{"id":2118,"date":"2012-12-04T16:30:33","date_gmt":"2012-12-04T08:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saporedicina.com\/english\/?p=2118"},"modified":"2022-02-14T10:30:56","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T09:30:56","slug":"quantum-memory-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saporedicina.com\/english\/quantum-memory-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Quantum Memory Power: Improve your memory and learn languages"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"quantum\"Creative<\/a> Chinese character dictionary<\/a> by Ian Lamont<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Click here to discover what Chinese courses
that we recommend at the moment!<\/a><\/div>\n

Why should you be interested on memory?<\/h2>\n

The reason for which people that have a better memory will learn a language better and faster should be obvious. No matters the language you are studying, if you want to achieve fluency you’ll need to remember a ton of words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions. Also, you’ll have to learn the grammar and pronunciation rules.<\/p>\n

Mandarin takes this challenge to the next level. Not only you will need to learn the tones and a new pronunciation system (pinyin<\/em>). But you will also need to remember the characters (if you are planning to learn Chinese<\/a> without taking characters in to account you are only misleading yourself).<\/strong><\/p>\n

What’s Quantum Memory Power?<\/h2>\n

People often believe that good “memory” is something that we either have or not. This is plain wrong. Beautiful hair are something we either have or not. Memory can be trained. Today I would like to introduce a program that aims at improving your memory.<\/p>\n

It’s called Quantum Memory Power<\/a> and was developed by Dominic O’Brien, the eight time world memory champion. <\/p>\n

I will first introduce the basic principles of O’Brien’s method and then illustrate how you can use it for learning Chinese with a simple example.<\/p>\n

Even if at the end you decide not to use this method for learning Chinese<\/a>, I believe that you can still benefit from this article by understanding how we fix new information on our mind and therefore how we can use these principles to improve our memory with little effort. <\/p>\n

The three ingredients of memorization<\/h2>\n

We often think about our memory as a storage zone where we stock the things that we learn. Some people even go so far to say that you can only memorize a limited amount of information. This is a urban legend comparable to the fact that you can see the Chinese Great Wall from the moon. There is no such a storage zone nor limits to the amount of information that our brain can learn.<\/p>\n

Our brain is much more powerful than what we think. The fact that at school nobody took the time to teach us how to use it is another story. <\/p>\n

O’Brien states that we only need three ingredients to remember things: Association, Location<\/strong> and Imagination<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"quantum\"Creative<\/a> characters<\/a> by thepismire<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Association<\/h2>\n

We stumble upon “association” every day. If I say “iPod” you will probably think about “music” while if I say “Michael Jordan” you are more likely to think about “basketball.”<\/p>\n

We don’t learn new things by stocking them into some hypothetical storage zone. Our brain is not a USB memory stick.<\/p>\n

We can only learn new information by linking it to something we already know<\/strong> (it can be a past information or, even better, a sensorial experience as a taste).<\/p>\n

Thus if I tell you “pizza margherita,” in order to understand what I’m talking about you don’t need to think that a “pizza” is a pastry of flour, salt and water with mozzarella and tomato sauce. It’s more probable that you recall the experience of a pizza that you especially like (maybe its image, its flavor or its consistency).<\/p>\n

Association is the key element of our memory. And this explains why “context” is so powerful while learning a new language<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Some practical examples<\/h2>\n

Let’s make an example and take the word “pijiu<\/em>,” which means “beer” in Chinese. If you learn the word at school, or through your flashcards, but you never drink beer in China, you are probably going to forget it quite soon. The reason is that you are lacking the right “context” to learn such a word.<\/p>\n

But imagine that you go to a bar with four Chinese friends, ask to one of them how to say “beer.” The you tell to the barman “qing gei wo si ping pijiu<\/em>” (“please give me four bottles of beer”) but, while you are getting back to your friends, spill a beer on the t-shirt of a beautiful girl (or handsome boy). Let’s also say that the girl (or boy) initially gets angry with you but then calm down, let her phone number to you and then become your girlfriend\/boyfriend. <\/p>\n

Now you can associate the word “pijiu” to a whole experience and it becomes quite easy to remember it. <\/p>\n

Life experience is the best way to create an association because it’s extremely difficult to forget something that you actually did. This is the same reason for which you mostly learn by taking action and making mistakes (you cannot forget how to drive a car, ride a bike or make love, it just doesn’t happen).<\/p>\n

When I was learning Spanish there was a word, mejillon<\/em> (it means “mussel”), that I was absolutely unable to remember. I tried for years without any results. Then I went to Madrid and I eat a lot of mejillones in a nice Galician restaurant in Calle de Jesus. I was with two Spanish friends and we also drunk two bottles of white wine. When I asked them how to say “mussel” and they answer “mejillon” I was sure that I couldn’t forget it anymore. And I didn’t.<\/p>\n

Here I was, eating mejillones with two charming Spanish girls in a Galician restaurant in Calle de Jesus. There was plenty of context, how the hell could I forget this word again?<\/p>\n

This holds true for any piece of information and it also represents the most important limit of flashcards. If you only rely on flashcards to learn new words your brain will lack the context, that is it won’t be able to associate the new words to something that you already know and, in the long term, it will refuse to keep going by filtering the information that you are trying to learn. <\/p>\n

This is why we often perceive studying as a torture. You are actually torturing your brain by trying to stock infos in a storage zone that doesn’t exist. <\/p>\n

The next time that you have the impression that you brain is saturating don’t blame your limited ability to stock new information, blame yourself for being lazy and not providing the right context for what you are learning.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

An important recommendation from O’Brien is to trust your brain: the first association that comes to your mind is usually the most powerful and the easiest to remember. The reason is that our unconscious brain relies on past experience to create new connections. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like that, but it’s only because your conscious brain forgot that given experience.<\/p>\n

Let’s explain it with another example. Try to create an association between the words “tree” and “chocolate.”<\/p>\n

I would instantaneously think about a banana tree that, instead of bananas, is growing chocolate bars. This works for me, maybe because two months ago I was in South East Asia and I saw a lot of banana trees (or at least I think they were banana trees). But maybe you thought about a chocolate bar with a tree painted on the top, which is fine as long as it works for you. Just trust your instinct.<\/p>\n

\"dominic<\/p>\n

Location<\/h2>\n

Location, to use the words of O’Brien, is the map of your memory, the key to access to the information.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If for instance I ask you to tell me how you were dressed last Thursday, you probably cannot answer me on the spot. But if you start to think where you were that day and what you were doing, you will also ending up remembering the clothes that you were wearing.<\/p>\n

It happens the same when you try to recall a word that you cannot remember. I write a lot and this happen to me all the time, even in Italian. Before to resort to a dictionary I will ask to myself where I learned that word or where I was the last time that I used it. A lot of time it works.<\/p>\n

Another example may be the task of remembering the name of a girl that you meet last week. Let’s say that you meet her again but you cannot remember her name. Your best bet is to think where you met her and in which situation. Many times you will end up remembering her name.<\/p>\n

I could keep going but I think you got the point.<\/p>\n

Imagination<\/h2>\n

“But I don’t live in China so everything I read till now is useless,” you are maybe thinking now. Not really ; )<\/p>\n

Imagination is the glue that you must use to fix things in your memory.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let’s take the character \u7ad9 (zh\u00e0n<\/em>), which means “station.”<\/p>\n

Sure, if you see it enough times you will probably remember its meaning. However there is a shortcut, and it may be created by your imagination (well in this example by my imagination but it’s the same).<\/p>\n

Call me drunkard, but in the character \u7ad9 I clearly see a glass (the left side of the character) and a bottle of wine (the right side). Now I can think about a man that is pouring himself a glass of wine from his bottle at the entry of the Central Station of Milan.<\/p>\n

I’m using association<\/strong> because I’m linking a character to an experience that I lived (the entry of the Central Station of Milan is full of guys drinking wine at any time of the day). As you see I don’t need to live in China for that.<\/p>\n

I’m resorting to location<\/strong> because I’m exploiting a place that I know (the train station of Milan) to remember the meaning of the character.<\/p>\n

And I’m using imagination<\/strong> because I moved from a Chinese character to a full story that embeds all the information I need to remember that character. <\/p>\n

We obtained a similar result to the one described by Heisig on his best seller Remember the Hanzi<\/a>, which I reviewed a couple of months ago (click on the link to read my review).<\/p>\n

There are two important differences. First, Heisig doesn’t talk about “position” (unless I lost it while I read Remember the Hanzi but I don’t think so). And second, while following the Remember the Hanzi approach you can only learn the meaning of the characters, I want to go a bit further.<\/p>\n

Pushing the limits of my imagination<\/h2>\n

Instead of just thinking about a generic man drinking wine, I could imagine my French friend Jean Baptiste sitting at the exit of Milan’s Station pouring himself a glass of Bordeaux Saint Emilion from his bottle of wine. <\/p>\n

Why would I want to go to such a great detail? <\/p>\n

There are two reasons. First, thinking about a specific person and wine instead of a generic man requires me much more imagination. Hence the image will be much more vivid on my mind and it will be easier for me to remember. Second, and here is where it get interesting, the French sound “Jean” is very close to the Chinese sound “zhan,” that is the pronunciation of the character \u7ad9.<\/p>\n

Hence I can now remember the shape (a glasses and a bottle), the meaning (“station”) and the pronunciation of the character \u7ad9. Since our memory only needs a trigger (the so-called association), it’s not necessary to have two identical sounds. “Jean” and “zhan” are enough close to do the trick for me.<\/p>\n

Again, my friend Jean may not work for you. It’s better if you find the “link” from your life experience. <\/p>\n

What you get with Quantum Memory Power<\/h2>\n

The program contains eight CDs. In this review I only scratched the surface of the first disk.<\/p>\n

The program goes on teaching you a whole set of skills. In my opinion the most practical chapters are the ones that explain how to memorize phone numbers, how to remember the names of the people you met, how to memorize the order of a deck of playing cards (great to impress girls in a first date haha) and how to win at blackjack (you are more luckily to win if you can remember the cards). <\/p>\n

I’m not going to hide you the fact that learning each one of these skills will require time and work. So only the most motivated people will go for it.<\/p>\n

In my opinion the real value of this program lies on the first, simple exercises (for instance how to remember a list of ten objects by using the principles of association, location and imagination) that teach you how to train your memory and use it at its most. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Learn a language with Quantum Memory Power<\/h2>\n

Quantum Memory Power<\/a> also contains a chapter devoted to learn a foreign language. O’Brien has some original tips and they make sense to me. However I believe that its ideas apply more to western language than Chinese. <\/p>\n

Last year, after I went through the program, I spent some time developing a simple system to remember Chinese words of two or three characters (most of modern Chinese words contain two characters so learning isolate characters is rather useless). <\/p>\n

The idea was to come up with a framework that takes into account the meaning, the pronunciation, the tones and (tentatively) the shape of the characters.<\/p>\n

I’ll write an article about this project as soon as I get enough examples. So if you are interested on the topic make sure to subscribe to my newsletter at the end of this post.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some lessons that we can learn from O’Brien<\/h2>\n