Memory, Mnemonics & Learning English From LEP#167

hello everybody and welcome to the podcast today we're going to take a journey into the palace of the mind we're going to venture into the deepest parts of your brain and in the process we're going to clean it up brighten it up sweep out the cobwebs and make it a much more effective place for learning and remembering english so have a glass of water take a deep breath and get ready for a brain upgrade because this episode of the podcast is all about memory mnemonics and learning english english has one of the largest vocabularies of any language in the world which is quite an overwhelming prospect for those of you who are trying to learn all the words or even just a portion of them like the commonly used ones but it's not just the words it's the phrases the idioms the spelling the rules of grammar it's a challenge but you can do it the question is how well let's look into it in this episode we'll be looking at ways to improve your memory and some specific mnemonic devices for remembering english vocabulary and spelling so strap in this is going to be a useful one with the methods in this episode you'll be able to remember massive amounts of vocabulary and you'll be able to remember the spelling for loads of difficult to write english words the techniques i talk about here are all well-known methods used by lots of people including some of the most famous brains in the world the illusionist darren brown is an example he's famous for being able to remember vast sequences of information and he uses this technique in his magic shows then there's the world famous detective sherlock holmes i know he's not a real person but in the modern tv adaptation called sherlock starring benedict cumberbatch he uses a mnemonic device known as a mind palace in order to remember all kinds of information which allows him to solve deeply complex criminal cases you can create your own mind palace too or just use memory techniques to help you remember names of people at a party business contacts telephone numbers lists of phrasal verbs all the way english words are spelled and pronounced we'll be looking at all of these things in this episode these are all tried and tested techniques and i invite you to try them for yourselves even if you've never considered the idea of improving your memory they're a lot of fun and surprisingly useful and you don't need to try very hard to just play along i don't want to go on about it too much but if you just listen it'll be quite entertaining but you'll get the most benefit from actually trying these things yourself and if you can do that if you just try to apply the memory techniques in this episode it could transform your english learning in a really exciting way you might need a pen and paper so that you can join in with some of the activities first i'll talk about some advice for learning english more effectively based on mnemonic devices i'll give you a summary of what i've learned from reading about this subject then i'll outline some specific systems for remembering lists of things such as a shopping list people's names the order of adjectives in english for example or lists of vocabulary then we'll go through some specific mnemonics for remembering english spelling which can help you to improve your spelling massively so just to explain a mnemonic is a method of remembering something it's just a memorizing technique mnemonic is an interesting word it has slightly slightly weird spelling it's spelled m-n-e-m-o-n-i-c but the first m is silent so it's actually pronounced mnemonic now in fact there is a mnemonic device for learning the spelling of the word mnemonics and it goes like this the basically the the first letter of each uh word in this sentence spells the word mnemonics so if you can remember this sentence in a meaningful way then it can help you to remember how to spell the word the sentence is mnemonics now erase man's oldest nemesis insufficient cerebral storage okay mnemonics now erase man's oldest nemesis insufficient cerebral storage so the first letters of the the words in that phrase all spell the word mnemonics say it again mnemonics now erase man's oldest nemesis insufficient cerebral storage cerebral means of the brain and storage which obviously means where things are stored or kept now i've discovered while reading about this subject that the key aspect of mnemonics seems to be that you have to push the things that you're trying to remember deep into your mind and make links to things that you already already remember well so it's about linking things to existing memories okay the more personal the connection to that word the more likely you are to remember it but how do we do it this means creating an image in your head and making it as vivid and clear as possible attaching some kind of narrative or story to it or connecting it to an already existing deep memory i guess this is because in your brain there are electrical pathways the brain is like an electrical system each electrical pathway is a connection to that word okay now the word really exists in in like physical sort of synapses in your brain brain cells okay your brain cells are the things the physical things that actually hold information so as i said each electrical pathway is a connection to that word so it's it's a way for your brain to access that particular bit of information so really the more electrical pathways or connections that you have to something in your brain the more likely you you are to be able to access that thing later and remember it okay so how does this relate to learning english well let's see if this confirms that you're already learning in the right way or if there are some new approaches that you can pick up all right first you should really engage with the learning process don't let information just go in one ear and come out of the other it has to go deeply into your brain in quite a personal way so as a learner you need to put yourself and your personality right into it and become an active member of your class if you're studying in a class with a sense of independent responsibility for your own learning remember that the stuff that you're studying like vocab or grammar is not just abstract information but something that involves you in a very personal and specific way so you're right there in the heart of the the language that you're learning okay so we're talking about personalizing new words think of examples or definitions of new vocabulary in a way that is meaningful specifically to you or to your life okay so when you're learning new words put yourself into the examples of vocabulary that you use imagine that you're living these words and phrases somehow picture yourself acting it out maybe if i teach you a phrase like to doze off meaning to go to sleep just imagine a time when you were really really tired and can hardly keep your eyes open even though you really want to stay awake then imagine yourself reacting to that by saying oh god i keep dozing off okay so put yourself in that emotional or physical space and then use the word it's likely to create a much more reliable connection to that phrase imagine people that you know in your examples of new grammar or vocabulary and vividly picture something familiar to you when you're trying to remember the words bring the language to life in your own head create stories with the new language involve you your friends or family in these stories and make them very vivid colorful and dramatic like my pink gorilla story for example you could make your own pink gorilla story and aim to include lots of new language in it you could perhaps think of very familiar places like your own home or the street in your town that you know very well and you can then add examples of phrases or language being used in that environment it's much more likely to stick with you if you do it when you're trying to practice using new grammar or vocab don't just make a random sentence make a sentence which you really feel or you really mean obviously this is not always possible for example if you're doing an exam practice exercise in a book or if you just have to play with the grammatical structure of a phrase quickly and just to learn how to to to use it structurally in that case you might just have to sort of dash off a quick sentence with the phrase in it for structural purposes but at some point you should aim to use that phrase to express something meaningful and personal to you this works for teachers as well when explaining new words try to give vivid examples bring the expression to life the more vivid and colorful the better if you can try to attach some personal element to it put yourself in the example perhaps if you need to use the the third person pick a real person like like a celebrity or someone in the class rather than just a name i know it's it's it's not always possible to think up these vivid examples or you can't always share personal details but just remember the more lively and vivid the example the easier it is for the students to internalize it also might encourage them to personalize personalize the language enthusiastically to when it's their turn to use the language i know as i said it's not always possible to do this sometimes when you're on the spot as a teacher or maybe as a student and you just have to come up with an example sentence it's not always possible to use one that involves you in your own life i mean for example i often just sort of pick random names i sort of talk about john or jeff or jane or something but i think it it's becomes a lot more memorable when the example seems to be real either because it involves you the students or a celebrity that everybody knows new words can be quite abstract so try making them familiar by attaching them to things that you already know for example the english word maybe the english word that you're trying to learn looks a bit like a word in your language or perhaps it reminds you of somebody's name or something like that you can then associate the english word with that name from your language and it sticks in your mind more effectively for example the japanese word for apple is ringo lingo okay i always remember this i always remember the japanese word for apple i in my pronunciation it's ringo but in japanese it'd be like an ingot okay i always remember this because ringo of course is one of the beatles he was the drummer in the beatles and the beatles record label is called apple so now i think of an apple and i think of the beatles and i think of ringo and so ringo that's how i remember that the japanese word for an apple is is ringo right now this method is common sense really but we often don't we often just don't apply these techniques to remembering things as much as we could instead we often just try to cram information into our into our head without doing it in a meaningful way and as a result we just fail to remember things i mean i'm thinking of examples i often see students trying to remember word lists and what they do is they just kind of go through the list and just sort of read each item in the list and hope that somehow the words are going to stick or they cover up the word and try and remember the next one that can help just remembering a sequence but you'll find you'll definitely remember them more if you make those words relevant and meaningful to you in us in some way we'll talk about remembering a sequence in a moment because there is a specific technique for doing that so this also works with names okay at a party for example we all know what a nightmare it is to remember names of people you're meeting at a party or at a business conference or a dinner party or something so when you are when you're introduced to someone as soon as you get their name you must make a point of connecting that name to something you know well for example if the person's name is john just imagine him with john lennon okay imagine this new john standing with john lennon or maybe just imagine this guy wearing john lennon glasses you know those round glasses that john lennon used to wear just imagine this new john wearing a pair of john lennon glasses maybe with long hair you could imagine him walking across abby road like on the front cover of the abbey road lp john like john lennon perhaps you have another friend called john so you can imagine the new john and the other john together maybe having a fight it could be like street fighter 2 you know john versus john round one fight hello john hello john hello how are you john perfect perfect perfect john wins now you won't forget it will you if if you do those things you definitely wouldn't forget it now um you do have to do that in your head i realized that in the dinner party you might be focusing on just trying to communicate and you know be polite and so on but just very quickly you can just create a an image in your mind maybe of this john playing guitar with john lennon or something and that hopefully will help you help the name to stick i do these things with my students they don't realize but i'm actually in my head creating connections between their names and things that i'm already familiar with and it works i remember their names and it helps me a lot so you could do that with everybody at the party or everyone at the business conference and you will remember their names and you'll have fun doing it just remember not to tell them okay for example if you get drunk a little bit later at the party don't go up to john and say to him hey john how's john lennon how how are all the other beatles hey when's the new album coming out john john i love you john don't don't do that that would be embarrassing sometimes though this memory technique does work against me i have a student at the moment called charles okay and to me he looks just like roger federer the tennis player he looks exactly like roger federer for me sometimes i call him roger by mistake and he has no idea why i keep calling him roger i haven't explained that i think he looks like roger federer and and that's because he doesn't really look enough like roger federer for everyone else to agree with me they'd probably just think i was weird and i'm supposed to be a professor you know anyway there's there's just something federer-ish about this student so i do mistakenly call him roger sometimes even though his name is charles so what i need to do is imagine federer meeting prince charles and perhaps being knighted by prince charles you know i pronounce you sir roger federer of switzerland you know i can imagine him being knighted by prince charles for being such a great tennis player and there we have roger federer and prince charles that should help so next time i should make the connection between federer and prince charles now you might think that remembering all these connections is actually more complex than remembering the individual words or names themselves you might think well if i just have to remember one name why do i also have to remember an entire story surely it's more simple just to get that one name into my head but that's not really true because we're just making connections to things that already exist in your head okay so all the the other details like the story prince charles they actually or they're already there and you remember you remember them all so you're not having to introduce new things you're just attaching a single new word to things that are already deeply in your in your mind the more connections that there are the more likely you are to remember the words words that exist with no connections at all are just lost in space in your brain disconnected and missing you see words like to hang out with other words they're all connected in some way so it's worth remembering that and people often draw mind maps you know when they're remembering vocab they actually draw a mind map which is a way of creating a visual representation of the connections between words and this is actually a very good vocabulary learning strategy rather than writing your words in a list you can write a mind map where you draw circles and lines uh which indicates the connections between words and and so on it it can help people to learn new words when they find out the origin of those words as well often words have a backstory so in all these mnemonic devices the words that come up a lot seem to be these ones vivid personal funny and weird okay so vivid personal funny and weird vivid means that it's very very bright okay basically very bright very clear very colorful personal you know what that means funny you know what that means too weird of course just means strange bizarre odd okay so these are the key aspects of an image that you create in your mind or a mnemonic device so when you're linking a word to an image you have to make it vivid personal funny and weird and that's how you really lodge the word deep in your brain you could probably create a mnemonic to remember that vivid meaning bright and clear personal meaning related to yourself or something that you know personally funny just something that makes you laugh and weird something bizarre out of the ordinary and strange now i'm just imagining the simpsons like homer simpson just glowing because they're vivid you know they're bright yellow and they have these big bulging eyes this very vivid image they're funny obviously i mean at its best the simpsons is one of the funniest shows on tv in english i'm not convinced it's as funny in other languages but in english it is generally hilarious sometimes so it's definitely funny they're personal because it's about a family and we know them very well we've grown up watching the simpsons on tv homer marge bart lisa and maggie we know them very well so it's quite personal and they're weird because they're yellow and that's strange they only have four fingers and the sense of humor in the show is quite bizarre also they've been on tv for 20 years and yet they've always stayed the same age bart has never grown up that's pretty weird so vivid funny personal and weird you could maybe use the simpsons in your images if you like those those four things though are the key qualities for mnemonic images so i've just given you some quick memory techniques for learning english as they occurred to me but let's have a closer look at some specific tried and tested memory techniques and mnemonic devices so let's have a look at some specific memory systems these might seem like pretty weird techniques but as i said earlier if you just listen to this you won't get the full benefit you'll just enjoy listening to it as entertainment so i invite you to try them for yourself because only then will you realize just how effective these things are it can make a huge difference to your life actually let's listen to a short presentation from the university of western sydney this video is available on youtube and also you can find a link to it on my website of course this video is about five minutes long and it clearly explains some mnemonic systems the guy in the video speaks with an australian accent it's not a very strong accent but you might be able to notice the way he says some words like the numbers one to nine for example i would say one two three four five six seven eight nine in australian accent it might be like one two three four five six seven eight nine nine i'd say nine he might say nine see if you can identify a difference okay so let's listen to the presentation from the university of western sydney about some mnemonic systems students often struggle trying to remember certain types of information mnemonics are memory strategies that make remembering information a bit easier transforming tedious texts into vibrant memory they increase your ability to remember difficult or unfamiliar information they are most useful for learning information where there is a sequence you need to learn in a particular order such as lists names or numbers let's look at some common mnemonics acronyms acronyms are when a word or a term is created from the first letter of each item to be remembered a well-known acronym is roy g biv which has helped many students remember the colors of the visible spectrum that's red orange yellow green blue indigo and violet acrostics acrostics are another popular mnemonic that's a complete sentence or series of words in which the first letter of each word stands for something to be remembered my very educated mother just served us nachos helps to remember the planets in the solar system in order from the sun mercury venus earth mars jupiter saturn uranus and neptune and passing exams may be difficult at school helps to recall an order of operations in algebra parentheses exponents multiplication division addition subtraction the peg system the peg system is useful for remembering numbers it uses keywords which are represented by numbers for example one equals bun two shoe three tree four door five drive six sticks seven heaven eight gate nine wine ten hen to remember the speed of light is one hundred and eighty six 000 miles per second imagine an iced bun one walking through a gate eight made of sticks six one eight six image mnemonics when the information to be recalled is constructed in the form of a picture that enhances memory the crazier the image the more likely you are to recall the relevant information you don't need to be an artist as long as you know what your drawing means you can use an image mnemonic to remember bat the depressant drugs barbiturates alcohol and tranquilizers you could draw in your notes a depressed bat that took barbiturates alcohol and tranquilizers if you needed to remember the name julie gilmore visualize a fish with large gills wearing jewels chunking chunking is another method it involves grouping individual pieces of information together in a way that makes them easier to remember for example the individual digits 1 8 4 and 6 are easier to recall as the year 1846 or a shopping list might be more easily remembered when items are grouped together by food categories such as drinks or vegetables mind maps mind maps are a visual pattern that can create a framework for improved recall they consist of a central word or concept around this central word or concept you draw the four to ten main ideas that relate to that word you then take each of these words and again draw out the main concepts that relate to that word be creative and use different colors symbols pictures or acronyms to help organize ideas a major benefit of mind maps is that they vividly and accurately show relationships between ideas they also help you to understand a concept from the broad and general to the very specific the keys to making mnemonics more memorable are use positive or humorous images funny and weird images are easier to remember exaggerate particular parts of the image to help it stand out vibrant colorful images are easier to remember than dull drab ones the key thing is that mnemonics should clearly be associated to the concept being remembered it must be vivid enough to be easily recalled when you think about it these are just a few examples you can use to enhance your memory but there are hundreds of examples on the internet or you might have some fun just creating your own okay so a number of different techniques mentioned there let me just summarize just to make it clear so he talked about acronyms that's a word each letter represents something for example roy gabiv red orange yellow green blue indigo violet roy khabib i used to use roy gibb as a memory technique when i was a kid at school i didn't really realize i was kind of employing a method but it helped roy gabif i just imagined a guy called roy who was very colorful he wore lots of bright colorful clothing roy gabif and the surname is quite a fun one to say it's quite unusual and it's got that fun kind of plosive sound in the middle which is quite uncommon roy gabif acrostics that's a sentence in which the first letter of each word spells out the thing that you need to remember the peg system that's where for example words represent numbers and then you can create an image using those words it helps you to remember a number numbers on their own are quite abstract unless you can attach those numbers to other things image mnemonics i've talked about this with the john lennon example from earlier on chunking grouping individual bits of information together to make them easier to remember this helps with vocabulary because words are often grouped together so you shouldn't just remember a word but remember a whole chunk or group of words for example whether that word is followed by a particular preposition or verb form for example mind maps we've already talked about this but you can make your own mind maps and you can make them as personal as you like create any kind of connection between words that will help you to remember them at my university course i have to remember some details of the assessment procedure for my course students often ask me for some reason they can't remember it themselves so they're always asking me they should remember and i definitely have to remember basically the grading system was continual assessment which included lots of different criteria and it was all the different criteria that were fairly hard to remember especially when i had to just come up with them off the top of my head so the different criteria would be things like their development through the course their english in a presentation their attendance absences and just the way in which they took part in class so to be honest it was quite hard to remember those five items and to say them all very quickly but i managed to group it together i came up with a system i called it the five p's the five p's and i came up with words that represented those things and they all began with a p so the five ps progress presentation presence punctuality and participation and that helped me to remember it and it also helped the students to remember too so whenever anyone asked me about the assessment i could say it's the five ps remember the five ps progress presentation presence punctuality and participation now knowing that there were five things and that they all began with a p allowed me to quickly recall and summarize the assessment type in the middle of a lesson now let's go on to look at the linking system i did mention this briefly earlier on the linking system this can help you to remember lists of apparently unrelated items it could be a list of nouns it could be a shopping list i've taken this explanation from a book actually and it's a really great book called tricks of the mind by darren brown who i mentioned earlier and who in my opinion is one of the world's best illusionists and a bit of an expert on mind control techniques hypnotism and mentalism right he's very interesting because he he deals with the subject in a very common sense and scientific way without all of the mysticism which often accompanies this subject so if you're interested in the subject i suggest that you get a copy of tricks of the mind by darren brown it's it's a great book full of really practical scientifically based approaches for mentalism mind control hypnotism and other stuff like memory techniques so let's have a look at the darren brown memory list then okay we're going to do an experiment here and it this is from darren brown's book okay so let's let's try this memory improvement experiment later on you will need a pen and paper but you basically you have one minute to remember um these 20 things okay i'm just going to list the 20 things let's see how many of them you can remember the first one is telephone telephone second sausages sausages third a monkey a monkey fourth a button fifth a book sixth cabbage seven glass eight mouse nine your stomach ten cardboard eleven ferry twelve is christmas thirteen is athlete 14 is key 15 is wigwam 16 baby 17 kiwi 18 bed and 19. paint brush and finally 20 walnut okay now let's see how many of those things you can remember if you have a pen and some paper you can now try and write down as many of those things don't go back just try and write them down in order okay so we're just gonna you can pause here while you try and write them down all right so i'm assuming that you've paused and let's continue all right so how many did you remember i wonder how many things did you manage to write down so if you've got between one and five things then you probably need to learn how to do this technique if you got between five and 18 items that's pretty good but you can definitely improve and if you got between 80 and 20 items then it means that you probably already know this technique now let's go into it in a little bit more detail shall we okay so here's the technique in a nutshell we're going to take a word and find a visual link with the word next to it so not just any picture that happens to link them but one that involves the following criteria okay has to involve these things in your in your picture right and the criteria is first the picture should be vivid that means that you need to take a moment to clearly see the picture in your head once you've decided upon it also let yourself emotionally engage with it for a moment if the picture is amusing look at it and find it funny okay all right so vivid clearly clear emotional funny all right now if if it's disgusting if you've chosen a disgusting image you should actually find it repulsive oh some people don't think they can visualize anything but if you think you're one of these people don't worry there's no proper visualization process involved it's just easy you just just picture it in your head right imagine you're looking at a photograph of it okay the second item second criteria is the elements of each picture should interact so picturing a and b just standing next to each other won't really work if a could could be doing something to b you know if they could be dancing or doing something together that's much better they need to interact with each other all right so you've made a picture of the item and then you make that picture very vivid and then you picture the the next item on the list and they're interacting in some way doing something funny meaningful emotional something like that and you really feel the the you really feel something when you see this image so it could be something violent or something ridiculous for example the picture should be unusual if you have to link the word man with the word cup for example you may be able to vividly imagine those two things interacting but the picture might just be too normal such as a man drinking from a cup bit boring and normal the picture will be more memorable if perhaps the man and the cup are interacting in a really extraordinary way okay so maybe the the man is trying to drink from a giant cup into his face or there's a tiny little man trying to get out of a massive cup before some hot tea gets poured on top of him okay that's a much more vivid image and therefore will will make your your brain remember it okay so bear those points in mind while reading these things okay so here are just some ideas of ways of connecting the items in the list first we had telephone and sausage so you could imagine trying to dial an old-fashioned telephone using a flaccid uncooked sausage it feels revolting and it's cold to the fingers it's utterly impractical to work the old dial of the telephone with this flaccid limp sausage i can maybe get the dial around a little bit but then it breaks you know the sausage starts to fall apart it's disgusting it's frustrating trying to dial a telephone with a sausage that's not what sausages were invented for okay the next thing is sausage and monkey you could imagine watching footage from a wildlife documentary of a monkey in the jungle and it's cooking sausages on a barbecue just making a fry up having an english breakfast these are very rare monkeys and this is the first time that they've ever been filmed maybe you could think of a name for them they could be the the english breakfast monkey okay and next to him he's got some ketchup and some brown sauce as well just a monkey in the jungle cooking up a sausage lovely monkey breakfast next thing you have to remember is monkey and button now you no longer have to spend valuable time doing up your own shirt buttons no that's not necessary because you now have a trained monkey to do such things you stand there in your socks and the monkey does up all the buttons with his clever little monkey fingers so you've got like a monkey servant you can call him the button monkey and it's his job to to do up your buttons on your shirts in the morning there you go so that's monkey and button imagine the monkey doing up the buttons with his clever little monkey fingers all right next thing is that the butt the word button and the word book okay so this is a book and it's all about buttons it's a special button book and in order to open it you have to unfasten a line of very big colorful buttons down the side of the book it's extremely impractical and it makes opening the book really difficult you you love buttons and you want to read about this buttons in this button book but in order to open the book you've got to undo all of these buttons and you're going to need your button monkey to do that but he's too busy cooking a sausage a sausage which certainly should not be used to dial a telephone all right okay so there you go we've got the button and the book the buttons all down the book next was book and cabbage so cabbage is a kind of green vegetable okay so imagine opening opening a book to have a quiet read at lunch time just have a bit of a read you're going to flick through your book and you you discover that the cover and all the pages have leaves of horrible rotten stinking cabbage stuck to them so the pages have got all the cabbage stuck to the pages it absolutely stinks and the book is ruined you can't read it you can't enjoy it you're frustrated because someone has stuck loads of cabbage between the pages of your book okay next thing was cabbage and glass okay imagine a beautiful but enormous cabbage it's it's and it's been realistically created out of glass it's in an art exhibition or something and the artist is there proudly showing off his his glass cabbage you know he's flicking it with his fingers ting making a pinging sound he's showing off about how great his cabbage glass sculpture is ping and everyone is standing around with glasses right they're all drinking glasses of wine and they're all going ping on their glasses of wine and there it is this huge glass cabbage but you think it's ugly you don't understand why everyone else thinks it's brilliant because what's so great about a glass cabbage nothing except that it goes ping when you flick the edge of it next is the word glass and the word mouse okay so you got to drink a glass of wine so you've drunk a glass of wine in fact you go to get a glass of wine but you find that all the wine is gone and instead instead there is a at the bottom of the bottle of wine there's a mouse and the mouse is completely drunk and he's having a great time he's having a little mouse party at the bottom of the the bottle okay you know he's just partying at the bottom of the wine bottle because he drank all of the wine okay he's covered in wine and actually he looks like he's having a really good time so that's the the wine that's the glass and the the mouse all right next is mouse and stomach okay all right so unfortunately we have to imagine something disgusting imagine that you've eaten a mouse and the mouse is inside you it's actually running around inside you squeaking you know the way my squeak well you're stuck your stomach is making all sorts of noises because you've got a mouse squeaking inside you i know that's quite a horrible image but imagine that imagine that you've got a tummy full of squeaking mice which then when you least expect it come pouring out they come pouring out of your throat because it's so disgusting mice everywhere because you ate one mouse and they multiplied inside you and you've puked up loads of mice everywhere it's a disgusting image it really is but mouse and stomach there you go all right next two items you have to link the word stomach to something else let's see what the next word stomach was next word was cardboard so imagine a pregnant lady who's covered her stomach with cardboard from old boxes so she's a pregnant lady she's got all this cardboard and she's taping it around her okay she's she's attached lots of cardboard all around her so that she now feels safe she's all protected because she's covered up her her belly with cardboard you know cardboard it's that brown card they use it to make boxes you know when you out of the behind the supermarket they throw away all the cardboard boxes well there you go that's what cardboard is so some pregnant woman has collected all this cardboard and she's wrapped it around herself and she's taped cardboard around her stomach and now she feels all safe because she's got cardboard all around her stomach all right next next words were cardboard and ferry a ferry is a boat okay basically the boat that it's like a boat usually that takes you across a stretch of the ocean like a couple of hours it's just a boat for transporting people cardboard and ferry imagine an image of a huge ferry sinking in the sea because in a spectacularly misjudged move to save money they they they made the the ferry out of cardboard okay so it was a huge mistake they thought we need to save money on ferries we're going to make our ferries out of cardboard and no one thought that it was a bad idea and so this ferry it's like the titanic is just sinking because the whole thing's made of cardboard as people are trying to escape in in boats dinghies but they're unaware that they're just made from paper okay the whole boat is made of cardboard and we all know that cardboard absorbs water so it doesn't doesn't really work does it now i could keep going with this i could keep going with this but i i hope you can remember this sequence and just see it as a as a way of effectively remembering now if i kept going and if you had done this originally i'd i expect that you would have remembered a significantly higher number of words than you than you did the first time around by linking them all up ideally you would actually make them all into a story and that's that's an even better way of remembering words going back to my phrasal verbs what you could perhaps try and do is create a story like every month okay so every 30 days or every 31 days have a look at the phrasal verbs that i've done for that month and put them in a list and then just try try and create some kind of story which links which has a link between all of the phrasal verbs in it or at least a story which features all those phrasal verbs as regular things in the story i might do that i think that might be an interesting way to for me to help you remember all those phrasal verbs maybe if i get the chance i'll try regularly to upload an episode in which i try and improvise a story in which i use all of the phrasal verbs actually i think that's a very good idea and i might be doing that if i get the time phrasal verb the phrasal verb chronicles i could call it interesting okay now let's move on to another technique and this is the idea of the mind palace now this is what sherlock holmes uses in the tv show it's an amazing idea apparently you can remember massive amounts of information if you create your own memory palace this is a massive space in your own head where you keep memories it works by making connections to a place that you know really well it could be your house for example or the route that you take to work if you know it very well or a part of a city that you know well or your school building or something so you imagine that you are walking around this place and in key spots in key places you plant a very vivid image of each thing that you're trying to remember so if you're walking around your house you might enter the front door and there is a hook where you normally put your coat and instead you hook something else onto it it could be you know the thing that you're trying to remember and then you you go past this chest of drawers and on top of that you place another item that you're trying to remember so all these key places you put an image of the thing that you're trying to remember in each place and then all you need to do is then walk through this room or through this building and in each keep key place you've you've established each item to remember so it's locking in your memory of the of this location with the things that you you want to try and remember okay now all you need to do is imagine walking around the place and you'll remember everything and also when you're doing it you can say hold on let me go into my mind palace which sounds pretty cool especially if you're a sherlock holmes fan let's hear darren brown talking about how he uses his mind palace okay let's just have a little listen to darren talking about his mind palace i realized this episode is going to go on for a little bit but that's all right because you can just pause it come back to it listen to it in stages okay let's see the mind palace of darren brown one of the things that fascinates me is this idea of a memory palace i i love it and the idea is that you if you want to remember a lot of information it can be anything from you know a shopping list to a speech to a whole discipline of information or your address book you know it can be anything is you you turn those pieces of information into things that you can visualize into pictures preferably things that are sort of bizarre and very memorable and then you you put them in an environment that you know very well so if you used your home as long as you're not changing your furniture around too much you could use your home and you could go on a mental walk through your home and then in each room you'd put so if you're gonna first of all you're gonna go into the hallway and there's a whole stand you can put i've got to remember to take the suit to the dry cleaners so you'd put a image of a bright gleaming white suit on the whole stand and then the next thing i'm going to do is buy some stamps and so you know the next route would take you into the front room and maybe you'd end up in a room like this and you'd look around and you'd seem to be full of chase long for some reason this is not where i live the tasteful leopard print shows along there might be the first thing you'd come across so you'd put the next thing you have to remember on that maybe reclined on it again you'd find some funny or bizarre way of imagining it the next thing maybe on this one maybe you'd work clockwise around the room things in the corners next to things that you know won't move and you as long as the route is something that you'll you don't have to think twice about and as long as the images you make are in themselves memorable and funny or whatever and so on then all you do is you just mentally wander around that thing and you know you immediately see the big white gleaming suit on the whole stand and then you walk into the room and you've got the thing next thing you know you don't have to think about those things anymore and i use it all the time i have a route up my street that you know if i'm falling asleep at night and things i need to remember to do the next day but can't be bothered to write them down because i'm falling asleep i start to plot them against shops that i know going up my road i have a mental map of central london that i'm plotting the history of art into because i just thought that would be a lovely thing to have a real grasp of then it could be wines or anything that you've things with a lot of information that just difficult to sort of sit down and learn so in a way it's a device for stopping people losing a sense of themselves losing a sense of what's important to them i think so yes memory policies were used for for spiritual development you know they weren't just used for memory you would store experiences and you would store wisdom really in these environments that then you could wander around and draw from i suppose it will and that really did build build a person it's a lovely interplay of sort of memory and personality that's an interesting concept the interplay between memory and personality the idea that your memory is not just where you keep useful information but it's also a key to your identity as well it's like the things you can remember about yourself your your experiences so memory is so deeply important it's very interesting now let's look at spelling mnemonics okay mnemonics for remembering how to spell words now i realize i may have left the best until last here because now we're going to look at lots of common mnemonics for difficult spelling in english don't forget you can read all of this on my website which is teacherloop.wordpress.com so let's get started i've taken this list from wikipedia actually and i've added some of my own as well so let's look at mnemonics for spelling in english so the characteristic sequence of letters so here's one i always become i always comes before e so i always comes before e but after c e comes before i okay in most words like friend field peace pierce mischief thief tear it is i which comes before e but on some words with c just before the pair of e and i like receive perceive or receipt e comes before i and this can be remembered by the following mnemonic i before e except after c i before e except after c repeat it it'll help you to remember it i before e except after c and it's memorable because it rhymes i before e except after c okay all right so as a general rule you should spell words with i and then e but if you have c it's e i but this is not always obeyed as in the case of some words like the word weird weird w-e-i-r-d so you can say i before e except after c except for weird but weird is just weird isn't it you know there are other words though like way weight height neighbor and this can be remembered by extending the mnemonic like this i before e except after c or when sounded a as in neighbor way and wait or when sounded like i as in height and weird is just weird another variant which avoids confusion when the two letters represent different sounds instead of a single sound as in atheist or being runs like this when it says e as double e put i before e but not after c wherever there is a q there is a u too wherever there's a q there's a u2 most frequently u follows q for example in the word q queen question quack quark quartz quarry quit peak talk macaque exchequer so they all have q followed by u hence the mnemonic wherever there's a q there's a u2 this is violated by some words and you can actually see a list of those words by clicking on the link which you'll see on my page if you're following this so when two vowels go walking the first does the talking this is really useful when two vowels go walking the first does the talking all right so that would be for words like oat or eat oat that's oat eat is e80 that here the second letter is a and that's silent so it's the first letter o and e which are pronounced in the examples okay so oat the o is the the vowel which dictates how you pronounce it and eat it's the e so when two vowels go walking the first does the talking all right all right now let's have some letters of specific syllables in a word for example believe the word believe believe is spelt b e l i e v e so there's the word lie do not believe a lie do not believe a lie that will help you remember the spelling of believe because it has the word lie in the middle l-i-e do not believe a lie okay secretary or secretary secretary has the word secret in the middle secret in fact at the beginning the first half of the word is is the word secret so a secretary must keep a secret okay a secretary must keep a secret the word principle principle uh the principle is your pal pal p-a-l pal means friend the principal is your pal so you remember that principal has p-a-l at the end okay so if you had like a really cool groovy principle in your school you could say i'm trying to put the pal back in principle okay yes trying to put the fun back in fundamentalism doesn't work next one is the word teacher teacher which has t e a c h e r so in the middle list there is the word ache you know like headache stomach ache that's a c h e ache teacher has the word ache in the middle so you could say there is an ache in every teacher it's true isn't it there's an ache in every teacher what kind of ache probably a headache from the stress maybe heartache you know for some some reason because you know teachers often tend to be quite artistic romantic people the next one is measurement measurement m-e-a-s-u-r-e m-e-n-t so in the middle there is the word sure measurement so it says be sure of your measurements before you start work you should be sure of your measurements and there you can find the word sure in the middle of the word measurement help you to remember how to spell measurement friend friend ie well there you have i before e okay friend but you can also say a friend is is always there when the end comes because at the end of the word friend you have end a friend is always there when the end comes okay all right fry you have at the beginning fri at the beginning of friend so when friday ends you go out with your friends yeah okay uh special special is spelt with the letters c i a so s p e c i a l c i a criminal invest criminal investigation agency the cia have special agents beautiful beautiful beautiful is a difficult one to spell because it's spelled b e a u t i f u l beautiful and it could be big elephants are ugly big elephants are ugly b-e-a-u big elephants are ugly okay slaughter slaughter difficult one to spell but you'll see in the middle of the word slaughter you have the word laugh in fact laughter okay t e s-l-a-u-g-h-t-e-r so l a u g h is the word laugh slaughter is laughter with an s at the beginning that's it pieces pieces p i e c e s pieces and pieces has the word pie at the beginning p-i-e pieces of a pie a piece of pie there you go assume assume and this is a classic one this one assume that's when you just think something without really knowing whether it's true or not you just imagine that it's true okay for example you know i assumed that it wouldn't be a problem and people sometimes say well when you assume you make an ass out of you and me you make an ass out of you and me so an ass a double s and then u and then m e assume don't assume because when you assume you make an ass out of you and me all right it's just how you remember how to spell assume separate separate s-e-p-a-r-a-t-e um okay difficult one but you must remember that in there's the word rat or a rat okay s-e-p-a-r-a-t so the word a rat is in the middle always smell a rat when you spell separate or separate always smell a rat okay there was a farmer named sepp and one day his wife saw a rat and she re and she shouted sep a rat ee okay okay distinguishing between similar words what's the difference between advice and advice practice and practice license and license okay advice is the noun advise is the verb advice is ce at the end advise is essie at the end practice is the noun practice with a with an s is the verb practice with the c is the noun license with a c is the noun license with an s is the verb okay advice practice license those with c are nouns and advise practice and license are verbs with an s so one way of remembering this is that the word noun comes before the word verb in the dictionary n okay comes before the the letter v in the dictionary all right so it's in order likewise the letter c comes before the letter s so the nouns are practiced licence and advice and the verbs are practice license and advise so you just remember that there's a corresponding sequence in in in order of the letters okay so the nouns come before the verbs the nouns are spelt with the c which comes before the s which is used to spell the verbs all right here or here here meaning not there but here right here where we are now and here meaning sorry i can't hear you here and here we here with our ear okay we hear with our ear so when you're listening we use e-a-r here with our ear all right okay complement and complement okay so complement with an e that's c-o-m-p-l-e-m-e-n-t adds something to make it enough it adds something to make it enough and complement means to put you in the limelight okay compliment it's got the word lime in it to put you in the limelight that's a bit of a complicated one principle and principle remember your principal that's the person is your pal and a rule can also be called a principle rule are you l e l e at the end and principle l e at the end so a rule can also be called a principle they both have l e at the end sculpture and sculptor sculpture is is the the work of art that's made by a a person the person is the sculptor the work of art sculpture is spelt u r e okay at the end t-u-r-e and you could say a sculpture is like a picture picture is also spelt t-u-r-e at the end this list goes on and on i'm gonna just keep flying through it let's let's move on to the first letter mnemonics of spelling okay these were acrostics okay so let's let's look at the word diarrhea shall we it's not a very nice word it's certainly not a very nice thing to experience diarrhoea you know when you eat something bad you might have food poisoning you have to keep going to the toilet to do poo it's not nice okay so diarrhea it's usually an emergency isn't it like oh god i've got to get to the toilet quick i've got diarrhea help you wouldn't shout that you probably wouldn't shout help i've got diarrhea i could explode at any moment i wouldn't advise shouting that out in a public place you should probably just say um sorry excuse me could you show me where the toilet is i just do need to go to the toilet rather quickly anyway diarrhea very difficult to spell d-i-a-r-r-h-o-e-a what is what's the h doing in the middle of that and how many vowels do you need in a word d-i-a-r-r-h-o-e-a diarrhea now how do you remember that you could say dashing in a rush running harder or else accident dashing in a rush running harder or else accident all right or dining in a rough restaurant hurry otherwise expect accidents oh my goodness dining in a rough restaurant hurry otherwise expect accidents i suppose that tells the story of someone who got food poisoning from dining in a rough restaurant hurry otherwise expect accidents all right next one is diarrhea is a really runny heap of endless amounts diarrhea is a really runny heap a heap is like a pile of endless amounts diarrhea is a really runny heap of endless amounts arithmetic meaning sort of like mathematics you know counting adding numbers up arithmetic t i a-r-i-t-h-m-e-t-i-c a rat in the house may eat the ice cream a rat in the house may eat the ice cream lots of rats and mice involved in this episode of fluke's english podcast today i hope you don't have any phobias or anything a rat in the house may eat the ice cream arithmetic a red indian thought he might eat tulips in class that is a bizarre one a red indian thought he might eat tulips in glass it's bizarre but maybe memorable you can imagine a native american eating a flower in in in holland i don't know necessary ah very tricky one to spell n-e-c-e-s-a-r-y necessary i always remembered this one in school as never eat cereal eat salmon sandwiches never eat cereal eat salmon sandwiches n-e-c-e-s and then a-r-y here we have not every cat eats sardines some are really yummy not every cat eats sardines some are really yummy never eat crisps eat salad sandwiches and remain young it's quite a good one because because b-e-c-a-u-s-e big elephants can always understand small elephants i like the logic of that that big elephants can always understand small elephants why big elephants are more intelligent because they're older i suppose bigger brains big elephants could always understand small elephants big elephants cause accidents under small elephants what how how does a big elephant get under a small elephant surely it would be the other way around doesn't really make sense big elephants can't always use small exits true that's very true if there's a building let's say you're having an animal conference you've got all the animals around maybe you've got you know like right okay that's the end of the conference see you next time all the animals leave and there's just a big elephant left at the end and you say why are you still here mr elephant and he goes well i can't fit through this the exit it's too small well how did you get in here oh don't ask so many questions big elephants can't always use small exits and then the next one is big elephants can't always use small entrances either so yeah surely if they can surely this the exits um example doesn't make sense because surely if they can't get in how are they supposed to get out big elephants can't always use small entrances because geography geography g e o g r a p h y all right there's a lot of consonants george's elderly old grandfather rode a pig home yesterday george's elderly old grandfather rode a pig home yesterday geography now what is the connection between geography like countries and stuff and george's elderly old grandfather riding a pig home yesterday it's certainly a vivid image the next one is the word tomorrow tomorrow t o m o double r o w not double m double r and here's how you remember that one trials of my old red rose over window what trail sorry trails of my old red rose over window okay i don't get that one you just have to remember double r old red rose maybe red rose that might help if you imagine a red rose tomorrow someone's going to bring you a red rose tomorrow that's a nice thought rhythm rhythm we've got melody harmony and rhythm it's difficult one r h y t h m and it's a good one here rhythm helps your two hips move rhythm helps your two hips move maybe you can just use this as an excuse to think about who's that colombian superstar i've probably got people all around the world going shouting out the name of this this person shakira that's it this is just a good excuse for you to imagine shakira's hips moving to the rhythm because rhythm helps your two hips move okay i think that's probably a good it's probably a good time for me to just stop uh this episode because it's not going to get much better than shakira's beautiful colombian hips moving to the rhythm because rhythm helps your two hips move it's not going to get much better than that folks in this episode so that's the end of it i think you'll all agree that this has been a stunningly useful exploration into the mind memory learning techniques and the ways in which you can improve your recall of focab and don't forget that this will really work best for you if you try these techniques you don't have to use them all just try some of them just think of situations in which you're having trouble remembering things see if you can just add some of the techniques that i've looked at in this episode remember to keep it vivid keep it weird keep it funny and personal and attach memories to to things that you already remember make connections and that's that's a really good meaningful way of memorizing stuff and i'm sure it's going to help you learn all those phrasal verbs that i've been teaching you okay don't forget you can leave your comments and questions in the comments section for this episode and there'll be more of this kind of thing in the near future so like like the page on facebook follow me on twitter and tell your friends about luke's english podcast for now though it's goodbye bye bye

Channel: Luke's English Podcast

Views: 64,969

Rating: 4.9584055 out of 5

Keywords: learn, learning, english, lesson, lessons, luke, podcast, luke's, vocabulary, native, speaker, interviews, listening, pronunciation, british, accent, london

Id: bDfyVlQqhmQ

Length: 68min 53sec (4133 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021