Topic 5: Remembering Foreign Vocabulary - Introduction

Extending Your Memory Skills

In the previous section you learned how to remember names and faces by associating a person's name to his or her face. In doing this there were two factors involved - the name and the face.

Most memory tasks can in fact be viewed as associating together two factors - a name to a face, an author to a book, a composer to a piece of music, a telephone number to a person or organisation, a capital city to a country, and so on. Even when forming a long Link, for example when you memorised the imaginary shopping list, you were still basically working with just two items at a time.

The Universal Principle

The same principle can be applied to remembering foreign vocabulary. In order to memorise any foreign word, you simply associate the word to its meaning in English. To do this you will first need to form a Substitute Word or Phrase to help you picture the foreign word.

Language Learning Examples

French

poulet

chicken

"pulley"

Picture a gigantic chicken operating a pulley with buckets containing more chickens

French

poisson

fish

"pass on"

A monstrous, evil-smelling fish being continuously passed around a dining table

French

escargots

snails

"S cargo"

An enormous snail pulling a trailer full of letter S's - an 'S' cargo

If you really try to see those absurd pictures, the system just must work for you!

More Language Examples

Esperanto

felica

happy

"feel itchy"

Being very happy and laughing while feeling itchy and scratching yourself

Welsh

moron

carrot

"more on"

A waiter keeps putting more and more carrots on your plate until you're buried in them

When you have formed your silly mental picture, just thinking of that picture must remind you of the two things you need to know - the foreign word and its English meaning.

Why This System Works

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Forced Concentration

Creating substitute words requires intense focus on both the foreign word and its meaning

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Universal Application

Works with absolutely any language, no matter how complex

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Rapid Improvement

With practice, you'll create associations almost instantly

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Creative Learning

Turns boring memorization into engaging mental imagery

Of course, it does take a little time to come up with appropriate Substitute Words and silly associations. But if you have ever tried to learn foreign vocabulary from a text book without a system, you will appreciate how valuable this method really is!

What's Coming Next

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Tutorial 6

Takes you through a detailed example of memorising ten Spanish words and their English meanings.

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Tutorial 7

Demonstrates that the system works not just for foreign words, but also for foreign phrases.