[b-greek] RE: Greek drop outs

From: Mark Wilson (emory2oo2@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Nov 22 2000 - 10:47:04 EST


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Doug:

You asked:

---
I am curious as to what the visual method mentioned below for Greek actually 
was.
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To me, Doug, I have given one example in an earlier posting. Here is basically what I mean by visual, and it appears to be in agreement with how Alan uses in his response.

By the way, I have read those university studies by Rutgers and Georgetown, and there are several others. Most of the ones I read were done more than 15 to 20 years ago. I think these studies were in response to the authors of the Memory Book's. One claim was that it could increase your retention and recall by more than 200 percent.

But to your question.

Using my earlier example of a picture, I am looking at A Pea Tamale getting rebuked by this guy. It just seems so bizarre and funny that I have never forgot it (Yes, Daniel, I am familar with Story's work.)

Anyway, shortly after Greek 101, my goal was to begin reading the Greek NT. To do that, among other things, I needed a large vocabulary. So I began memorizing Greek words. When I "saw" this vocabulary card with a "picture" drawn on it of A Pea Tamale getting Rebuked, that "image" was stored in my brain.

A few days later I came across the Greek word EPITIMAW as I was reading the NT. Rather than having to go back to the dictionary and look this word up, my mind was able to recall it because of the bizarre image eteched in my mind.

I did not just do this with EPITIMAW, but with many, many words. So, as I was reading, rather than going back to a dictionary, since we are prone to forget new vocabulary words, I would first go back "visually" to see if I had an imaged etched in my mind for the word.

What this allows you to do is to read much faster since you do not need to keep going back to look up words in a dictionary. Then, after you come across the word SEVERAL times as you keep on reading (that is an important part... usage!!!!), your mind simply KNOWS this word by now, and it no longer has to go retreive an image.

And, when you add audio to this process, you get even quicker results, as a general rule. There may be very few exceptions, but that is looking for ways for mnemonics NOT TO WORK.

Hope this addresses your question.

As a note to Daniel in case he is reading this, you mentioned TOPOI being used by ancient orators as the means whereby they did not remember the speech, but the order and sequence of the topics that they wanted to address, such as 1, a, b, c; 2, a, b, etc.

That is exactly what mnemonics is all about. Although mnemonics can do much more than this, using mnemonics as an aide to remember outlines for long speeches is what I call mnemonics at work.

Again, in about 30 minutes I learned 100 random "decimals." I could just as well have learned 100 random "topics." It would take a little longer, but I would challenge any person who prefers non-visual memorization methods to such a task.

I already have a visual 10 by 10 matrix in which I could quickly store this information. I use this matrix all the time. For example, in the box located at column 3, row 4, I have an visual image of my mother. That never changes. In all other boxes, I have visual images that are there if I need them. If I want to store information at column 2, row 3, there is my son's state championship tennis match. I can not get these images out of my mind. I can simply put any topic in any one of these boxes and recall it at a later time.

Sorry, there I go rambling again...

Mark Wilson

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