Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

Linking to existing knowledge
The commonest way of remembering new vocabulary is to exploit the different
memory systems in our minds for linking new information to old. Learning an
entirely new item may be very hard; it will be a single isolated piece of knowledge
that will rapidly fade. The information that ‘posto’ 
 ‘seat’ soon disappears if is not
linked to our experience in one way or another. The ancient Greeks first devised
memory systems to help with delivering speeches. One invention was ‘loci’: store
information you want to remember in a carefully visualized location. You imagine
a palace with many rooms; you enter the palace and turn to the left into the west
wing; you go up the stairs, find a corridor and go into the third room on the left;
you put your piece of information on the second bookcase on the left, second shelf
up, on the left. To retrieve the information you mentally retrace your footsteps to
the same point. Adaptations of the loci theory are still in use today by people who
entertain with feats of memory; it is also supposed to be useful for card players.
Other ways of remembering information link what you are learning to some-
thing you already know through mental imagery. In Tapestry 1 Listening and
Speaking (Benz and Dworak, 2000), students are told, ‘To remember new vocabu-
lary words, think about a picture that reminds you of the word.’ One system is to
link the new vocabulary to a pre-set scheme. First you need to memorize a simple
scheme for storing information; then you need to link the new information to the
scheme you already know. New information is hooked in to old. The version I have
used involves students memorizing a short poem for the numbers from one to
ten: ‘One’s a bun; two’s a shoe; three’s a tree; four’s a door; five’s a hive; six’s
sticks; seven’s heaven; eight’s a gate; nine’s a line; ten’s a hen.’ Then they remem-
ber ten items by making an incongruous mental image connecting each item with
a number on the list; if no. 1 is an elephant, then they have to invent an image of
Strategies for understanding and learning vocabulary 61

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