When I was doing the random word training using the Link method, I found it very hard to picture abstract words like “is” “instead” or “ever”.
Are there any good suggestions for such cases?
Thanks!
These are difficult. I use words that come close but are a lot easier to picture.
is - islamic state
instead - insead. This is a school.
ever - fever.
Thanks! That helps a lot!
I can tell you what really works here (for me at least). I rely heavily on the first sound of the word. I repeat it in my head and outloud. I type it into google images and use the autocomplete function of google to help me to come up with some sound-alike word(s) which has some visual characteristics. then, I look at the google images pictures, some of which are often very creative, to cement the image in my head. from there, I can manipulate the image to hook it to what I wish to associate it. sometimes, the first sound is just no use or is too abstract or has no good visual I can come up with, so I have to go to the second sound of the word. It would help maybe if you posted what you are trying to memorize.
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I’ve been improving at words a lot recently. I think if all of the words were concrete nouns I might be really good at the discipline, but trying to visualize the abstract words has always sucked up my time and if I memorize enough words I’ll forget the abstract ones anyway. I’ve recently been memorizing 2 words per locus which is how the top Words peeps usually do it, and I take in the two words as one, coming up with an image to encapsulate them both. Usually that means that only the concrete one gets visualized, and the abstract one becomes a quality of the image. I’ve put a lot of work into Words in the last two years, and I still can’t make good images for abstract terms quickly if at all.
The way this works is that you get to go quite fast by only having a clear picture of the easy-to-picture item. That means that you can leave a lot of time for review, which you’ll need if you aren’t coming up with a picture to exactly represent the abstract words. So I got the words “parachuting contrary” the other day. I usually would have imagined a parachuter coming down dripping a bunch of ink (I always make “ing” words inky), and then I would have sat there for a while coming up with an image for contrary, eventually deciding that that is basically impossible and settling on a convict holding a tray, or perhaps a canary. It’d take me 15 seconds to come up with an image that sucks, and those kinds of images are forgotten the most often. So Words have been the bane of my existence as an MA these past couple of years, but I think that I am on my way to loving it. I got 25/25 in 17 seconds the other day (the first day I tried to memorize this way), and today I got 44/50 in 1 minute, xmt rules.
This time, I just imagined two parachuters repelling each other as if they were magnets, which took literally two seconds. That solution looks very clever, and you may likely think you wouldn’t have come up with a good idea like this on the fly, immediately if you had gotten those words yourself. Indeed it would be clever if I had only gotten to see the second word after making the parachute image, but as I said above, I don’t think words like that anymore. I made an image which literally represented what it means for two people to be parachuting contrary to one another. “Contrary” is hard, “parachuting contrary” is not. I had “declaration favorite” a few words later. I imagined a scroll to represent the Declaration of Independence, and I merely noted that the person holding it was looking at his favorite part of it. Not only can this be done very quickly, but the addition of these kinds of qualities add depth and significance to the image, making it surprisingly memorable. You do not NEED an image for abstract words if you can represent the information as an adjunct to the easy-to visualize word. So as far as addressing the examples you gave, I could not do that without seeing the adjacent words.
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Thanks for your advice! The google way really works!
And sometimes I find that not only some particular image in the returned result from google can help me picture a word, but the whole page of returned result can draw a vivid picture too.
Thanks for your detailed examples!
It is really awesome that you spent 17 seconds for 25/25! I never reach under 30 when I use the Link Method, which is taught in the Getting Start wiki and in the wiki it is said that it should be within 30 seconds after a couple tries. It really frustrates me…
But I can do much better if I use the journey method because I don’t have to spend a lot of time forging links painfully…