2 Step Method to Effortlessly Memorize Chinese Words and Never Forget Them

I'm going to teach you this incredibly simple two-step method to effortlessly memorize Chinese words and never forget them I've used this exact method to memorize thousands of Chinese words and I still use it every day to improve my spoken Chinese now the first step is to use pneumonics instead of wrote memorization and there are six different keys to successful pneumonics we're going to walk through in just a moment the second step is something called context the essential perhaps even more important component that allows you to actually use the word accurately and fluently in conversation let's start with step one pneumonics I spent 3 hours every day for 9 months on a website called memorize.com repeatedly reviewing the entire hsk 1:6 vocabulary list after 9 months I could regurgitate every single definition for well over 5,000 Chinese words and pronounce them accurately but I soon discovered a big problem I didn't actually know how to use the majority of these words in conversation and even worse I started forgetting what most of the words meant after a few weeks of not reviewing on the website I was learning words using the worst possible method rot memorization what makes this kind of rote learning so ineffective is a lack of understanding a lack of connection and a lack of context which makes it impossible to relate to the material and hold on to it long term my brain saw all these words as irrelevant nonsense and so promptly remove them from my brain to Safe space for more important things so the question really is how do you become connected and relate to a bunch of squiggles that make up Chinese words the best answer I've found by far over 10 years of learning and teaching this language is pneumonic devices and pneumonic device is one or more connections you create between the new thing you're trying to learn and your personal Memories the more dense with sensory and emotional information the links you create are the more effective the pneumonic will be the perfect pneumonic to learn a Chinese word will contain a personally memorable link for the characters opinion sounds and spellings and definition now ideally all of these are personally relatable and easily summed up using a single mental image that must have a sensory component ideally visual now does this sound overwhelming or even impossible to do in any short amount of time well that's where my six keys to success come in these will make it almost effortless to generate tons of pneumonics and memorize upwards of 100 Chinese words per day easily plus you don't even have to make these pneumonics yourself because later I'll go over how to use chat DBT to make them for you so key number one to the perfect pneumonic is accurate usage so when a word comes up in conversation or while immersing or if you're just starting out building your initial vocabulary using a list of some kind the first thing you need to do is make sure that you know how the word is truly used now for simple nouns like t meaning car this obviously isn't a problem but for more abstract words I like to First first check out some example sentences to see it in its natural habitat you can even put the Chinese word into an image generator like chat gbt or Dary or a straight up Google image search to see how it's represented according to native speakers let's use the word TN as an example now this word can mean to embody or to reflect something it could also mean to appear in certain way often that English definition is not enough to fully understand how it's used so just quickly check some example sentences or have chat gbt provide some and explain it for you even if you just have a rough idea of how the word is used that's good enough to start with and it's better than nothing you will deepen your knowledge of the word further through context later this pneumonic step is just to make the first citing of the word super memorable so it stays in your long-term memory long enough to fully acquire it through repeated exposure later on some words you'll just be able to master them instantly other words will require lots of input and repetitions before they're fully acquired especially words that are slang or have a lot of Pop Culture references involved with them or that just aren't that common key number two is character definition link you want to create a link between the meaning of the characters of the word and the final definition so let's go back to our T example the two characters are t meaning body anden means either present as in present tense right now or to show or appear so we think about the definition here of the two characters and how they relate to the final definition of of to reflect or embody TCN so you could think the way a body appears is how it's reflected in reality and just is a cool thing about this the more foundational knowledge you have of characters and words the better as there is more to draw from so you might not be aware for example that Cen actually has two majorly different definitions and you can use either one of those definitions in creating the neonic device oh do not worry about the real atmology of the word and the characters within the word just look at the definition and try and make some connection of some kind literally in just a few seconds now while I love the logic of this word Tien meaning to embody it's not enough to make a really great neonic so let's add a visual component to it now how could you visually represent the two meanings of these characters body and present or appear and make them interact in some way to produce the final meaning simple word association is the best here so when I see the word body I think bodybuilder the Greek god statue or maybe in Jesus the body of Christ with present what comes to mind when I think of present I think immediately of meditation monks being present and in the moment now for the other definition of sinen meaning to appear or show I think about a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat so all I have to do then is link these two images that represent the two characters and Link it to the final meaning of reflect or embody so the immediate image that's coming to mind for me is a skinny guy meditating with his eyes closed in front of a mirror and he sees in his reflection his muscles getting bigger and bigger and bigger but we're not done there let's move on to key number three sound definition link so if you can add in some sort of link to the pronunciation that's going to further deepen your knowledge and memory of this word now while my visualization of the skinny guy turning into a musly guy while meditating is acceptable for sure it is also ideal to include elements that will represent the pinion spellings or sounds the more connections the better so T is pronounced TI T so just think what links does that come up with for you in terms of other Chinese words pronounced in the same way or a similar way or even other words from English or other languages you know I'm British when I hear T for example I think of a cup of tea so that's my immediate reaction but maybe if I was Spanish I would hear tea and it would sound more like you in Spanish and maybe I would think of a connection based on that you can also use the fact that Chinese has very few pronunciations to your advantage and think of a homophone in Chinese that also sounds like T so for example t means to kick in Chinese or t as in raise a question you can even make a sound connection based on how the word as a whole sounds so T if you say it in a certain way it could kind of sound like teasing so maybe I could connect that in some way to a visual pneumonic device so if I was going to really soup up our nemonic device of the skinny guy meditating in front of a mirror I might include him drinking a cup of tea with a piece of string tea and sinin when he drinks that tea it causes him to become really musly in front of that mirror while he's meditating key number four to make the perfect pneumonic device is personal connection so if you're finding a new Chinese word hard to remember try to relate that word to personal experiences emotions or stories ideally positive ones and the more specific and personalized the connection the better this idea was shown perfectly in a movie that I watched way too much as a teenager called Road Trip the main character Josh has a philosophy exam the very next day that he hasn't studied for and his highly intelligent friend says that he can teach him everything he needs to know in just a day when asked how he says yeah I can teach Japanese to a monkey in 46 hours the key's just finding a way to relate to the material he then goes on to teach Josh in terms of his favorite interest wrestling comparing Socrates to Vince McMahon this beautifully illustrates The Importance of Being connected to what you're learning the more connected you create even artificially the more hooks there are the more hooks there are the more the thing you're learning becomes sticky like Velcro so it's not just some skinny guy turning into some bodybuilder it's a specific bodybuilder he becomes he turns into Arnold swarchenegger and I don't think of just a faceless meditating person I imagine echar tole the guy who wrote one of my favorite books called The Power of Now all about how to stay present the fifth key to creating amazing pneumonics is to not aim for Perfection do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good go fast with this aim to do every single nemonic in just a few seconds and go with your first instinct don't chop and change and second guess yourself so just look at the word think about the characters what they mean and then say it out loud a couple of times and see what comes to you you do not need to add all layers of this pneumonic guide to every single pneumonic device in fact in most situations one of these elements alone will be enough to make that word super super memorable so please don't think that you have to keep adding all these layers with every single word for me new words come up mostly while I'm busy I'm immersing in something I'm listening to an audio book or a podcast so I enter the word or an entire phrase or example sentence into my flashcards and I try and think on the spot of some connection there that's usually enough and if I still don't remember it the next time I will add a new layer to it oh and speaking of layers let's add in the final layer by producing the sixth and final tip use chat gbt or some other AI to come up with an image based on your personal connection now just that process of searching for the image and looking at it is more than enough in most cases but you can also copy that image and put it into a flash card now ideally you come up with pneumonics yourself but if you can't come up with anything after a few seconds maybe a minute tops or you're just feeling lazy then you can use our chatbot here's how let's do it so one what I'm going to do is hit generate and as a word comes up I'm going to make a pneumonic on the fly and walk you through that process yeah one meaning night now this one's really logical so the characters here mean year which means night and one which means evening so I would imagine the characters are really obvious I don't really need to look that up because it's like a a noun it's not very abstract so what I do for this one is I would just imagine the moon and the stars Would Imagine a recent evening I spent outside like with my family in fireworks for example that happened the other day we were using sparklers and stuff I might imagine that evening get some image from chat gbt or something to add to my flash cards if necessary I I might just think of the image in my mind and move straight on but we might want to add a pronunciation element to this so yeah onean now one I think of BS W in Chinese is bow different character same pronunciation yeah I just think of yeah like partying so I think of uh maybe that image of me and my family outside with sparklers but we're we've got some loud music on and we've got some lights going as well and we're all throwing balls around and smashing them because you know it's a Bowl party yeah W all right let's go on to the next one this word has three letters it's more like a phrase technically kaiw sha means to play a joke so to Kai a joke is to just tell a joke or be joking for example in Chinese you might say k Shia K and Shia after you you've told a joke just to make it very clear now you might not know this so it's a good idea to go to your Pleco app and look for some example sentences to see how it's used oh I'm just joking I'm just joking now the three characters involved are Kai meaning open onean meaning play and shall meaning smile so open Play Smile now when I think of open I think of a can like that sound when you open a can so I imagine that there's a bunch of little kids like maybe even my own children I might imagine them sort of standing there still and then someone maybe me opens up a can like that and then they're allowed to start playing and smiling this character could also mean Kaur as into drive a car uh when shout one again means Bowl I could say w as in a bowl I can evolve bowls again for some reason I do that a lot just keep the same Connection in terms of the sound and use it a lot throughout different pneumonics and seia can also mean a ton of different things thank you Chinese for having such few pronunciations and tons of homonyms to work with and homophones so sha also means school like sh sha so again that's connected to children as well so I can imagine a child's playground maybe kids driving around in a car there's all sorts of connections and sometimes you get so many connections that come to you just choose one and it could just be a single one doesn't have to be multi-layered think of an image in your mind and just move on and maybe if K and sa comes up again or you want to say the word joking in Chinese kaan but you can't remember it then maybe your nemonic is not strong enough enough and you need to add another layer and that layer could be referencing the actual thing that you're weak at the thing that you're forgetting so if you're forgetting the meaning then add more elements or more intense elements with more emotional connection in your visualization that represent character meanings and if it's the pronunciation you're not getting maybe add a pronunciation element to your pneumonic ah so that's an interesting one it's quite abstract it means to note down something or really to notice pay attention to and check out the character meanings DW is a very formal way of saying to pour something and e means well meaning or significance so when you're pouring meaning into something now of course that logically just pouring meaning into something saying that out loud is not enough we want to visualize it as much as we can so I would imagine something that comes up that needs to be noticed when I think of that I think of I recently read a book called unreasonable Hospitality all about fstar restaurants and Michelin star restaurants that is the connection that I make when I think of noticing that's hospitality is all about noticing the customers needs so I think of like a really high level waiter noticing everything but that's not enough for me I need to make it visual so I'm thinking of a specific waiter from the movie Ratatouille at the end I recently watched this as well cuz I have a three-year-old son and he loves that movie so at the end of this movie Ratatouille he's running around on Rollerblades and he's serving everyone's drinks really quickly so that is the image that I'm thinking of for this do eat so that's one of the images but what about meaning to pour meaning in something so I I think that comes from the heart like so I imagine him sort of like pouring wine and water just straight out of his own body into someone's drinks in in the restaurant that's kind of a weird sort of image but the weirder the image the easier it is to hang on to and the more memorable it is and it really only takes like a second or two to make these connections now as this is the last word let's also add a pronunciation element to this demonic just to show you how this could be done so again Jew that reminds me of pigs in Chinese is a very common pronunciation I'm thinking of e the number one in Chinese so there's just one big fat pig in the restaurant he's the only customer and this waiter is pouring wine for the pig out of his heart which is where his meaning comes from out of his chest here so let's see what kind of AI image we can actually conjure up with that in mind huh so it connected the word draw with zo zoo in this case and you'll see a unique unique e okay so it's connected the English word unique e uh animal with the pronunciation of e the animal is so captivating that it pours its ideas into your mind making you pay extra attention to it who check that out now that is really cool Your Personal Image and your personal connection though might be even more powerful than this so just remember that your own brain and your own personal life and memories could well be far more effective than any amazingly awesome and cool AI image that this can generate but still this GPT is not only really fun but it can speed up the process for you and we also trained this GPT to give you three more suggestions after the initial one and you can just type in a number say for example you prefer number two like oh visualize a character from the movie zootopia intensely e e as well mean meaningful intensely focusing on a meaningful clue linking to the idea of paying attention so we just put in number two and it will automatically explain that in a deeper way and provide an image for it oh this one says uh zootopia it can't do that because of copyright uh how about zookeeper then so we'll just type in number three picture of Zookeeper paying attention to each animal's needs this scene symbolizes the act of taking notice yeah I actually prefer the original but you get the idea okay so I think we've covered effectively now how to create amazing pneumonics very quickly for Chinese words so now let's talk about step two context now it's important to remember that the goal of everything we've learned in this video so far is not to learn lots of Chinese words our goal is to speak fluent Chinese to use a word fluently and accurately you first need to see and hear that word in an understandable context often many times now I've heard that the average is 10 to 20 times for a word now if that's actually true then by applying what we've covered so far creating amazing pneumonics I'm confident you will massively reduce the number number of times you'll need to see a word to fully acquire it and use it in conversation but you still need to see that word in many contexts to fully make it a part of you let me illustrate how important this is with a little story imagine walking into a random party where you know nobody and someone comes up to you and tells you their name they talk about themselves in a boring way for a minute or two and then they leave now it's highly likely you'll have forgotten that person by the end of the night but now imagine that you walk into a party held by your best friend that you've known since childhood the party is filled with people you've known all your life and your best friend introduces you to someone a 6'10 man with a pink suit and a huge charming smile and that man asks you questions about yourself and you find you have tons in common with each other in fact you went to the same school and you even read a book that this man had written that really helped your business now even if you never met that man again it's likely you would remember the encounter for many years perhaps even the rest of your life life and that's what the first step in this video does for you in terms of learning Chinese words however you don't know that man in The Pink Suit yet this will take more meetings in more context and so it is with words some words just like people are deeper with more nuances that you'll build on over time others are shallower and easier to understand and don't require much effort or time to get in their entirety I see Chinese words as like bars that need to be filled the density of connection the level of personalizations and the quality of the context and the frequency of the review determine how much and how fast that bar fills up and once you do fill that bar up past a certain point that word becomes a part of you pretty much Unforgettable now if you're a beginner you'll start by learning pronunciation and characters then you'll find example sentences using your target words to understand how they are used in context make sure you are immersing consistently everyday in material that you can roughly understand and preferably also enjoy now if doing that plus everything else I've talked about in this video so far by yourself sounds daunting then check out our suite of courses the blueprint in the description below and we'll guide you every step of the way from where you are now to pretty much any level of Chinese you want you can also check out these two videos here for pronunciation and learning characters if you'd like to try and get there on your own

Channel: Mandarin Blueprint

Views: 19,022

Keywords: How to learn Chinese, How to Learn Mandarin, How to Learn Chinese Language, Chinese Video Lesson, Chinese online course, chinese course, learn chinese fast

Id: crhdLJPoGJs

Length: 20min 25sec (1225 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024