I once learned that memory of names, words and concepts is facilitated by 2 things; mind pictures, and associations with any created subject, story, name or event.
The core principle being that the more strange, fantastical and unrelated the relating image might be, the more effective it is on recalling the exact desired word or idea.
I have 2 examples. 1. My Italian wife named pur daughter Tatum. When we went to Italy to introduce Tatum to her family, aside from her sister's remarking her disappointment in the none Italian/non-Christian name, all the family immediately pronounced it with the Italian soft a and hard u, making, "Tahtoom"
This drove me crazy and I could not get them to untie their tongues, no matter how I /we explained it.
Then one day while trying to read the Italian newspaper, I noticed the headline with a word containing the letters tey. I asked my wife how that was pronounced. She said, "tay," or "tey," both being the same in English. I then told my wife to tell her family to imagine Tatum's name as if it was spelled, Teytum. She did that, and BINGO! All got it right. Problem solved. When we returned to Tucson a month later, I went to court and had her name legally changed , birth certificate and all, to Teytum.
Another: I used to work in a hospital. I had many blood draws for various reasons. There was one phlebotomist named Lilly whom I liked. She prefered the name Lil, but I seemed to always forget her name. She always had several pieces of jeweley on and pretty colors. So. I remembered stories about a famous prostitute in the old west named, "Diamond Lil". Thereafter, whenever I saw Lilly in her "diamonds" I remembered "Diamond Lil" and never for got her name again.
A lot to take in, and a lot to learn. When I have learned (and retained, which is not always the case) a language, I have always done it by hand. When I teach ESL, the same way. My Leitner Box method is somewhat different than most because what I am trying to accomplish is to necessarily "repair" the harm that HS or college students have been faced with, esp. in repressive countries. Long stories there, but when I get students of a certain age, they are either prickly or distrustful until I can show them some progress. In authoritarian countries such as Uzbekistan, North Macedonia, Albania, Iraq, Oman and others, students are openly chastised for their mistakes...often to the point of verbal assaults. So, that's a horse of a different color.
Without going into too much detail, I do have my students prepare cards with one concept or retrieval method on (or for) the card. Sure, it may mean I have several cards with the same word, but one might be a series of collocations or phrasal verbs/adjectives, and another might simply be an image or a doodle made by the student themselves.
My system uses a "seven day" SRS system that works amazingly well. I challenge myself (if I'm learning) or my students to tell me that, after first hearing or seeing the word on day one that, by the end of day seven, that they are convinced that that word or phrase will never again need to be looked up in the dictionary or any other reference source. Here's how it works; I will use a simple "definition card" example as the approach here:
Each day I or my students start anywhere from three to ten cards, depending on confidence levels. Each day has one aspect added to the card. These are all "retrieval based" cards, whether they are definitions, audios, phrases/chunks, colloquialisms/slang, etc. So, let's say my aggressive students want to do ten cards a day.
By the end of the week, the student has started 70 cards, and completed 50 of them (five exercises done during the week for each new card, with the last two days of review. Each day, each of the seven slots receives 10 new cards, and the progression never stops (unless you take a day off or something).
I could write the procedure down here, but the entire initial SRS review phase takes no longer than seven days. I have a secondary system, whereby each set of 10 cards is retired starting on day 8 to a secondary system that reviews each set of ten cards on a succession of review after one week, then one month, then one quarter, then...retired for good. At any time during this entire process ANY CARD can be brought back into the system, but has to be reviewed according to the day it was brought back to.
My best students and myself take no more than two days off a month, which equates to 28 days on average, or 280 new words, phrases, concepts, images, whatevers generated each month.
I have been studying French under Dr. V's system for over two months now, and have about 610 cards in my system. Not only are they retrievable, I use no fewer than two hundred of them on a daily basis in some form or fashion.
Come Thursday, I'm excited to see what new joys she has in store so I can incorporate them into my system.
I once learned that memory of names, words and concepts is facilitated by 2 things; mind pictures, and associations with any created subject, story, name or event.
The core principle being that the more strange, fantastical and unrelated the relating image might be, the more effective it is on recalling the exact desired word or idea.
I have 2 examples. 1. My Italian wife named pur daughter Tatum. When we went to Italy to introduce Tatum to her family, aside from her sister's remarking her disappointment in the none Italian/non-Christian name, all the family immediately pronounced it with the Italian soft a and hard u, making, "Tahtoom"
This drove me crazy and I could not get them to untie their tongues, no matter how I /we explained it.
Then one day while trying to read the Italian newspaper, I noticed the headline with a word containing the letters tey. I asked my wife how that was pronounced. She said, "tay," or "tey," both being the same in English. I then told my wife to tell her family to imagine Tatum's name as if it was spelled, Teytum. She did that, and BINGO! All got it right. Problem solved. When we returned to Tucson a month later, I went to court and had her name legally changed , birth certificate and all, to Teytum.
Another: I used to work in a hospital. I had many blood draws for various reasons. There was one phlebotomist named Lilly whom I liked. She prefered the name Lil, but I seemed to always forget her name. She always had several pieces of jeweley on and pretty colors. So. I remembered stories about a famous prostitute in the old west named, "Diamond Lil". Thereafter, whenever I saw Lilly in her "diamonds" I remembered "Diamond Lil" and never for got her name again.
Great story about Lil. Did you ever get around to telling her how you remembered her name? I mean, before she smacked you? lol
A lot to take in, and a lot to learn. When I have learned (and retained, which is not always the case) a language, I have always done it by hand. When I teach ESL, the same way. My Leitner Box method is somewhat different than most because what I am trying to accomplish is to necessarily "repair" the harm that HS or college students have been faced with, esp. in repressive countries. Long stories there, but when I get students of a certain age, they are either prickly or distrustful until I can show them some progress. In authoritarian countries such as Uzbekistan, North Macedonia, Albania, Iraq, Oman and others, students are openly chastised for their mistakes...often to the point of verbal assaults. So, that's a horse of a different color.
Without going into too much detail, I do have my students prepare cards with one concept or retrieval method on (or for) the card. Sure, it may mean I have several cards with the same word, but one might be a series of collocations or phrasal verbs/adjectives, and another might simply be an image or a doodle made by the student themselves.
My system uses a "seven day" SRS system that works amazingly well. I challenge myself (if I'm learning) or my students to tell me that, after first hearing or seeing the word on day one that, by the end of day seven, that they are convinced that that word or phrase will never again need to be looked up in the dictionary or any other reference source. Here's how it works; I will use a simple "definition card" example as the approach here:
Each day I or my students start anywhere from three to ten cards, depending on confidence levels. Each day has one aspect added to the card. These are all "retrieval based" cards, whether they are definitions, audios, phrases/chunks, colloquialisms/slang, etc. So, let's say my aggressive students want to do ten cards a day.
By the end of the week, the student has started 70 cards, and completed 50 of them (five exercises done during the week for each new card, with the last two days of review. Each day, each of the seven slots receives 10 new cards, and the progression never stops (unless you take a day off or something).
I could write the procedure down here, but the entire initial SRS review phase takes no longer than seven days. I have a secondary system, whereby each set of 10 cards is retired starting on day 8 to a secondary system that reviews each set of ten cards on a succession of review after one week, then one month, then one quarter, then...retired for good. At any time during this entire process ANY CARD can be brought back into the system, but has to be reviewed according to the day it was brought back to.
My best students and myself take no more than two days off a month, which equates to 28 days on average, or 280 new words, phrases, concepts, images, whatevers generated each month.
I have been studying French under Dr. V's system for over two months now, and have about 610 cards in my system. Not only are they retrievable, I use no fewer than two hundred of them on a daily basis in some form or fashion.
Come Thursday, I'm excited to see what new joys she has in store so I can incorporate them into my system.