The Power of Memory

How To Boost Your Memory Power

Language learners know how time-consuming and boring it can be to memorize new vocabulary. Learning lists of words can be mind numbingly tedious and for a lot of learners is the part of language learning that they enjoy the least. To make matters worse, research has shown that rote learning is one of the least effective ways to retain new vocabulary. So not only is it boring, but all that time and effort spent reading, repeating, reading and repeating again is actually pretty much a waste of our study time! But what can we do to relieve the boredom, and put the fun and excitement back into memorizing new vocabulary?

Mental Energy

When we want to learn new words in a target language, the thing we all know instinctively is that it takes effort. Simple memorization focuses all our mental effort on the process of mentally repeating the words over and over. so all the effort is concentrated on one process. This is the least efficient use of mental energy! Instead, we should spread out the mental effort over several kinds of process. Let’s say you want to learn a new word. There are a few tasks you should complete to help you remember.

How to Memorize…

First, think of a sentence that includes the word, shows the meaning of the word, and that means something to you. So if the word is ‘milk’, you could think of a sentence like this:

‘I drank lots of milk when I was a kid, but I don’t even take milk in my coffee these days’.

Then write the sentence down, and say it out loud, and visualize yourself as a child, drinking a glass of milk, and as an adult, pushing away a jug of milk as you drink your coffee.

Why does it work?

What’s happening here? How is this different from rote memorization? Well, by thinking of a sentence that shows the meaning of the word, you are engaging more parts of the brain. You are accessing long term memory rather than just short term memory. By personalizing the sentence, you are going even deeper into your the brain’s networks of meanings and relations, and this has a powerful effect on memory. Visualizing the actions in the sentence lets you access the visual cortex, a very large part of the brain which is known to aid in memory development and retention. Next, by writing down the sentence and saying it out loud you engage your motor system (when you move your arm and hand to pick up the pen and write with it) and your auditory system (when you hear yourself speak the words).

The sentence you thought of has meaning to you – it’s relevant to your life. you could make up more sentences that relate to your family or friends or to topics that interest you, your hobbies, or anything else you want. Just the fact that you get to choose the topic means that you are more more engaged with the word than you would be if the topic was given to you by a teacher or a textbook. It’s much more interesting for us to talk and think about things that we find familiar and pleasant that topics that mean nothing to us.

Make ‘fun’ your study partner!

So you can see that by changing the task, you can use your brain in so many different ways. You will remember new words quicker this way, and remember them for longer too! You won’t get bored so easily while studying, so you will end up learning more in each study session than if you use boring techniques. Use the tendency for humans to engage better with familiar and fun topics to help you learn faster and more effectively! Remember: in language learning, fun should be your study partner!