I know a made another thread about this earlier just throwing the idea out there but I've now actually got around to playing with the method and want to use this thread to chart my progress. The reason I decided to start this is because the initial results have gotten me pretty darn excited.

A quick recap for those that didn't see the other thread: The idea is to place individual vocabulary words within the scenes of your favorite movies by using the Linkword method to create mental imagines out of the pronunciations. How you do this is you take the Japanese sounds of the Japanese reading of the vocabulary word and actually turn it into a picture of something you know and then put that in the movie.

For example let's take the word "IPPAI" which means FULL. The image you could make is the characters of your movie sitting around with their bellies stuffed full after eating an "E shaped (as in the letter E) PIE".

Doing this I added 91 vocabulary words into Anki yesterday evening without doing ANY reviews once they were input......... until I tested them today that is. The result? As per Anki "First-seen cards: 97.8% (89 of 91)".

I'm amazed for the following reasons:

1. I put those first 91 vocabulary words all within the first 20 minutes of the movie. I thought I was going to have to spread them out more but what I realized is that it's not really about the story of the movie.....it's about the scenes. Basically every time the movie would change to a notably different scene I would just pause it fill it up with all kinds of vocabulary words. If this rate continues it means each movie could easily fit 300-400 vocabulary words if not more. 3,000-4,000 vocabulary words and only having to use 10 or so movies? Yes please.

2. It doesn't seem to matter if you use something from the scene or not....as long as you simply place the object in the scene. I had objects in the scenes that weren't interacting with the characters at all, just sitting their looking ridiculous in the background, and it didn't seem to matter at all when it came to memory retention.

3. It doesn't take that long. Maybe 1 minute total per word which is definitely worth if it continues sticking that well. I'm simply copying and pasting from the iKnow vocabulary lists so putting them into Anki is really fast.

I'm going to try and do 100 per day for the next two weeks or so, 50 at minimum if I get busy, and will try to keep this thread updated to see how well it works as the numbers start piling on.

My idea, if this works, is to see if one can gain a big vocabulary really fast and then go back and reinforce it with something like iKnow (or just normal listeing) while letting Anki take care of the real long term results.

Wish me luck.

erm, what's the point of putting your words into a movie?

Wheew, it doesn't sound natural to do so, but it sure is daunting. Please keep us informed on updates.

radical_tyro Wrote:erm, what's the point of putting your words into a movie?

It's basically just an offshoot of the Roman Room or Journey method used by all of the world memory champions. The idea is that at you take something you already know very well (such as the rooms in your house, scenes in a favorite movie, etc) and place the items you want to remember in those rooms. By associating the items with something you already know it basically gives your brain an additional link to recalling it. I know it sounds odd but it works.

In fact it has already been used on this site by one user (can't remember his name) to learn all of the Kanji readings extremely fast.

Here I found a video. It's actually an edited clip from a BBC documentary on developing super memory. One of the world memory champs teaches the host the technique and tests him on it:

Are you using movies you already know, or making one up as you go?

kazelee Wrote:Are you using movies you already know, or making one up as you go?

Movies I already know. This is key to the method. If you don't know the settings where you are placing the items then it's going to just be one more thing to remember.

My first movie I'm using is the original Power Rangers Movie. I watched it probably 30 times one summer when I was a kid so it was an easy first pick even if it's not exactly something I care to watch nowadays being that I'm 25 lol.

Cool video. Anyway, the reason I ask is because the loci method is typically used for grouping items or for recalling items in order. I believe it was used by another person here to group kanji by readings. In your case of just learning vocab, group and order are superfluous, so it just seems to add extra overhead. But probably the reason you are having success is because your method makes you really focus and think about each word and maybe is fun at the same time. So long as the extra time investment doesn't outweigh the benefits, you may be on to something.

Your movie method is one way to get vocab into your head, but the most important thing to do is re-enforce your memories by learning words in more than one context. I pulled this quote from the youtube clip you posted:

Quote:The reason we often have difficulties in retrieving a memory is because one neural pathway can easily get broken. But by having several different pathways to a memory, it means that if one doesn't manage to reach it, another one will.

The movie method is great, and so is Anki, but you have to be experiencing (experiencing = hearing/reading/writing/speaking) these words in as many ways as possible.

I'm using a weird hybrid based on the movie method and RTK to do the readings. But lately it is turning into childhood method, because I'm using images from the time I was a child.

activeaero Wrote:For example let's take the word "IPPAI" which means FULL. The image you could make is the characters of your movie sitting around with their bellies stuffed full after eating an "E shaped (as in the letter E) PIE".

I read this when you wrote it, and I've said "e-pie" over and over to myself. I cannot think of any way to make "e-pie" sound like いっぱい. If I say it fast, it sounds sort of like いっぱい but with a bad accent. I know it's just an example, but my biggest fear with this method would be that I would learn a lot of vocabulary with bad pronunciation burned into my memory. Are you doing anything to try to prevent that?

nest0r Wrote:I've always done a kind of purely phonetic version of this for learning readings, and never had a problem with pronunciation, though I had the same fear, a bit, at first. It doesn't really stick as long as your focus is on correct pronunciation, kind of like how you forget stories for Heisig unless you want to recall them... I've made some tweaks the past month or two that I'll write about in more detail next month, for what it's worth. ^_-

Well the other reason it isn't going to stick in a bad way is because you are never going to see or hear it in the "bad" form. When reviewing all I ever see is the correct reading and the same goes whenever you come across the word while listening. The visual image you create in the movie is just to give your brain a big clue of sorts for the meaning whenever you see or hear the word in practice.

The only way I could see it creating bad pronunciation is if you tried to recall the meanings by having the question side of your Anki card the actual movie image instead of the correct reading. Of course why anyone would do this would be beyond me. The question side of my Anki cards have nothing but the reading and Kanji compound and the answer side nothing but the definition.


And as an update I'm up to 200 cards (did about 100 the past two days) and I had my first real review session come up from my cards from 3 days ago. Pass rate for those cards (about 60 of them have come up so far) is at 88.5%.

I only rarely use linkword mnemonics anymore and when I do they're usually done with Japanese words, but for the first 1000 or so words I learned I used english word mnemonics extensively (this was before I had Anki). There's really no risk of damaging pronunciation. The mnemonics are not the actual answer, they just provide a push in the direction of the answer (ie the correct word). I honestly couldn't remember most of the ones I made anymore even if I tried. All that's left is the word.

mentat_kgs Wrote:I'm using a weird hybrid based on the movie method and RTK to do the readings. But lately it is turning into childhood method, because I'm using images from the time I was a child.

Me too. Well I used kanjitown to learn the onyomi a few months ago but I experimented with all kinds of locations- parts of my house, games, movies, books. Places with memories from childhood worked the best. I recommend it.

nest0r Wrote:Exactly. + I'm glad to hear about the Japanese linkwording, as this ties into some things I've started tinkering with, but why did you stop? I'm going to assume it became unnecessary after a point?

Yeah pretty much. Most words seem to stick on their own now. I don't really have a good theory why, but I suspect after a few thousand words the connections between existing words act as a support for new words. Or something? Also learning compounds with the onyomi knowledge already makes a HUGE difference. Like, if you know 旅館 and 飛行機 then learning 旅行 is like falling off a log. That goes for pretty much 80% of compound words.

I think most people naturally progress into learning from compounds. It's not really forced, it's just one day you realize you know a lot of readings and can read compounds. Then they're much easier to remember.

It really just holds true with what people are doing with mnemonics - assocating words with things they already know very well. In this case, you're associating the word with Kanji that you know very well and, further, associating it with the readings of those Kanji that you know as well. So all you have to remember is that, when grouped together in that way, it has a certain meaning. You're not memorizing the Kanji, you're not memorizing how to read it, you're only memorizing the meaning.

Not so encouraging, though... "one day it happens" but that's sorta the way it is. It feels like when you first start out, you're just fumbling around in the dark for so long trying to build connections. So using English mnemonics to help you out works nicely (although I never did this - my vocab acquisition was sssooooo slow through the first 6 months or so).

This is one of the very few things about Japanese that actually makes things a little easier, I guess. Learning the first 1000 words actually makes learning the next 1000 easier. And so forth...

Ben_Nielson Wrote:I think most people naturally progress into learning from compounds. It's not really forced, it's just one day you realize you know a lot of readings and can read compounds. Then they're much easier to remember.

Hey guys. Q:What's this guy's idea based on? Hint: it's in the title of the thread.