As I said in my discussion of different scripts, the Hellenic languages use the Greek alphabet. Here it is. I’m afraid the table is a little complicated, because (a) each letter has a name, which it’s useful to know, and (b) there are some differences in pronunciation between Ancient Greek…
Strategies for Better Memory & Learning
I don’t often talk about motor or skill memory — that is, the memory we use when we type or drive a car or play the piano. It’s one of the more mysterious domains of memory. We all know, of course, that this is a particularly durable kind of memory. It’s like riding a bicycle, we say — meaning…
The more hyped and less plausible passive Mozart Effect
The so-called "Mozart effect" refers to two quite different phenomena. The one that has received the most media play concerns the almost magical (and mythical) effect of Mozart's music on intelligence. It is the result of a…
To celebrate Māori Language Week here in Aotearoa (New Zealand), here's some mnemonics to help you learn 25 common words in te reo. These use the keyword mnemonic. Keywords are written in italics.
aroha (love), an arrow in the heart
awa (river), a water flowing
hīkoi…
Humans are the animals that manipulate their cognitive environment.
I reported recently on an intriguing study involving an African people, the Himba. The study found that the Himba, while displaying an admirable amount of focus (in a visual perception task) if they were living a…
A general distinction you can make is that between:
- direct study, and
- learning from context
Direct study is more important when you're learning a non-cognate language. It's also more important in the initial stages of learning a language. Learning from…
A fascinating article recently appeared in the Guardian, about a woman who found a way to overcome a very particular type of learning disability and has apparently helped a great many children since.
As a child, Barbara Arrowsmith-Young had a brilliant, almost photographic, memory for…
There are two well-established strategies for remembering people’s names. The simplest basically involves paying attention. Most of the time our memory for someone’s name fails because we never created an effective memory code for it.
An easy strategy for improving your memory for names…We don’t deliberately practice our memories of events — not as a rule, anyway. But we don’t need to — because just living our life is sufficient to bring about the practice. We remember happy, or unpleasant, events to ourselves, and we recount our memories to other people. Some will become…
In the mid-seventies, Raugh and Atkinson had remarkable results using the keyword method to teach Russian vocabulary to college students. While later studies have not tended to find such dramatic results, nevertheless, a large number of studies have demonstrated an advantage in using the keyword…