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Memory Techniques How To Improve Your Language Learning Part 2

Why not try to making learning a language easier for yourself?

I have always remembered how to spell the English word “because” through the simple mnemonic ‘Big elephants can always upset small elephants’

The brain needs a little help along the way sometimes and the science proves this. The cortex system or the “advanced” part of the brain brain is divided into two halves, the left and the right. The left is used for words, logic, number, sequence, analysis, lists, detail and the right for rhythm, spatial awareness, gestalt, imagination, colour and dimension. If you can link the two sides of your brain in your learning you have more likelihood of getting the information to ‘stick’ and of transferring the information from the short term memory to the long term. That is why colour-coding, mnemonics, mind-mapping, listing and chunking words into groups, putting groups of words to a rhythm or chant or bouncing a ball while saying the words are all so effective: both sides of the brain are working together, words with music, sequence with imagination, lists with spatial awareness.

Try these simple methods:

The Link Method

Here you are using images to link a word in your language with a word in a foreign language. The English word carpet is ‘tapis’ in French so you imagine a carpet with a picture of a tap woven into it. The English word for trousers is ‘Hose’ in German, so you think of a man wearing trousers and watering his garden with a hose. You can play around with this for all language learning. It works!

The Town Language Mnemonic

This method is very useful for learning vocabulary of everyday things. Choose a town or city you know well and use objects within that place as the cues to recall the images that link to the word you want to learn. The image coding the word for a book, for example, could be associated with a book on the shelf in the library. Different parts of the town contain the image and the word you want to learn. Your brain goes on a journey around the town to retrieve the word. Adjectives could all be in the park; blue, fast, cold and your verbs could be in the sports centre; jump, go, lift, eat.

The Story Mnemonic

This is an excellent method to remember a sequence of words (such as a verb list) or a sentence structure and word order. Make a story in your head using the words in that order, for example the verbs that have the auxiliary verb “to be” in the perfect tense in German (stay, drive, go, come, climb….). When I was staying at the Ritz, I drove out of London and went to the……

Help your brain to help itself!

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