Using the memory palace technique to remember anything

zKing wrote:

leosmith wrote:

Just curious - do you do conversation lessons with tutors, take notes, then put them in anki?

For Cantonese, I hadn't attempted any real output for nearly ten years (my giant mistake #2)... mostly because of my Krashen-like over reliance on input. A couple years ago I had an enjoyable detour with Italian, where I finally learned how important output practice was (among other things) and did weekly iTalki sessions. In May of 2018, when I decide to pick up Cantonese again, I started regular iTalki sessions and a bit of journaling. I take notes, but I honestly don't do much with them. I don't put anything in Anki from them. Up until recently my iTalki sessions were 100% focused on speaking fluidity.

I ask because I've done some informal documenting of time I've spent using certain techniques in my learning, and I've found that my improvement in conversation is almost directly proportional to the number of one hour conversation where I briefly noted and later memorized vocabulary and sentences that I lacked or didn't understand. Like yours, my classes were also 100% target, and other than the noting process which only took a few minutes, were just as you described; no corrections unless they truly didn't understand me. 

To be perfectly honest, I've been using this method for a long time now, and the only things I compared were periods when I read 2 hrs/day vs 30 min/day, periods where I did the exercise mentioned above vs conversation with no memorization and periods of 5 - 7 hours conversation per week vs 3 or less hours per week. As I mentioned, the overwhelmingly best indicator of level in conversation turned out to be the number of hours spent conversing and memorizing. I was quite surprised that 2 hrs of reading wasn't noticeably better for conversation than 30 minutes for the single data point of myself.

dragonsky wrote:

I feel jealous for people that can learn like this.

You feel jelly for them? Jelouse?

Doesn't seem as if anyone would be really learning by the sole means of flashcards. "Sole", as in: eating them raw, without cooking or adding some spice. At least there would be some additional Mental Processing Work. Like asking oneself how to say this and that. This is a way of actually using it. 

Coming from someone who quit eating flashcards a long time ago. And who doesn't recall ever having utilized them as his only tool, not even in combination with that Mental Processing Work.

leosmith wrote:

I ask because I've done some informal documenting of time I've spent using certain techniques in my learning, and I've found that my improvement in conversation is almost directly proportional to the number of one hour conversation where I briefly noted and later memorized vocabulary and sentences that I lacked or didn't understand. Like yours, my classes were also 100% target, and other than the noting process which only took a few minutes, were just as you described; no corrections unless they truly didn't understand me.
To be perfectly honest, I've been using this method for a long time now, and the only things I compared were periods when I read 2 hrs/day vs 30 min/day, periods where I did the exercise mentioned above vs conversation with no memorization and periods of 5 - 7 hours conversation per week vs 3 or less hours per week. As I mentioned, the overwhelmingly best indicator of level in conversation turned out to be the number of hours spent conversing and memorizing. I was quite surprised that 2 hrs of reading wasn't noticeably better for conversation than 30 minutes for the single data point of myself.

Wow, that is REALLY interesting to me... and makes sense. You've just sparked my motivation: I've been taking a break from Anki for a couple of months now, but I'm going to restart and only use production cards from items collected from speaking gaps in my iTalki sessions (or other production attempts). I've had the thought in the past to narrow my flashcards to only items for which I actually experienced a missing need in production... but this nicely put the cherry on top of that idea.

You have way more successful experience than I do and I really appreciate you sharing this.  

Thank you!

It is completely dependant on the way your brain prefers to work, everyone uses a combination of the aural, visual, kinetic, learning to store and rec\all memories. My school took part in a 4 year study to see if you could tailor education for an individual and excel their learning.Their are different subsections of eqach, some people use all of them , some use a range, others use just one or heavily favour one or 2.

For example the word water some people hear the word water when they read it, some hear the sound of water, some see a body of water visually, some feel water on their skin or how it feels to drink etc. Likewise if someone says water they can recall in these various manners (there are more some people see the word in their head when they hear it, some remember the phsyicaluity of handwriting it. 

knowing what your brain naturally likes to do with your native language can help determine the best way to learn a second language, or in fact any new informationwas tested rigoureszsly for 3 oiut of the 4 years 

zKing wrote:

You have way more successful experience than I do and I really appreciate you sharing this. Thank you!

You bet - I hope you experience as much benefit from the method as I have. The other thing I forgot to mention is that I was surprised by how much better it works than conversation without memorizing anything. I should also note that memorizing something after a session doesn't guarantee I'll be ready to produce it by the next conversation; it still takes time. But it gives me more of a fighting chance to patch those holes than any other method I've used.