Reading and repeating words or rules a few times may not be enough, but bringing attention to them and creating associations that can empower our brains to easily recall them when needed, is reassuringly successful- the greater the association we can create between the new words and things we already know. In‘ Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything’, Joshua Foer( 2012) writes that,“ As bad as we are at remembering names and phone numbers and word-for-word instructions from our colleagues, we have really exceptional visual and spatial memories.” The Method of Loci or Memory Palace mnemonic approach corroborates this. Its first remembered iteration is said to have been when the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos, identified some of the dead after an earthquake, because he recalled where each person had been sitting, when he left a banquet early.
In our Mandarin department teachers recognise how challenging Chinese characters can be for learners due to the complexity of their strokes. To aid students in memorizing these intricate characters, they encourage them to see the pictures in the pictographs
These visual associations not only enhance students’ accuracy in writing but also make the learning process more enjoyable. They often express delight in discovering that Chinese lessons can simultaneously be an art class. Next steps naturally include students seeking out their own pictorial associations.
In Modern Languages at Sevenoaks, we listen to how words are pronounced and see if the word or any parts thereof sound similar to those in our native tongue. Creating associations by linking these sounds to words we already know is an effective place for a personalised mnemonic to be born, given the ease and spontaneity with which we can create an image from a word, often using the first thing that comes to mind. To go one step beyond and remember what it means, we may need to add and combine images and add some action. Shiffrin and Nosofsky( 1994) described‘ pronounceable labels that may be cycled within short-term memory’. Redintegration, the restoration of a whole from a part, is a memory phenomenon: a process where a memory fragment,( part of a complex stimulus) triggers the recall of the entire original stimulus or experience. Images clearly hit memorisation‘ bullseyes’ far beyond this example: Lidia Stanton’ s Tricky spellings in cartoons books are landmark texts. A favourite I’ ve also used in my co-curricular drumming workshops is:
( shān): resembles three mountain peaks and means mountain.
( yǔ): looks like raindrops falling. Its meanings include rain.
( Image shown from the author Lidia Stanton’ s Twitter share)
( yú): reminds us of a fish swimming. It can mean fish among other things
( niǎo): depicts a bird perched on a branch and means just that.
One of our Chemistry teachers is renowned for his enthusiasm for mnemonics, yet his original awareness of them came from a History teacher at school, helping him memorise the 100 most important events in History( according to him) using memory aids. He finds mnemonics are notably useful for learning the many lists inherent in Chemistry: Monsters Eat Peanut Butter for the first four alkanes and so on. He encourages students to invent their own, to give that personal‘ catalyst to the reaction’ of the encoding in the brain, such that students are more invested in them too.
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