How to Develop a Perfect Memory (11 page)

Time travel has many other benefits. One common symptom of people who

don't know how to use their memories is the failure to recall dreams. It is non-sense to say that we don't dream. We all do, every night. It is the brain's way of filing away the thoughts it has had during the day. By exercising your memory regularly, you will begin to recall more and more dreams. (You might even have more wild and untamed dreams! No promises, though.)

Finally, you may wish to use the findings of your archaeological dig for one of your journeys. When I memorized thirty-five packs of cards, I needed thirty-five routes, many of them taken from my childhood.

12

HOW TO LEARN

LANGUAGES

BACK TO SKOOL!

When I was at school, I just about managed to scrape through with passes in O

level French and Spanish. I can't help feeling slightly resentful today about the way I was taught. The ability and good intention of my teachers is not in doubt, but I bitterly regret the methods they used.

If only I had learnt how to train my memory when I was thirteen rather than thirty! I am convinced that I would have sailed through all my exams with top grades, using the principles that you are about to discover. School life would have been so much more productive and enjoyable. The amount of study, for example, would have been halved, freeing up more time to devote to other subjects or interests.

Instead, I progressed with all the speed of a garden snail. I never looked forward to lessons, least of all to language classes. There was no incentive to study, no desire to remember. I felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of

information I was expected to learn, living in perpetual fear of 'vocab. tests' on a Monday morning. And as for exams! At best they could be described as boring. Most of the time they were a nightmare.

My troubles were further compounded by the suspicion that I suffered from dyslexia. The written word was not my natural medium. I could never understand why people got excited about the prospect of lying on a beach with a good book. I equated books with work and effort; they represented the class-room. What chance did I have learning a foreign language if I couldn't even read my own?

RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

To cap it all, I was left-handed. Among other things, this meant that the right-hand side of my brain, which is more concerned with spatial co-ordination and creativity, dominated the left-hand side, which is more concerned with articu-lating speech and comprehending language. It might explain why my passion for music, art and sport far outweighed any desire I ever had to learn Spanish or German.

I am convinced that training my memory over the last five years has helped to develop the left-hand side of my brain, enabling me to become a good 'all-rounder'. My dyslexia has almost completely disappeared. I no longer have a fear of reading, and five years ago I could never have contemplated writing a book like this! Similarly, learning foreign languages has become so much easier.

VOCABULARY

During language classes at school, I was left with the impression that we were expected to learn new words as best we could. There was no instruction or set procedure telling us
how
to go about fixing these strange new sounds in our head or converting them into English. I was told, for instance, that the Spanish for food was
alimento.
How was I to remember this word, and that it was masculine?

The teacher's job didn't extend to the nitty-gritty business of
learning how to
learn.
No one taught me
how
to commit a large number of new and alien words to memory. The teacher was there solely to deliver the information and explain how the language worked. Without a vocabulary, however, grammar is useless.

What good is it, as you stutter and stammer in a bakery, desperately trying to remember the German for 'bread', if all you can remember is how to decline the verb 'to bake'?

We tried to learn words parrot-fashion, monotonously calling them out in class, or staying up late, half-covering one side of a well-thumbed vocab. book.

What a travesty, a terrible waste of time and money! And as far as I can gather, things haven't improved much today.

A NEW METHOD FOR LEARNING LANGUAGES

The method I am about to show you is so effective and simple that I would expect you to learn a new language in a matter of days and weeks rather than months and years. Foreign words can be learnt and memorized after just one reading at an accelerated rate of approximately 50 to 150 words per hour. This means that a basic vocabulary of 2,000 words could be learnt after just twenty hours' study.

My personal best, using this method, is 320 new German words in an hour

(after one sighting of each word). In the 1991 MEMORIAD, I won the language event by memorizing the most number of Chinese words in fifteen minutes.

Not bad for a dyslexic slow learner!

If ever a subject was tailor-made for my approach to memory then learning languages is it. When you learnt how to memorize a list, you used location in the form of a simple journey. You used location again to remember names and faces; if someone reminded you of John McEnroe, you imagined a tennis court.

It won't come as a surprise, then, to discover that location is central to my method for learning languages.

THE METHOD

When you are memorizing a large vocabulary, you need somewhere to store

everything, a place where words can be accessed quickly and easily. There's nothing worse than having a head crammed full of information. It's not that there is too much (your brain can store far more information than most of us will ever need), it just isn't ordered properly or organized well.

Step 1:

Choose a familiar town. The perfect way to store basic vocabulary is by using a detailed mental map of a town or village. Think of the sort of words you will be learning: shop, church, garage, door, car, road, house, room, chair. A town can encompass all these everyday words.

Step 2:

Use your imagination and association — two skills you practised in Chapter 2.

Let the foreign word suggest a key image to you. For example, the German for a 'plate' is 'teller'. Your key image might be of a bank teller. Concentrate on the phonetic sound of a foreign word, rather than the way it is spelt. If some of your associations produce words that don't quite match the correct

pronunciation, don't worry. You can add the finishing touches of accent and emphasis later.

Step 3:

Place your key image in an appropriate location, suggested by the English. You are likely to find a plate in a restaurant, so think of a particular establishment you know in your chosen town.

Step 4:

Combining your key image and location, imagine a bank teller counting out piles of money on a large plate in the corner of the restaurant.

CHOOSING YOUR TOWN

The advantage of using a mental map of your town as your filing system is that you can group various types of words together in different quarters or ghettos.

Adjectives can all be put in the park, for example; action verbs (to run, to shout, to jump, to swim, and so on) can be found in and around the sports complex.

More importantly, however, it allows you to divide up words into their

respective genders.

WELCOME TO THE GENDER ZONE

In Spanish and French, a noun is either masculine or feminine. Consequently, if I were learning either of these languages, my town would be split into two quite distinct zones or districts. If I were learning German, it would be split up into three zones: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
Teller
is a masculine word, so the restaurant where the bank teller is counting money would have to be in the masculine district.

It is important to spend time familiarizing yourself with your map before you start to fill it with images. Make sure you know which part of town is masculine or which is feminine, and which is neuter. If you were thinking of London, for example, everywhere south of the Thames might be masculine,

and north of the river might be feminine.

Always use a separate town for each language, but this doesn't mean that two or three languages can't be learnt simultaneously. You are limited only by the number of towns you are familiar with. If it happens to be in the relevant country (Madrid, say, for Spanish, Paris for French, or Berlin for German), so much the better, but it's not too important.

Certain areas will build up with images more than others. You might find that there is a lot of vocabulary linked with a restaurant, for example. This isn't a problem; one image in the dining room might remind you of another. But make sure you are familiar with the many physical details of a popular location (the size, the layout, what is in the corner, etc), and don't let it get too congested.

Your town can expand if you need to include areas that don't exist on the real map. No planning permission is required. If there isn't a sports complex for all your action verbs, why not build one, or transfer one you know from somewhere else? And if your town doesn't have a park nearby, it should do!

MAKING A SCENE

Creating the overall scene that links the key image (suggested by the foreign word) with its location (suggested by the English meaning) is an essential part of the process. Generally speaking, the first association that comes to mind is the best one. Exactly the same principles apply as before: the more exaggerated and unusual the scene is, the more likely you are to remember it. Here are some examples of how I would remember German words:

Der Mantel
(an overcoat):

Mantel makes me think of MANTELpiece, which is my key image. It's another masculine word, so I might as well stay in the restaurant (location). It is important to let your images spread organically through your town. Some

might be next to each other, others might be across the high street, or round the corner. I imagine a huge, heavy overcoat hanging from the mantelpiece.

Using imagery in this way works well if you are translating from English into German, or German into English. If I am searching for the German word for 'an overcoat', I immediately have an image of a huge, steaming one above a fire. It's resting on the MANTELpiece, which I know is in a restaurant in the masculine part of town, hence
Der Mantel.

Similarly, if I am confronted with
'Der Mantel',
I immediately think of a MANTELpiece (because my initial association was obvious) and an image of the steaming coat hanging off it.

Die Tür
(a door):

My key image is of a sign saying 'detour' with a big arrow pointing left. It's a feminine word, so I go to somewhere in the feminine district of town where there is a door. The museum has a grand old oak entrance (location). I imagine that a big sign has been stuck on the outside of the door announcing a 'detour'.

People are filing past, tut-tutting, as they make their way round to a side entrance.

I have to admit that this is quite a crafty one, because 'detour' sounds exactly like
Die Tür.
Even if you can't include the definite article in your image (and on most occasions you won't be able to), allocating words to specific districts makes remembering the gender very easy.

Schlafen
(to sleep):

It's not so easy to form an association with this word. My key image is of two city-types standing over a man who has fallen asleep. One of them is laughing loudly, the other is saying, 'sssshhshhhh, you'll wake him'. 'Sssshhh' and

'laughing' approximately equate to
Schlafen.

As
Schlafen
is a verb, I go over to the sports complex (location). The man has fallen asleep in a squash court.

With a little bit of imagination, you will always be able to find some link. It doesn't matter how far fetched it is, providing that you will make the same connection in the future.

Die Gardine
(a curtain);

My key image is of a beefeater 'guarding' something. As it's another feminine word, I go back to the museum (location), where there is a very valuable curtain hanging on one wall inside. I imagine the beefeater 'guarding' this old relic.

Das Glass
(the glass):

In cases like this, where the German word is identical to the English, you should incorporate a code of some sort to indicate as much. I always use the image of a court jester or a joker (I am playing a wild card). It's a neuter word, so I make my way out of town to a suburb I have previously designated a

neuter district. I know where there is a kitchenware shop (location), as likely place as any to find a glass. I imagine a court jester standing in the window, precariously balancing a Waterford cut-glass goblet on his head.

CONCLUSION

Pick a language and then establish the layout of your town, making sure to cordon off certain areas for different genders and word types. Let the words take you all round the town, spreading through your different districts.

See how quickly you can think of a key image for a foreign word, and then find a suitable location suggested by the English. Remember to combine them with an association. It's no good kidding yourself that you'll remember anyway.

If you don't form a mental chain of links now, how can you expect to make the connection in a few days' time? It's like being given directions by someone in your car; if you are on your own later and you weren't concentrating the first time, you won't be able to find your way back.

I hope that this method removes some of the pain of acquiring a large

vocabulary in a short space of time. You should find that it accelerates your rate of learning quite dramatically. If only I had discovered it when I was at school!

13

HOW TO

REMEMBER

GEOGRAPHICAL

FACTS

When I listen to the news on the radio, I am more likely to pay attention to an item on Ghana than on Liberia. Both share the same west African coastline, and both countries have English as their official language. The sole reason I express an interest in Ghana is because I have been there. It's an important difference.