It’s hard for me to come up with an image as clear and versatile as my own preset images for random words on the spot. So I can’t memorize them the way I memorize digits or cards. I can’t memorize them well in fact, so I want to get in as many reviews as possible to stick the words with sheer repetition where mnemonics are weak.
So I will use the first image that comes to mind of course, you should always do this, though images don’t always come to mind. Sometimes there are images that come to mind that could be construed as representing plurality. If the word “grass” comes up, I’ll just imagine a lawn. Just a bunch of grass. Not just one blade of grass. That would be a better image for blade. It would work here, but that wouldn’t be the first thing to come to mind.
So how do I know that the word was not “grasses?” When I have plural words, I take the single image and duplicate it. There is an exact copy right next to the original image. The same angle, identical, just like double vision. That’s how I know a word is plural, and no matter how many images there are, if there isn’t a side-by-side perfect duplicate, I’ll know that even though I came up with an image with many things in it, it does NOT represent a plural word.
“ink” for “ing”
Initially, I move at a little slower than 1 word per second and I encode up to the target. I look at the two words at once and come up with an image to represent them. I do not come up with an image for the first word, then an image for the second word, and link them. Often I have only one image for the two words but both words are represented contextually. “jealous parachute.” I would just imagine a person parachuting and note that I am jealous of him. This is fine as long as your strategy is like mine. If you are a person who wants to encode everything well so that it should all be remembered and then review just to double-check, this won’t work well. There is no image of jealousy whatsoever, and “jealous parachute” looks identical to my image for “parachute.”
When I’ve encoded everything, I go back and quickly read the list of words. I interpolate words of my own to form phrases that are close to grammatically correct. I would start this chain by saying “jealous of the parachute that…” so on and so on. If you don’t use images at all and simply read through the target amount over and over very quickly while making as many phrases as you can, each as long as possible, you’ll remember the words very well. The problem is that when the first blank comes, you lose every single word after. Then if you peeked at the next word on the answer sheet, you’d be able to recall the next few words because of the phrase, then a blank, then a peek, ad infinitum.
Of course you can’t peek at an answer sheet during recall, so that is what the images in the loci are for - the images are essentially bookmarks.
I have 150 or so images for Greek and Latin parts, prefixes and suffixes. I rarely ever use them, but when I do use them they can really save me. I ought to relearn these and get to know them very well. Long, abstract words will often have these roots. “Con” is a convict, with old-timey black and white stripes and a ball and chain around his ankle. So “conversation” may be a difficult one for you to visualize. You could see people talking, but that same image could be used for many things and this realization may slow you down. I am able to confidently place two convicts talking to each other and move on. Then I’ll know it’s something to do with human interaction that starts with “con.” “Companion” is a tricky word. It’s easy to get an image for it - all you need is two people standing next to each other. But again, that same image could be used for so many things. I’d have that image, but there is a computer in a pan as well. Making these up on the spot is not fast, so creating the images ahead of time is essential to get a good score IF you like this method. I only resort to breaking a word down and using monosyllabic presets if I know I won’t be able to come up with an image at all. It’s slower to make than a regular image, but faster than sitting there puzzling over the creation of a difficult image, which will likely not be memorable anyway.
For word forms, clear, clarity, clearance, clearing, clear, clearer, clears, cleared - all of these images will include a modifier. Remember all types of errors hurt your score equally, so if you don’t remember the word form, you may as well have not bothered to memorize it at all.