Hello friends, I have 1500 words to memorise from English and I’m working with flashcards now. Is there another method you recommend for memorising?
Use e-flashcards with Spaced Repetition Software (SRS), e.g., Anki Flashcards
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I am running an experiment to memorize 900 words this month. I have already gathered the words in the first two weeks from materials that I read from e.g. books, newspapers.
I am an intermediate learner so all words are unknown, reasonably complicated ones, nouns, verbs, adjectives, inflections, etc.
I am using FSRS setup with Anki together with mnemonics. The mnemonics started out fairly promising for the first week or so but I found it far too much effort and found I forgot them as often as I would forget a word, and I found this quite ineffective over a couple weeks. So I decided to only create a mnemonic if a) It is easy to do so and could do so within several seconds and b) my brain makes one automatically, so I can’t help it anyway.
I will be testing myself the end of the month.
I am cautiously optimistic to retaining about 25% of the words with partial meanings. It may be that 900 words is simply too much, so I will be doing further tests in the future involving smaller amounts.
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Well, if you forget your images very easily it means that you never observed them carefully, when I started to memorize my first PAO 00-99 list I didn’t know most of my subjects and their actions and/or objects were not at all common in them and in a matter of minutes I had the list memorized.
The biggest problem with mnemonics is that it requires an effort that not many people really want to face, the brain can get exhausted quickly if you are not used to hard work using your memory, mnemonics make the job easier, not that it is magic.
1,000 words does not seem like a lot of words to me with the use of mnemonics, the most time I would use to create the list with which I would use online resources for frequent words in the area of interest, and in an excel sheet place right next to it an image placed in an intelligent way i.e. really think about what is the right one to help you and reinforce the image based on its characteristics for example if it is an apple which is commonly red, I can observe it in black or white, touch it and it is sticky, smells like petroleum, etc., use all the senses when interacting with that image, so that you involve much of the sensory memory and remember to observe the image, not a fleeting and quick observation, if you want to fix the first time and when you review you can remember the scene or image because you think that in color, smell, touch, etc…
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Well I did not say that I forgot them very easily, rather that it required more effort than it appears to be worth. I found simply memorizing the word to be easier in most cases.
I venture to say that using imagery like mnemonics is merely a means to an end and the real magic of memorization comes from SRS and retrieval. Whether or not you use imagery is a personal preference. But I don’t dismiss mnemonics, sometimes they work very well. I just do not see how this is going to scale, as I have a lot of long complex words to learn…nah its not going to work.
I have a feeling that a lot is down to luck. If you get a word that your minds eye just happens to really attach to then the stars align and bingo! Otherwise you have to do all this artificial stuff like create stories and imagery and honestly after a hundred of so its grows quite tiresome. Its just easier to skip it.
At the end of the day I use mnemonics to help learn words not just put effort into mnemonics for the sake of it. If it does not serve its purpose, out the window it goes.
Hey, I’m new to memory stuff. What is the PAO system and how does it help you memorize stuff? Thanks
Here are many articles about this method but you can use the phonemic code of the major system and create a set of character, action and object, this combinatorial numbering technique goes from 00 to 99.
Remember that the adaptation (habituation) is a gradual process, start taking small steps, then your memory will automate it and you will be much faster, the biggest problem is boredom, I say this because I felt it myself, I was bored grotesquely, the same with reading, etc., it is normal, the brain seeks to save energy…, start taking small steps and do not get discouraged, our brain is always looking for the best way to do things, remember the brain bothers to do hard work, it will always look for ways to do it faster, so I advise you to keep a record of what to do and what you should improve for the next session.
Spaced repetition is just an artificial prompt for retrieval (when done right; done wrong it’s rote with extra steps.) The real magic is actively using the information so you develop skill.
That’s not surprising. The magic of mnemonic imagery is putting something into long term memory immediately. After that, you have to maintain it and it follows your forgetting curve pretty closely (although I think it sticks longer for me, but there’s still a forgetting curve.)
Right, yes. The true magic is when you actually use it. But there are a few stages to go through before you can reach that stage.
I don’t find that engineered mnemonics go to long term memory at all. I find I am forgetting them after a few days. This could be down to a lack of competence in creating mnemonics of course as I have only been practicing them for about a month. Or more likely, mnemonics just don’t work that well for learning new words.
I find the only ones that stick are ones that come naturally, as in, created automatically by the brain and I have no conscious involvement. Why put all the effort into maintaining artificial mnemonics if doing SRS is more far more simple, easy and effective?
This is kind of the problem with mnemonics. For new and complex information I don’t think they are quite the right tool for the job. There are far far too many ways information can go haywire with encoding and decoding of words. To the point of making a mnemonic system work requires more effort that not using the system. And there are no answers to this except “practice”.
Of course it may be a different matter if you are storing information you are already familiar with, that has regular patterns, sequences of numbers, stories etc. People have done a lot with this and are keen to apply that to other applications.
Hence…I get the feeling that to those with hammers here everything looks a lot like a nail.
A day or two is long term memory. You expand it by review, and use.
If you’re naturally good with language you might not find much difference between regular review and practice over use of mnemonic imagery. For me it would mean being able to get words and terms down right off the bat, unlike the past where I spent about a month trying to learn Japanese only to recognize but not understand dozens of words, and learn maybe ten before giving up.
For reading Japanese I can see the value of mnemonics. In fact, these are already images so you want to be treating them as such.
Latin script is abstract however. So a lot less suitable.
For me, the stages of learning a word goes something like:
- Learn the word with one meaning, this is the basic hook stage, all that matters is you remember the word. At this stage the word may or may not be useful depending on the complexity of the word.
- Review the word enough so that I can recall it being written. I will tend to only recognize the word one way (e.g. foreign language to native language), and the imagery of it e.g. spelling is vague. I will only recognize it partially.
- Refine the meaning over time by seeing the word used in different places, through text and audio, and writing composition, etc. Get used to seeing it in different forms.
- After I am very used to the word I am able to go backwards and even use the word a bit. I can inflect the word, etc.
- I understand how the word relates to other words and decide whether or not to use it or choose one with a better meaning, hence: fluent with that word.
If I use a mnemonic then its usefulness is somewhere between stage 1 and 2. The purpose it serves only exists at stage 2 i.e. providing the hook to some kind of meaning - a toenail hold on the word. After that stage the mnemonic is best discarded as it can cause incorrect associations.
Stage 3 is where I want to be spending most of my time, ideally. Bringing the word to life. I don’t want to burn more time than necessary on stage 1 and 2. Nor do I feel this is well served with elaborate spreadsheets with AI images, etc.