Hey everybody,
I received a good question from Eldon Reeves. He was commenting on this post: (lǐmào: courtesy “leave a mouse”).
Here is what he wrote:
That’s an amusing mnemonic
Can I just ask how long it takes you to come up with each one? I wound up in a bit of an argument/heated discussion a while ago about the pros and cons of using mnemonics for language study. The other guy was saying that it took too long to come up with a mnemonic for every word… Do you use a memory aid for each word or just ones that present a particular problem?
Answer: Well, for that one it took about 5 seconds to see that “lǐmào” was similar to “leave a mouse”. Then I had to look it up in the dictionary. Five seconds after that I said in my head: “It is common courtesy to leave a mouse”. Then I needed to make that into a more memorable story. It probably took another 10 to 20 seconds to imagine the rest of the story.
“Our users are interested in efficiency and it’s not efficient to spend so long watching a video for a mnemonic of one word. If I were you, I’d tighten it up a lot.”
That is what an owner of another well known web site about learning Chinese characters, who wishes to remain anonymous, said to me recently in an email. Here is what I replied to him:
“If you watch a video once and/or read and imagine the mnemonic you will most likely not forget the word. Compare the time spent with the mnemonic to the sum of adding up all the time that is spent reviewing that word with an SRS method, you should come to a similar amount of time. I think a mnemonic is simply more fun.”
Now, with regards to whether I make up a mnemonic for every word or just ones that present a particular problem: Allow me to answer that in part 2.
Let me know what you think of this. Please leave a comment below.
Ok, interesting. So that’s 20-30 seconds per word if you come up with it on your own. As a follow-up question (in addition to whether you use mnemonics for every word!) – about how many words do you know at the moment?
As a follow-up comment, you surely must end up reviewing a word after you’ve learnt it, even if you don’t use an SRS. Even if it’s only by virtue of seeing it “in the wild” that you’re reviewing, you’re going over it nonetheless, which is adding to the sum time spent learning it.
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Twitter: chinesemnemonic
I don’t know how many words I know right now. I would guess 500.
I am constantly reviewing words “in the wild”. When I tell my friends about my mnemonics, when I use the words, and when I read the words.
Sometimes it takes longer to think of a mnemonic. Sometimes I can’t think of anything worthy of being published in the blog, only something vague, but still better than nothing.
Aight, cool. Looking forward to seeing the next post!
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Twitter: chinesemnemonic
Here is the link to part 2 of the article: http://www.mandarinmnemonics.com/editorial/how-long-does-it-take-to-come-up-with-each-mnemonic-2/
Twitter: mandarinchina
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It used to take me about 20-30 second per word but know that I have increased my vocabulary it only takes me about 10-15 seconds. Still a lot more than it would take you Natan, but I guess practice makes perfect
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