate images. Some learners mix both. Some learners use the physical shape of the word. The lesson in this is that each learner found their own ‘way’ of association.
On a side note, you mentioned that this is a great strategy for beginning learners. I agree with this in principle, but it can also be useful for advanced learners who just cannot, for whatever reason, remember that one particular word. I would also caution that sometimes the associations can become so complex that learners (incorrectly) memorize some part of the association instead of the actual vocabulary word. I know I’ve been guilty of this.
Great point about the complexity of the associative-imagery, Erin.
One of the solutions to this involves making sure that the images we create are large, vibrant and filled with zany action. This helps to reduce the intellectual and conceptual element of mnemonic practice and increase the “impressions.” I’ve personally struggled with this element and found that spending time drawing every day and more time looking at art and being self-conscious about the presentation of iconic imagery in cinema has made me much more visual and able to create snappy impressions in my memory work that do not become overly complex.
With greater experience, however, complex images can serve important functions, such as when memorizing foreign language poetry, lyrics and phrases.
But it all comes back to how the mnemonics are being used and how the different elements are practiced. I believe that, as in poetry and art, simplicity comes through experience. The best part about using mnemonics with language learning is that you get to become a better memorizer as you become better at the language, which is why I closed the article with the suggestion that mnemonics-assisted language learning is essentially a perfect circle.
The best method to English vocabulary is to not memorize word lists.
In fact, learning should be subconsciously, effortlessly and deeply!