How to you memorize words? Share with us all of your tips!! | General discussion | Forum

Hey Kevinpost, yeah I've heard about learning kinesthetically, it's a method called "Total Physical Response (TPR)". Personally, I've never tried it (it doesn't seem that practical to me, especially when you need to memorize words that do not involve any physical action). Have you ever tried it? I'm sure it might work well for teaching/learning really basic stuff, like "I'm holding the pencil in my hand", or "I'm opening the door" or something like that. I guess if you go to a foreign country and somebody who doesn't speak your language is trying to teach you their native language, it would be a good way to go. Otherwise, not too sure.

Raphacam, your method reminds me of Tim Ferriss' "Deconstruction" method. He gives an example, in his book "The 4-hour Chef", of how he learns languages. He says he focuses, at first, on a bunch of simple sentences where you can see how nouns, verbs, and pronouns are used differently. Here's an example taken from his book:

Here are the 12 sentences, the “Deconstruction Dozen”:

The apple is red.

It is John’s apple.

I give John the apple.

We give him the apple.

He gives it to John.

She gives it to him.

Is the apple red?

The apples are red.

I must give it to him.

I want to give it to her.

I’m going to know tomorrow.

(I have eaten the apple.)

I can’t eat the apple.

"The benefits of these few lines can be astonishing", he says.

Seems like a decent technique to me, and it gives the learner a powerful overview of the grammatical structure of the language and of how basic sentences are constructed. Seeing the word in its different forms is definitely something that can help memorization. Although that wouldn't work for languages such as Chinese, since words only have a single form.

Anyhow, keep the ideas coming! Anybody else has their own technique for memorizing words? Once again, I'm surprised this topic hasn't surfaced more before, since it's such a huge part of language learning.

I suspect you didn't try the method I outlined above hard enough. Most of these are tried and tested memory techniques that have worked for people across time and ages. I think the most powerful techniques are mnemonics and the method of loci (Memory Palace). Learning words is not about learning "forcefully". It's simply about aiding your brain to remember what you're learning. Without any technique, it's highly inefficient to simply learn by rote.

I highly recommend you to try some of the techniques I mentioned more in detail. Check out my blog if you're interested in learning more. Dominic O'Brien, eight-time memory world champion, managed to learn and actually remember 320 new German words in an hour (after one sighting of each word), his personal best. Not bad for a dyslexic slow learner who barely managed to scrape through with passes in French and Spanish in high school. Believe me, memory techniques can work.

Memory-champions who are good in learning lists of words or phone numbers or other stuff like that are the memory-champions so they could do it with or without any techniques.

I'm sorry my friend but I must say you couldn't be farther from the truth. Memory champions are normal people who have studied memory techniques and perfected those techniques. If you're interested in reading more about such champions and how they got to be where they are, check out books by Dominic O'Brien, or "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer.

Memory techniques have to be learned, yes. That's an investment you have to make in order to make remembering in the future much easier. Check out my guest post on The Polyglot Dream website if you're interested, it's entitled "The Laziness Paradox" and it's very relevant to this discussion.

Cheers!