"Mnemonics" and "learning a foreign language" are incompatible concepts?! Let's figure it out. Cicero's method for memorizing foreign words Cicero's method for memorizing English words

In a well-known room, you need to mentally arrange memorable units of information, in our case, foreign words. When imagining a room, or several rooms, say, your apartment, you need to arrange the images in a certain order. Having fixed the location of these images, you can walk around the room and remember everything that is written there.

This method with the room system is great for remembering dates, events, speech outlines, and more. However, when memorizing foreign words, certain difficulties arise. For example, you can memorize a sequence of words in your own language without memorizing those words in a foreign language. This is the first. The second is the problem of “scattering” words throughout the apartment in random order. The third snag is how to remember the spelling of words (if necessary).

In class, I introduce students to the essence of the method and suggest memorizing a pre-prepared list of words that I think they do not know. Their apartments are selected as a polygon. They draw a rough plan of their house and remember the location of everything inside.

To solve the issue of the spread of words around the apartment, we define our own part of speech for each room or corner of the room. It turns out that in one room there are only verbs, in the other only nouns, etc. This helps to immediately turn to the right room to find the right words without going through the whole “apartment”. But within the room, you should move clockwise, and therefore arrange the images in the same way.

We solve difficulties with remembering the pronunciation of a word with the help of phonetic associations. As far as possible, the association is chosen such that there is some action in it. So it's easier to remember.

We remember spelling, trying to mentally write words on objects to which images are attached, or by putting the spelling into a phonetic association. For example, a fifth grader, memorizing the English word " master ”, posted a poster of his father on the wall of the room. On the poster - the corresponding inscription. There is also a good way to link to other words with similar spellings that you already know well. This is especially true for the Chinese language, as it has many words that sound the same. Hieroglyphs, of course, need to be taught in a different way :). For example, while studying the word “pearl” (zhenzhu), a student remembered it as “throwing a pearl in front of a true pig” (truth-zhen, pig-zhu). The image was glued to the box in which the whole scene with the pig took place.

The same operations with words can be done not in a mental apartment, but in a mental city. Then you need to represent a well-known city, also highlighting its areas for the corresponding parts of speech. Moreover, its possibilities for storing images are endless, because there are many “apartments”, shops, etc. in the city. It is important to learn how to connect images and associations with each other. So it is remembered much better and remembered much easier.

At the first stage of mastering the method, we memorize only 15 words. As you get used to the method, it is planned to increase the number of memorized words to 25, 30, 35, etc. Memorizing 15 words while mastering the essence of the method takes about 15-20 minutes. Then a repetition. I will try to describe the results after the trial period.

It bears the name of one of the great Roman politicians, who became famous for the fact that in the process of his bright speeches he never used records. At the same time, the speaker operated with a lot of figures, names, facts, and also quite often used quotes.

According to some sources, Cicero's method was used with great success long before its official author. In particular, the famous ancient Greek poet Simonides actively and successfully practiced it.

This method is simple and effective at the same time. Another name for it is the Roman room system. It is based on the fact that the key units that need to be remembered must be placed in thoughts in a certain order, imagining a familiar room in the head. After such a procedure, it is enough just to restore this room in memory in order to restore everything that you recorded in memory. Cicero, when he was busy preparing for a public speech, walked around the house and placed in his head the main key points of his speech in various places.

Before you start practicing Cicero's memorization, decide how you plan to go around the room. Choose a sequence of places where you plan to mentally place key units. For some, the idea of ​​a room in the head will suffice. However, for the first time, it will not be superfluous to walk around the house, as the great speaker did. At the same time, it is worth choosing a familiar room, for example, your personal office. You can choose to move clockwise.

With experience, you will be able to use an increasing number of objects and places, thereby expanding your ability to capture information. You can use absolutely any items. Let it be a sofa, TV, shelf, desktop, computer and so on. You can mentally move from left to right, and up and down. You don't have to limit yourself to just your room. Familiar routes and the like can be used to more efficiently commit to memory.

You need to associate key points of the information you are trying to remember with certain items through associations. Starting to practice this method, it will not be superfluous to have a set of room elements in your head. Thus, you will always have a “handy” set of so-called mental hooks for which you can hook on the necessary key points.

As an example, consider how easy it is to remember a list of the following items: bicycle, backpack, bottle, plasticine. These elements will be placed sequentially in accordance with the scheme of the house. Let's start with the corridor. It is necessary to use non-standard connections so that its reproduction is not difficult even after a long time.

We place the bike on a hanger near the door, and it is in an upside down position. Such an association will easily be deposited in our head. Next comes a backpack that hangs on the door, and a cat peeps out of it. We put a sunflower flower in the bottle and place it on the bedside table. We completely seal the mirror located in the hallway with plasticine, thereby creating a non-standard association and fixing the last key element on our list. Thus, we have a rather unusual associative array, which we can easily restore in our heads.

It is very important to preliminarily determine those objects that will meet us on the way. Otherwise, there is a risk that you yourself will look for details that will be easier to associate with a particular keyword. As a result, memorization will be inefficient.

Of course, Cicero's method should be used for much more difficult problems. The above example is just to help you understand what happens. remembering information. This method is productive in the process of fixing in memory the text, the plan for the day, the order of the necessary phone calls, and so on. Moreover, when the information is logically related data, and not just a collection of words, you will be able to use the same room repeatedly. At the same time, the rows of key elements will not be mixed up, and you will be able to easily restore data on a specific topic.

To learn how to use this method, a few trainings are enough. This is its main advantage, if we compare this technique with others. Moreover, this technique can be used anywhere. And the room where you are can be an excellent starting point for remembering information. You do not need to use the linked association method or take a long time to restore the chain, as is necessary when using the sequential association method. You just need to recall a familiar room or use where you are at a particular moment. It is quite enough to look at the room, while placing key words and tying them to some objects. Restoring information is also easy. It is enough to remember the situation. Using this method, you will be amazed at how easily and quickly even very complex material can be mastered.

Cicero's method is unique mnemonic device which everyone can learn. Even if you do not consider yourself to be a person with a good memory, using this technique, you can easily surpass each of them.

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It happens that when you come to the store, you realize that you left at home a list of products that you needed to buy. Once you master the Dominic O'Brien method, you can easily keep a list of everything you need in your head.

Let's take 10 arbitrary products for this example:

Apples - milk - cheese - butter - battery - chess board - basketball - tennis racket - mug - hanger

Many of you will be able to memorize 4-5 items without much effort, a small part - 7-8.

A special exercise developed by Dominic O'Brien to improve memory will come to the rescue.

Try to remember how today went, what she remembered, what happened yesterday, last week. What left the most vivid memories?

Take a pen and paper and write down everything that you remember over the past day, some of the things that you remember will surprise you with their presence in this seemingly most ordinary day.

Here, it is associations that play an important role, with which, one or another event, certain memories are associated with you, how vivid it was.

So, you went shopping. Put mentally each item in certain places along the route. For better memorization, give the image of objects a certain hypertrophy and brightness.

As time passes, you will be able to remember what you need to buy on the way to the supermarket, because each item is clearly associated with specific associations.

1. Memorization by the "Cicero" method

The “Cicero” method is a memorization method associated with memory for places.

This method is also called the "place" method. The Greek poet Simonides (d. 469 BC) is considered its creator, and the following story is told.

“Simonides was invited to a rich man for a feast. When the guests were already sitting at the table, the poet was summoned on an important matter, and he immediately left the room. As soon as Simonides left, the room collapsed and all the people in it died. To bury the dead, their relatives and friends asked the poet to identify the bodies. And Simonides remembered everyone sitting at the table in the place they occupied. “This gave him a reason to discover the law that one can remember the image of a famous person in a place, and this led to the discovery of a method of remembering.” (G.I. Chelpanov, 1900)

Thus, the discovery was made that our memory is closely connected with the place. And indeed, when we meet a familiar person, we can remember his name only after we remember where we saw him. The same thing happens in a situation where we were busy with something, and we were suddenly distracted. We will be able to remember what we did or what we thought only when we return to that place.

The method is named after the great orator Cicero because he was the first to describe and apply it to memorize his speeches. This method is still used to memorize long speeches and a lot of precise information.

The essence of Cicero's method is to

choose some well-known place or room;

select objects (or places) in order, and it is important to immediately decide on the sequence and accept once and for all one option to bypass the room or place, for example, clockwise;

it is better to choose bright and well-remembered items that are constantly in this place, for example, a closet. If the subject regularly changes its location, then confusion is possible. For example, if the vase is rearranged to another place, then, “reading” the information, you can name it in the wrong order;

you can not use duplicate items, tk. the sequence may be broken when you remember. For example, if you have two identical armchairs in the room, then it is better to choose the first one;

connect the items you have chosen in the room with the information you remember in pairs (we will talk about how to connect them later).

Helpful notes

Before memorizing, it is advisable to take a walk in the place where you will remember the information.

Prepare your seats and memorize the sequences of items. You will need this to memorize a large amount of information. It is desirable to have a system of 10 rooms, in each of which 10 items are allocated. Then you will be able to remember 1000 units of information on this matrix! And this is a textbook!

One list, memorized by the “Cicero” method, is stored in memory for up to three days without repetition. If you want to save information for a long time, then never use this list to remember other information. Each previous list is “erased” under the influence of the next one. If you need to memorize information only for a few days, then you can remember today for one list, tomorrow for another, the day after tomorrow for a third, and two days later return to the first.

Control recall is a prerequisite

So, let's go around the well-known room clockwise. Now we select a sequence of objects, i.e. 1 - door, 2 - bed, 3 - curtain, 4 - window, 5 - bookshelf.

Please note that there is a second window in the room, which is not suitable for memorization!

6 - desk, 7 - armchair

So, we have prepared a list of items that meets all of the above requirements.

Vasilyeva E.E. Vasiliev V.Yu. “SUPERMEMORY FOR EVERYONE”

Word list

Consider the possibility of using the Cicero method or as it is also called the road method for memorizing a sequence of words. If you have prepared the "road" or "matrix of images" in advance, then you can start the exercise.

How to remember?

Memorizing a list of words using the Cicero method is to arrange words in key places on your road. You take the first word and create an association with the first image of your matrix. Then you create an association of the second memorized word with the second image of your matrix. This process must be continued until the end, until the list of words to be memorized is over. If the images in your matrix ended faster, then you need to attach another matrix to this matrix and continue memorization.

How to remember?

The reproduction of the memorized information is very similar to how it was done in the exercise "Pairs of words": you know one of the words, you need to mentally reproduce the image corresponding to the pair of words in order to remember the second word. Then move on to the next word.

triplets of words

Why is this needed?

In this exercise, you will need to memorize, according to the Cicero method, not a sequence of words, but a sequence of triples of words. Why do you need to memorize triples of words? The fact is that very often you have to memorize information in which each memorized element requires several parameters to memorize, i.e. is not a separate image, but a block consisting of several images or keywords. This block is associated with the corresponding image of your matrix.

For example, if you need to remember the Roman emperors, then it would be nice to remember, in addition to their names, also the years of birth, death and reign. When memorizing the periodic table, you need to remember not only the name of the element, but also its designation, atomic mass and some other characteristics. Also, the need to memorize group images is required when memorizing texts, when it is often not possible to single out the main idea of ​​a section of text in the form of a single image and you have to group it from several.

Memorizing triplets

The purpose of the exercise is to remember not just words, but a set of words. The sets that are provided to you contain exactly three words. In real life, this rarely happens, but the main thing is to understand the principle and then it will not be difficult to create complex images. Usually you have to deal with a list of two to five words. From this set, you need to make a single image and then create an association with the next place in your matrix.

An example of creating images from three different objects.

Lampshade - Fist - Butterfly- in the first place of your matrix, you can put a glass lampshade, in the shape of a fist, inside the lampshade, instead of a light bulb, a butterfly glows.

Cinema - Crossword - Scribe- in second place is a clerk, sitting in a dim cinema hall, with a goose pen (so as not to forget that this is a clerk) solves a crossword puzzle.

Texts

Memorizing texts of the Cicero method can be used to memorize quite a lot of information: for example, texts, speeches, etc. The memorization process is described below.

Memorization of the text is carried out in three steps

• Break the text into separate semantic sections.
• For each site, select a few keywords.
• From the selected keywords, create a general image and place it in the appropriate place in the matrix

The text is played in reverse order:

• Recall the first cell of your matrix in memory and reproduce the image stored in it in memory
• Based on the image, remember the keywords that this image encodes.
• Using keywords, restore a piece of text encoded in this way

In this way, you can memorize the content of sufficiently long sections of text. It should be borne in mind that the content, meaning, and not every word is remembered verbatim in the text.

Chain method

The images are connected in association in pairs. The sizes of the images are approximately the same in each pair. When you have formed a connection between the first and second image, the first image is removed from consciousness by transferring attention to the second. After that, a relationship is formed between the second and third image, and so on.

The Chain method is one of the simplest mnemonic techniques. Its essence lies in the pairwise connection of images. At the same time, the relative sizes of the images in each pair are the same - large, and the images themselves are bright and memorable. You form a connection between the first and the second image, and then remove the first image from consciousness by shifting attention to the second. After that, a relationship is formed between the second and third image, and so on. In each pair of images, it is necessary to clearly distinguish between the first and second images of the pair.

The second image of the couple penetrates the first.

The second image of the pair is on top.

The second image of the pair is on the right.

Always form connections clearly according to a certain system. If the association is horizontal, place the first image on the left.

If the association is vertical - place the first image at the bottom.

If the images penetrate each other when connected, place the second image in the first one. When recalling, read the images in the same order.

For example, we need to remember a shopping list: a loaf, milk, sausages, salt, a newspaper, a battery. Large, vividly imagine a fresh, crispy loaf - and on top of it lies a package of milk. Consider this connection for a second or two, and then connect the milk carton with the second image of the chain: the package is lined with sausages. Fix the connection and move on to the salt. When you remember the first image - a loaf, "milk" will inevitably pop up in your memory, milk will call up the image of sausages in your memory, and so on along the chain.

The chain method does not require preliminary memorization of the support image system, it can be used without preparation. However, this technique is difficult to memorize sequences with a repeating element. In addition, if you forget one link, the chain will break and you will not be able to remember the rest of the elements. Therefore, the role of the chain in modern mnemonics is rather auxiliary and training. But in everyday life (remember the to-do list, the shopping list, the order of actions according to the instructions), the chain can be used quite often.

When doing training exercises, you can memorize long sequences of images when long-term preservation of connections is not important. In this case, the number of linked images is practically unlimited - you can link dozens and even hundreds of images.

Cicero's Method

You and I regularly see the same visual images - objects in the apartment, objects on the street, along which we constantly return home, etc. These are the supporting images from which natural associations are formed. Since the connections between the objects we regularly see already exist in our brain, they do not need to be memorized. We remember them anyway. It is only necessary to fix the sequence of images familiar to us well in memory, that is, to repeat them many times over. That is, the memorized units of information must be mentally arranged in a well-known room in a strictly defined order. And then it is enough to remember this room and reproduce the necessary information. This is the essence of the method of Cicero or the method of the Roman room.

This method is named after one of the most brilliant orators in world history. Mark Thulius Cicero (106-43 BC) - statesman of the Roman Empire, became famous for never using notes or clues in his public speeches. Cicero reproduced from memory many facts, dates, historical events and names. In order to memorize the prepared speech in a strictly verified sequence, Cicero broke his speech into parts and prepared each part in one of his many chambers. Directly at the speech, Cicero mentally walked around his numerous chambers along a certain route, and this helped him clearly remember the part of the speech that he was preparing there.

According to other sources, the roots of this method go back to Ancient Greece (the poet Simonides successfully applied this technique). Allegedly, Simonides accidentally got out alive from under the rubble of the roof, which collapsed on a large feasting company. The relatives of the dead asked Simonides to indicate in which part of the collapsed building to look for the bodies of loved ones. The poet, remembering, found that he managed to name almost everyone thanks to the familiar details of the situation in the room. He considered this observation valuable and subsequently developed the idea. Thus, Cicero's method is the most ancient of all the memorization techniques known to date.

Let's learn how to select support images using the Cicero method using the following example. Let's consider your apartment (house). Determine the sequence of rooms for yourself. For example, remember the rooms in the following order - corridor, bathroom, kitchen, large room, bedroom, balcony.

Then, you need to focus your attention on one room and mentally go around it around the perimeter (and always in the same direction - clockwise). Think of 10 objects in this room.

Now do the same in other rooms and select 10 images in each (for example, pieces of furniture).

As a result, you will memorize a sequence of 50 objects. That is, you fix the selected images in memory by repeated recall.

Here are some important rules of the Cicero method:

The visual images that you highlight should not be repeated. Only the names of objects can be repeated, and the images must be different.
You need to draw out the connections that already exist in your brain. Therefore, highlight the images, remembering them. Try to pick up such images so that five sub-images can be distinguished from them.
Experience Cicero's method when preparing your speech or when memorizing a text.
The sequence of working with text is as follows:

Read the text and answer the question what it is about.
Break the text into several semantic parts.
Remember each part of the text in different rooms of your apartment or house, clearly defining the order in which they follow (entrance hall - bath - toilet - kitchen - living room - children's room - bedroom)
Play the entire text aloud, taking into account the sequential presentation of the parts.

Demonstration of the method on the example of the fairy tale Kolobok

1) we will divide the plot of the fairy tale into 6 semantic parts and represent each in the following way:
flour - a bun on the road - a hare - a wolf - a bear - a fox eats a bun
These images in mnemonics are called auxiliary. They encode the information we want to remember.
The image of a place that already exists in our memory and we know it very well is called a reference image in mnemonics.

2) Let's combine in our imagination auxiliary images (flour, a bun on the road, a hare ...) with supporting ones (kitchen, living room, bath ...):
the flour is in the kitchen;
the gingerbread man rolls along the road in the living room;
hare in the bathroom;
wolf in the toilet;
bear in the kitchen
the fox eats a kolobok on the balcony.

3) we repeat the tale, using auxiliary images to remember the plot, and supporting images to remember the sequence of events.
Remembering, it is important to represent each image clearly, large. Do not think that this operation will take a lot of time. In order to store one pair of images in memory, a few seconds will be enough. Cicero's technique is so simple that some experts even recommend teaching it to preschoolers.

The advantage of the Cicero method over, for example, "Chain", in addition, is the following:
- the method of Cicero uses images that are very familiar to us
- in the "Chain" technique, in order to get to some element of the sequence, it is necessary to go through the entire sequence; in the Cicero method, you can move through the memorized material much more freely.
This method is also useful when memorizing long verses or poems. Try it in practice and you will see that it really works!