A easy Memory Tactic You Can Use to Build a Core Foreign Language Vocabulary in Ten Hours or Less

Minimum Core Vocabulary

In a former article, I said that I advocate a minimum core vocabulary in the range of 1500 to 2000 words. And while you can "communicate" with much fewer words, you could sound "strained", "artificial" or even "childish" in your speech while trying to get your point across.

In addition, if you're working in a skilled trade, work or profession, the minimum core vocabulary count could increase by as much as 300 to 500 words more. That means then, that time spent acquiring considerable foreign language vocabulary is time well spent. Now, let's reconsider a straightforward mnemonic method that you could use to start studying or memorizing key foreign language vocabulary practically immediately.

The Loci Method

According to Cicero, the Loci method or Roman Room theory is said to have originated in old Greece circa 500 B.C. When the building he was in collapsed, crushing all of the population inside beyond recognition, the only survivor, poet Simonides of Ceos identified the victims by name solely based on where they had been sitting at the supper table. The technique was generally used for centuries by Greek and Roman orators to give speeches without using notes.

Try this example:

Take a list of 10 to 20 items you'd like to remember - a grocery list, people's names even a list of telephone numbers. Now, look around the room you're in, or visualize a room or place you know indeed well.

For each object in the room, in order as you look around, associate an object, name or whole from your list. Front door (sugar), table (bread), chairs (eggs), bookcase (butter), potted plant (coffee), curtains (broccoli), sofa (milk) and so forth until you've "located" all the items or gone all around the room.

To recall your list of items, names or numbers, plainly go back around the room in your mind and "see" each object, someone or whole related with items in the room. You might have reasoning images like sugar pouring straight through the front door keyhole, bread spread out all over the table, broken eggs running and dripping over the chairs, butter smeared all over the bookcase oozing from under the books, coffee running out from the base of the potted plant, broccoli stuck into the curtains, milk running from beneath the sofa cushions and so on.

Now honestly, you know that if these things indeed happened, it would make such a mess you'd Never forget it! This is a basic example of the Loci Method. The expression, "in the first place", etc. Derives from the use of this method of recall.

Did you try it? How did you do?

You can drastically enhance with just a dinky practice.

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