تکنیکی برای افزایش کیفیت حفظ کردن

056 - A Memorization Technique that Works!

Hello there, Kevin here with another episode of the Feel Good English Podcast, the only podcast that is helping you become a more fluent and confident English speaker while also becoming more confident and fluent at life.

A question for you, how do you learn new English vocabulary? How do you memorize new expressions and phrasal verbs in English?

Do you have a system for this? Does it work? Or are you somebody who struggles in memorizing new vocabulary?

In today’s lesson I’m going to talk about a book that can help you memorize things freakishly fast. In the book “Memory Palace” by Lewis Smile we learn about something called loci memory or also called spatial memory. This is a system … It’s been around for thousands of years and it’s going to help you permanently and quickly memorize new information. This book is short, valuable.

We’re going to talk about the main idea behind this thing called memory palace or spatial memory and also show you an example of how you can apply it to your life and to your English.

Today is a mental exercise, let’s train our brains so we can have big, buff brains along with our big, buff muscles. If you don’t have big, buff muscles that is totally fine, too, but a big, buff brain, that’s important.

By the way, if you want a transcript to this and other Feel Good English episodes, so you can learn this information more deeply go to FeelGoodEnglish.com and learn how you can become a Feel Good member which gives you access to transcripts, to all episodes of the Feel Good English Podcast. Help yourself, help me, help the world. Go to FeelGoodEnglish.com after this episode and get the transcripts to the show. Now let’s get into the lesson.

The year is 400 BC meaning before Christ, so roughly 2,500 years ago. There was a guy named Simonides who was a poet having dinner with other kings and special people in ancient Greece, so you can imagine big chicken legs and pies and vegetables and wine and everybody’s having a great time. So Simonides for some reason got up and left the banquet room where they were all having dinner. He went outside to do whatever he needed to do, who knows. All of a sudden the building collapsed killing everyone in the building except lucky Simonides. Later when trying to figure out who died because the building collapsed and had crushed everybody, nobody could recognize who was in there, Simonides was able to recall everyone in the building based on where they were sitting. He shut his eyes, he went around the room. This person was sitting here, this person was sitting here, this person was sitting here and he came up with all of the names.

This is a legend, so who knows if it’s true or not, but it is a widely accepted legend. This is the foundation for what is now called memory of loci or think of it as location-based memory. In the book “Memory Palace” which is another name for this we’re using this technique to memorize new information.

Simonides was able to recall people based on where they were and this has a foundation in our evolution. When we were running around the Earth barefooted, hunting dinosaurs … I don’t know about dinosaurs, but when we were hunting animals for food in the world it was a very dangerous place. We needed to know how to get back home. We were running away from a big tiger. Where did we go? We just spent the last few years walking through the forest. How are we going to find our way home? Through evolution we needed to be able to memorize certain locations that would give us signs on where we were, so we could run back, get away from the tiger or the lion or the dinosaur and find our way home.

Over time we have been using this to also memorize speeches.

You’re going to give an hour long speech, how are you going to remember all that information? Well, what we’re doing is we’re memorizing things based on location. In something here … An important word here is mnemonic, a mnemonic device. Have you ever heard that word mnemonic? A mnemonic strategy or a mnemonic device is just a way to memorize information better.

Some examples of mnemonic devices, learning words through music. When you put new words to a melody it is easier to memorize them. Learning English through music is very, very effective.

Another example if you’re trying to learn a list of things you would break down each word from that list, use the first letter, and come up with another word. An example of this is you wanted to learn all of the planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. How are you going to memorize this? One mnemonic device is breaking each word down and using the first letter and coming up with something more tangible, something more creative, something in your mind. For example, my very excellent mother just served us nine pickles. My very excellent mother just served us nine pickles, my, Mercury, very, Venus, excellent, Earth, mother, Mars, just, Jupiter, Saturn, served, us, Uranus, nine, Neptune, P, Pluto, pickles, right. That is a mnemonic device.

Spacial memory, loci memory is also a mnemonic device, so without explaining it too much more let me give you some clear examples of how you can do this and also set up the foundation for how you’re going to create these spacial memories, your memory palace.

A palace is a house. It’s actually more like a castle, a very big, beautiful house. What we’re going to do is take your house or your apartment. We need to create spaces in this apartment, specific locations and use specific items to create new memories. We’re going to take new information. It could be a vocabulary word, it could be an expression, it could be a list of things. You have a variety of options, but whatever it is you need to take new information, make it tangible, not just a number or letters, but make it something real and connect it to a space.

By the way, the more creative you are, the more vivid you are, the more crazy these images are, the easier they are to remember, so this is very unique. If my examples don’t make sense to you that’s just because it didn’t connect with you, but you can do your own.

Taking my apartment, I live in an apartment in Denver, Colorado (there’s some personal information). In my bedroom there’s a bed, there’s a chair, there’s a desk, there’s a dresser, there’s a closet, all of these things exist in my room and I know exactly where they are.

The next thing you’re going to do is create a sequence of events.

The sequence in this is very important. You’re going to create an action process, something you’re going to do and you’re going to focus on each item or each location in sequence, in order. In a bedroom I wake up, I’m in my bed. I look over to the right in a chair, something happens. I jump out of bed and I run to the desk and I jump onto the desk. Then I do something on the desk which makes me then leave the bedroom and so on, so there’s a sequence. You always have to follow the same sequence. A little clearer, maybe not.

Okay, now what are we going to do? We are going to learn the phrasal verbs that begin with the verb pick. Phrasal verbs as we know are difficult to memorize. Phrasal verbs are verbs that have two words, pick up, pick on, get up, go over, see through, catch up, for example. We’re going to focus on phrasal verbs with the verb pick and we’re going to use this memory palace. The phrasal verbs we’re going to use and let’s choose five or let’s choose four; pick at, pick off, pick out and pick up.

Remember this is imagination, I’m creating this. I’m actually creating it right now, so let’s see what kind of craziness I can come up with here. Come up with, a phrasal verb, to create. I’ve already memorized the room and a sequence, what I’m going to do. This item is here, this item is there, number two, number three, number four. I’m going to do one thing and then I’m going to do two, three, four. If we’re creating different memories, different items, we’re going to use the same sequence just with different visualizations.

Number one, the first phrasal verb is pick at. Pick at, the meaning of pick at we’re going to use here … There {are} two meanings for pick at. Pick at could be with food, you’re eating something slowly, playing with your food because you’re not really interested in eating it. Another meaning of pick at could be using your finger to pull on something because you’re nervous or you have something on your skin and you want it to get off of your skin, so you’re picking at it. It’s kind of gross, but those are two meanings of pick at. I want to learn one of these meanings which is to eat food slowly.

I wake up out of bed because I look over in the chair and there is a monkey picking at his food. He’s eating pizza. He thought he wanted some pizza, but he’s not enjoying pizza because monkeys probably wouldn’t like pizza very much. He’s picking at it, he’s using his finger, he’s kind of just playing with his food. This wakes me up out of bed. It’s obnoxious, I look over in the corner at the chair, this monkey is picking at his food, it drives me crazy. I jump out of bed and jump onto my desk. Because it kind of scares me, too, why is there a monkey in my room?

The next phrasal verb is pick off. To pick off could mean to aim at something and shoot. Maybe you’ve seen this in a videogame, so I’m going to pick off this monkey because this monkey is waking me up picking at its food. I take my gun which happens to be on my desk, it’s convenient, and I pick off the monkey who’s picking at his food on the chair in the corner.

Next I’m going to jump off the desk and leave my bedroom, however, I’m naked because for some reason that day I woke up naked. I need to pick out some clothes, pick out is the next phrasal verb. To pick out means to select, to choose. I’m going to pick out some clothes, so I don’t run out of my room naked because there’s probably other people in my apartment. I pick out some jeans and a shirt, I put those clothes on, put on, another phrasal verb, to put clothes on. That’s number three, pick out clothes.

I then am very worried about having a dead monkey in my bedroom, so I run into the kitchen where the phone is to pick up the phone and call the people that come and pick up dead animals. Pick up is the next phrasal verb, to pick up. Pick up the phone to call the dead animal service. These are very visual to me, I’m memorizing different ones. We have picking at his food, picking off the monkey because I want to shoot him, picking out clothes because I’m naked and I need to leave my bedroom because there’s a dead monkey and going into the kitchen and picking up the phone to call the dead animal service people.

Four phrasal verbs, pick at, pick off, pick out, pick up.As you can see this takes a little bit of time. However, if you think about creating a memory like this for five minutes, four phrasal verbs, getting really visual with this, repeating it to yourself, writing it down, within five minutes you can have new phrasal verbs memorized, four new phrasal verbs. Shoot, you could even do this with one or two phrasal verbs. Learning phrasal verbs little by little is very effective. If we took a list of 10 phrasal verbs and tried to memorize it there’s no space for those words to go to. They’re just words on a piece of paper, very hard to connect, and this is based on evolution, how we memorize things. The way that we are taught in school is directly conflicting with the way that we’ve memorized things in our past, interesting, right?

In the book “Memory Palace” the author uses Shakespeare’s plays as an example and he actually takes you through all of his plays, Shakespeare’s plays, and teaches you how to use this system of spatial memory to memorize his plays. I did it, it worked pretty darned effectively. I’m someone who has had a very difficult time memorizing new information, but this system seems to work with me. Again you can get as creative and imaginative as you want.

This is just in your head, so you could even get dirty and vulgar with your memories, nobody will ever know.

Again a quick review, what does pick at mean? What about pick off, pick out, pick up? Did you see a monkey picking at his food while I picked him off with a gun, then picked out clothes because I was naked and then picked up the phone to call the dead animal service. Maybe, hopefully.

Going over the vocabulary from today’s lesson. The first word you heard in the beginning is freakishly. I say freakishly fast. Freakish comes from the word freak. Freak is like crazy, really surprising.

Freakishly would be doing something that is very surprising or not typical, abnormal. You do something freakishly fast it’s like crazy fast. Freakishly slow, crazy slow or this food is freakishly good. It means it’s so good it’s crazy, it’s hard to understand, definitely a slang word.

The next word, buff. I’m talking about a buff body, a buff brain, buff, b-u-f-f. It means strong, big muscles. You see buff people at the gym looking at themselves in the mirror taking selfies and posting them on Instagram. Those are buff people and we’re doing muscle training and we’re getting buff muscles. We’re doing brain training, we’re getting a buff brain.

The next word, roughly. Roughly 2,500 years ago. By the way, 2,500 is two thousand five hundred. Roughly is approximately, when you’re guessing or you’re giving an approximate number. It’s not exact, it’s roughly. There’s roughly 100 people at this party.

You’re guessing, good word.

To break something down, we’re going to break something down.

It means we’re going to analyze something, we’re going to go into detail about this. We’re going to break this problem down. Let’s analyze this problem. Or we’re going to break this expression down, this new word or expression down. Let’s analyze it, let’s learn more deeply about it.

Tangible, if you make something tangible you take an idea or something you can’t touch or see or feel and you put it into something that you can touch or see. Taking this memory example, if you’re trying to memorize numbers, a big number, that’s not tangible. If you visualized each number as something like one is a baseball bat, the number three is a snake, that would be making it tangible.

A dresser, I talk about having a dresser in my room, so a dresser is the short piece of furniture on the ground where you would put your clothing. Maybe you would have three drawers that come out and you put your clothes in that. It’s on the floor, you put clothes in it, it’s short and it’s like a table with compartments or drawers underneath it. Dresser, you think of dress, getting dressed or you put your dress, your clothes in that. That is a dresser.

The last word, obnoxious. Obnoxious is really annoying, somebody who is really annoying or something that is really annoying would be obnoxious. A monkey in your room picking at his pizza, that’s pretty obnoxious. What are you going to do? You’re going to jump on your dresser, you’re going to pick him off with a gun, you run out of your room, but first pick out your clothing, so you don’t run out of there naked, and then pick up the phone and call the dead animal service.

If this is interesting to you you can find this book on my website, FeelGoodEnglish.com/memory where you can actually download the audiobook for free from a service called Audible.com. You can also just search Google for memory palace, loci memory, l-o-c-i, as well as spatial memory and start putting this to use for English and for other… things.

Again if you want the transcript to this episode go to FeelGoodEnglish.com and become a member. A Feel Good

member gets transcripts to all episodes, past, present, and future.

Go over to Feel Good English and learn how to become a member and check out other things on there. There’s some free content for you to become a more badass English speaker and a more badass person. “Memory Palace” by Lewis Smile was the book for today. I hope it helped and until next time, be brave and keep learning.

Of course, I’m going to leave you with a joke before we go. What do you call a monkey who sells potato chips? A chipmunk.

That’s very deep.

See you in the next lesson.