|
|
Memorise a page of text |
This article assumes that you have understood the lessons in Part 1 of the Memory Bloke memory course. It will show you the amount of work which can go into making a memory system which serves a specific purpose.
In the 1990s, I thought that I could use a list of peg locations and fact images to memorise a page of text.
I had an image to represent every letter pair from AA to ZZ. So, if the first word of a page was 'In', then I would have an image to mean 'IN': I can use the image of a specific inn.
My thinking was that the two letters of anything from AA to ZZ should inspire the image. So an inn is used for IN because they look or sound similar.
If the page of text begins 'In an inn, there is a receptionist' then I want to represent each word with a letter pair image:
1. In - IN - i.n.n
2. an - AN - a.n.t
3. inn - IN - i.n.n
4. an image to mean a comma
5. there - TH - t.h.r.u.s.t (eg. a specific image of a rocket thruster)
6. is - IS - h.I.S.t.o.r.i.c a.r.t
and so on...
Peg location 1 of my system of memory places would have to store the first word of the page of text: 'In' as an image of an inn.
The BLOKES system, from Part 1 of the course, would only cover about 50 words of a page because it does not have 100s of imaginary places where each fact can be imagined at.
For this example, though, let us use the BLOKES system. The first memory place is the bath tub. So the inn image is imagined there. Obviously, an inn in real life is too large to appear in a bath; so I miniaturise the inn in my imagination so that it is the size of a dolls house; then i imagine it in the bath tub.
The second memory place of the BLOKES system is an area of wall tiles in the bathroom. In front of these wall tiles, I imagine word 2 of the text: an ant which represents word 2: 'an'.
Eventually, for recalling the whole page, I mentally visit these memory places, look at what is stored at these places (the inn, the ant, etc., and then I want my normal memory to be able to use these prompts to remember the words 'in' and 'an'.
Well, I realised that I would want images to represent single letters of the alphabet as well as images to represent digits 0 to 9, and maybe even 00 to 99 or higher. I would also want images which would represent grammar such as commas and quotation marks.
In more recent years, I became interested in shorthand - and I designed a shorthand system for quickly writing dictation. You can see the Memory Bloke shorthand system. You can see my alphabet letter pair system and punctuation too.
The shorthand system often uses a letter and a digit to mean a word or it uses a digit and a letter to mean 2 words:
eg. A3 means 'act'. 3A means 'what a'. Trust me. It just does!
What I wanted was a shorthand system which could also help me to learn a page of text. I would need a memory image to represent A3 and to represent 3A. A3 is another image system (inspired by hieroglyphs).
I also wanted an image to represent the '2 letter' codes of the grammar. I decided to think of names based on each '2 letter' code. eg. AA means 'always' in the shorthand system; a common name using AA is Aaron; so I searched on a search engine for images using Aaron Smith and chose a good quality image. The 'Smith' surname is used to make the person be less likely to be mega famous. If I had searched for just Aaron then I might have found an Aaron who is a big celebrity - and I prefer celebrity images to be used in another memory system. Here is a list of people's names. Another example is AE which matches with forename Alex but means 'above'. If I need to memorise the name Alex if I see it in a page of text then I might memorise at one peg location a person whose head is made of jigsaw pieces: to say, "At the next peg location, interpret the image of a person as a person's name rather than as a grammar word"; then, at the next peg location, I can imagine Alex and know that I am meant to interpret the Alex image as the name 'Alex' rather than as the word 'above'.
I try to make memory systems re-usable. If I meet someone new named Alex then I can imagine my special Alex person shaking hands with that new person whom I meet; that visual scene is a prompt that the new person's name is Alex.
Even now, I am honing the page memorisation system and developing a way to use the 1000 people images (from Part 1 of the course) to represent 1000 everyday words of vocabulary; these images will represent popular text when I try to memorise a page of text.
Flashcards:
Shorthand practice: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Shorthand practice: 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Shorthand practice: 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18
Shorthand practice: 19, 20, 21
Ideas for lower case alphabet images (a to z rather than A to Z)
Images to use for punctuation:
| Symbol | Looks a bit like |
| $ | dollar shape as a jewellery pendant |
| % | unicyclist |
| & | rounded Russian doll |
| ' | drawing pin |
| ( | (L)ava maggot |
| ) | hair grip |
| * | prop star |
| + | car nut loosening tool |
| , | rusty nail |
| - | length of wood |
| . | currant |
| / | (L)oft hatch door |
| : | cuff link |
| ; | fang |
| < | (L)oud speaker |
| = | ladder |
| > | bellows of a blacksmith |
| ? | coat hanger |
| @ | paperclip |
| ¿ | wheelchair |
| ! | pogo stick |
| " | clothes peg |
| # | hash brown |
| £ | pound coin |
| ¢ | hack saw |
| [ | (L)ozenge sweet |
| \ | slide of a playground |
| ] | fridge magnet |
| ^ | dunce's hat |
| _ | scoreboard |
| ` | CCTV camera |
| { | (L)id of bin |
| ¦ | drain pipe |
| } | bull-clip |
| ~ | drill bit |
2,000 Images
In an earlier lesson (Vocabulary People), you were introduced to how images of 2000 people (1000 men and 1000 women) can represent some spellings or vocabulary meanings.
Spelling systems can be quite arbitrary - but I hope that my system will help me to spell a lot of words.
The vocabulary in the surnames of the 2000 people are still a work in progress. However, here are links to the current work:
Memory Road 'Consonant : 2 Vowel' Spellings
10,000 Images
There is a system of 100 syllables. eg. 70 is HA and 32 is KE. Is there a way in which 7032 could be represented by pooling these two syllable numbers together? 70 with 32 could be presented somehow as 7032 : represented by one image.
An idea for achieving this is to have 100 subject categories. So the 70 topic could be something like car models or famous musicians; then the 32 could be an example of that topic - ideally beginning with the letters KE... . So one concept or image would be reached by using the 70 and the 32.
Given that 70 is HA and 32 is KE, that same one image might be used to represent the spelling of 'H.A.K.E'.
And, if I extend the choices of what 70 or 32 can represent then I can represent more spellings.
70 could represent HA or AL ; 32 could represent KE or EN ; then the 7032 image might mean HA.KE or AL.KE or HA.EN or AL.EN .
Here are some spelling choices.
These spellings could be very useful if memorising a page of text: one image could be a substantial prompt of a real word. eg. HA.KE could spell 'hake' or a longer word which begins 'hake...'.
