Saturday, June 26, 2010

Complete memorization of texts
文章丸暗記

まず一つ言わせてください。この素晴らしいアイデアは僕が考えたものではないです。でも、とても効果的なものだと思います。実際にそのパワーを、このアイデアを教えてくれた、アンクルポリグロットのサイトでみてください。ビックリすると思いますよ。彼はシンガポール在住の日本人で、何カ国語も喋れるスーパーマルチリンガル。特に英語、中国語、フランス語は驚きの完成度。ためになる記事やビデオなどが満載なので、是非みてください。もっと読む。。。

この方法がなぜ効果的だと思うかと言うと、これは前にも記事にした、授業、セミナー、ミーティングなどの際に、外国語でノートをとるという考えと似てると思う。ノートをとるとき、一度聞いた内容を理解しなければ、頭の中で翻訳できないのと同様に、文章を読むときも、内容を理解することによって、暗記ができるのだと思う。勿論、理解しなくても、音だけで覚えることは出来るという反論もあるだろうけど、内容を理解した方が遥かに覚えやすいはずだ。また、暗記を試みる行為には、何回も何回その文章を繰り返し読まなければならない。この繰り返しこそ、定着への最短な道だと思う。

アンクルポリグロットさん、面白いアイデアありがとう!

人気ブログランキングへにほんブログ村 外国語ブログへ クリックして応援してください!

First of all, this is NOT my idea! I cannot take credit for it. But I believe it can be a very effective method. If you don't believe me, check out Uncle Polyglot, the super multilinguist who told me about this method. He is a Japanese living in Singapore, and is fluent in many languages, of which I am particularly impressed with are his English, Mandarin, and French. His blog is mighty informative so I urge you to go take a look, especially his videos are a great source of edutainment. Read more...

The reason why I think this method should be very effective is similar to why I think taking notes (during classes, seminars, meetings, etc.) in foreign languages (which I wrote about previously) is an effective language learning exercise. Just like you need to understand what you are hearing before you can translate it in your head when taking notes in foreign languages, you should understand a text fully in order to memorize it. Of course, one can argue that it is not a necessity, but understanding the text will make it much much much easier to memorize it. Also, going through the exercise of memorizing requires "repetition". There's no better way to make new words stick. Repeat profusely.

Thanks Uncle Polyglot for a great idea!

2 comments:

  1. Hi Tetsu,

    What a nice surprise and an honor to be introduced to your readers here! Thanks a million for the mention!

    From my personal experience I can say for certainty that memorization of complete texts really helps! I owe much of my proficiency in English to the tons of memorization of English texts that I did a few years ago. I once memorized 300 pages of texts from an English novel, and since then I've become far more comfortable speaking or writing in English than before.

    As I've recently been focusing on my studies of French slang and idioms, I haven't practised this text memorization method for quite some time. However, in order to improve my French, I will certainly come back to this method at some point in the future!

    Thanks again for mentioning me on your blog!

    Talk to you again soon!

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  2. Uncle Pol

    you are amazing. 300 pages!! I couldn't do that were it written in my strongest language (English), even in Font size 72!

    Bonne chance avec le Francais!

    ReplyDelete