How to Build a Memory Palace for Language Vocabulary

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A memory palace is a mnemonic for recalling information by placing vivid associations along a familiar route. It can help with some vocabulary and phrases, but it is not a shortcut to fluency. You still need retrieval, listening, reading and speaking practice.

This guide shows you how to build a simple palace, add useful associations and test whether they help you recall the right words.

Plus I’ll explain how Abraham Lincoln can help you learn faster.

What Is the Memory Palace Technique? Let’s Talk About This Specific Mnemonic

A mnemonic is a learning device that helps you recall difficult information.

A memory palace can help you organise words and phrases as a sequence of retrieval cues. Start with a small set and test what you can recall without looking at your notes.

If the term “Memory Palace,” isn’t right for you, many people use other terms, including:

• memory castle
• mind castle
• mind palace
• method of loci

I’ve even heard language learners who use memory techniques call this approach the “vocab journey.”

We’re not going to get hung up on the terminology, but I prefer the term Memory Palace because of how St. Augustine associated what we’ve learned with treasure.

And let’s face it:

There’s nothing most of us treasure more than being able to speak a language.

The Scientific Case for Mnemonics

Research gives the method of loci a promising but qualified result. A 2021 meta-analysis of 13 randomised controlled trials found a medium improvement in recall, while also reporting a high risk of bias in much of the evidence. A newer review reached a similar broad conclusion but warned about heterogeneity, publication bias and low confidence in precise effect sizes.

That makes a memory palace a useful option, not a perfect technique or a guarantee. It is best for material you can turn into distinctive images and retrieve in a clear order.

See the 2021 meta-analysis and the newer systematic review for the evidence and its limitations.

Memory techniques don’t apply only to languages that stem from English. James Heisig has helped many students learn Japanese using mnemonics by using an approach similar to Benny Lewis’s for how he learns new words.

If Mnemonics Work, Why Don’t More People Use Them?

Mnemonics add an extra step: you have to create an image and then learn to retrieve through it. That can save time for some items and waste time for others. Start small and keep only the associations that work for you.

Examples from another person may not be memorable to you, so adapt the method to your own places, interests and associations.

The Ancient Story Behind the Memory Palace

The familiar origin story comes from ancient Roman writers. Cicero and Quintilian tell how the poet Simonides supposedly remembered where banquet guests had been sitting after the roof collapsed, which allowed their bodies to be identified. The sources disagree on details, so treat this as the traditional story behind the method, not a dated historical event from “556–468 BC”.

The practical idea is what lasted: use ordered places as cues for ordered information.

You can read the ancient accounts in Cicero and Quintilian.

How Does a Memory Palace Work?

A Memory Palace is an imaginary construct in your mind that’s based on a real location. If you can see your bedroom in your mind, then you can build a Memory Palace.

Within your Memory Palace, “stations” are locations like a bedroom or sitting room and the space between them is called a “journey”. As you build your Memory Palace, you will leave words and phrases at these stations and then pick them up later on when you take a journey through your palace.

You do not need a perfectly vivid mental picture. Use whichever details you can recall reliably: position, sequence, movement, sound or a rough visual image.

In whatever way feels natural, just think about where your bedroom is in relation to your kitchen. Consider how you would move from the bedroom to the kitchen. Take note of the doors, hallways and rooms along the way.

As an example, this image is a simple drawing of a high school I attended:

Each station in this Memory Palace has a number. These numbers are for creating a top-down or numbered list of the stations in the Memory Palace.

Create Your Memory Palace In 4 Easy Steps

Step 1: Choose a familiar building and draw a floorplan.

This can be your home, a school, church or movie theatre. It can be any building so long as you know it well enough to draw a floor plan.

Step 2: Form a linear path through the floorplan.

Do this before you number your stations. Memory Palaces work best when you don’t cross your own path or lead yourself into a dead end.

Don’t cram every possible station into your first palace. Include the obvious locations like a bathroom, bedroom, living room, kitchen, as well as an entry point.

Here’s an example of the same Memory Palace with arrows:

Notice that my journey is simple and linear. Because I know this location well, it is almost nothing for me to think about as I move from station to station.

You should select buildings with which you have a similar level of familiarity.

Step 3: Make a top-down list of those stations in linear order.

This step is useful for testing purposes. Here’s an example of how you can create such a document:

Step 4: Review your palace.

At this point, you should have:

1. a floorplan of a familiar building
2. a linear path drawn on the floorplan that does not cross itself
3. designated a starting point and exit point
4. numbered the stations
5. written the top-down list
6. walked through the Memory Palace (floorplan) several times so you can see or recall each station.

Congratulations on constructing your first Memory Palace!

How to Use Your Memory Palace

Now, it’s time to learn how to place words and phrases on each of the stations in your Memory Palace.

To use the palace, pay attention to the word or phrase, create an association that links its sound and meaning to a station, then practise retrieving it without looking at your notes. Retrieval, not simply placing the image, is the test.

1. Paying attention in a special way to target words and phrases.
2. Encoding the sound and meaning of information using imagery and action so each word or phrase becomes memorable.
3. Retrieving the word or phrase from the image, then checking it against your source.

To encode your information, create images that are large, bright, colorful, weird and filled with intense action. You can stick the images to a station in your Memory Palace and revisit them at any time.

Tip: exaggerate this imagery so that you can retrieve them by drawing on sounds and meaning.

For example, tengo para dar y regalar means roughly “I’ve got more than enough” or “I’ve got plenty to spare”. Would you find that phrase immediately memorable?

Probably not.

But what if I told you I’d seen a strange performance of a tango dance with Darth Vader tangled up in a parachute? And, in his frustration, he’s trilling an “r” with his tongue through his breathing grill while trying to share an egg with his dancing partner. She herself is a giant egg and also tangled up with Darth Vader in the parachute. She says, “no thanks, I’ve got plenty.” Darth Vader responds, “No really, I’ve got plenty to share.”

Are you able to see that scene in your mind? It’s such an unusual image that chances are you can.

Next, imagine this scene taking place in your bathtub. Really concentrate on the elements. This is the kind of outlandish image and sound-based story you need when you bring your mind back to your bathroom tub and decode it.

The equation here is:

Tango + para(chute) + Dar(th Vader) trilling “r” and handing off a r”egg”ular = “tengo para dar y regalar”.

The scene gives you a retrieval cue. Revisit it, test yourself without the written prompt and use the phrase in speech or writing. If you cannot retrieve it later, revise the association rather than assuming it has entered long-term memory.

Notice how, in this example, I’ve tied sound to meaning using the images and actions. It’s not just that Darth Vader trilling his “r” and handing off an egg helps recall the sound of the word. The action also helps regularize the meaning of the word in the context of the phrase.

Use Your Own Associations

These examples come from my own interests, so yours should look different. Familiar people, places and references can make an image easier to reconstruct, but you still need to test whether the cue brings back the right word.

Small connecting words may need their own cue if you keep dropping them. Let your recall test decide rather than assuming they will take care of themselves.

Enter Abraham Lincoln!

We can take things further and make the combination of a Memory Palace station like a bathtub much more useful using another technique: a bridging figure.

A bridging figure gives you one more cue for grouping images, but it is optional. Use it only if it makes recall easier rather than adding extra work.

Ideally, your bridging figure should be a person you already remember.

For example, I use Abraham Lincoln for words that start with “A.”

In this example, you can see Abraham Lincoln assisting me with the memorization of four Spanish words using a journey in my old office in Berlin.

Bed – Abajo: Abraham Lincoln smashing to”ba”cco into a banjo “down below” his feet.

Desk – Abrir: Abraham Lincoln tearing a hole in the “rear” of his pants to reveal an “ear.”

Wall – Abuela: Abraham Lincoln says “boo” in Grandma Ella Fitzgerald’s ear. My Grandpa shouts “lo” (abuelo) and pulls Ella away. She says ,”los” as they pair up (abuelos).

I recommend focusing only on the words that interest you the most and that you think you’ll use.

In other words, you don’t have to memorize an entire dictionary like Dr. Yip to get great results by reaching your vocabulary building goals.

Practical Tips for Using Your Memory Palace to Master a Foreign Language

1. Build a well-constructed Memory Palace using the principles you’ve just learned.
2. Relax. Memory techniques work best when you’re mentally and physically free from stress.
3. Memorize a selected list of words, ideally in alphabetic order.
4. Catalog the words, meanings and mnemonics either by hand on paper or in an Excel file or the equivalent.
5. Remove yourself from your written record or Excel file and all other materials that might cause you to cheat by looking up the meanings of each word.
6. Write out the words and meanings based on your memory on a piece of paper. Don’t worry if you miss a word or your associative imagery fails to trigger the sound and meaning of a word on your list. You can fix this later.
7. Check the list you produced from memory with your record.
8. Use these words in conversations, write them into a ten-sentence email and keep your eyes and ears open for them as you read and listen to your target language.

Use a Memory Palace Alongside Other Practice

Related Learning: The Best Way to Learn a Language (Scientifically Proven, Polyglot Tested)

A memory palace works best alongside other practice. Build a small route, add a limited set of useful words or phrases, retrieve them without notes, and then use them in speaking, writing, reading and listening.

The method takes practice and will not suit every item. If a cue becomes more work than the word itself, use a simpler tool such as spaced repetition.

If you want a practical system for organising and reviewing vocabulary, Vocab Vault can help you turn those words into regular retrieval practice.

Original article by Anthony Metivier, updated by the Fluent in 3 Months team.