This article talks about memory competitions and the techniques the high-level competitors use. It also discusses the differences between speed-typists and normal typists, which are like the differences between amateur musicians and professionals.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/20/magazine/mind-secrets.html

When it mentioned Dr. Yip Swee Chooi, who has memorized the complete Oxford Advanced Chinese-English dictionary, I had to look him up. This video (probably not available in China, but you can try searching for him by name) is pretty entertaining, and at the end he explains his technique, which is related to the classical Roman Room technique.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDcVKtyryPw

I also can't help but point out that all that work with the dictionary doesn't seem to have helped his accent much. I wonder if Skritter users might tend to have the same problem in Chinese.

James

Fascinating. I have not yet made a habit of using the Skritter mnemonics feature, but I have been struck by the number of users that seem to opt for non-visual mnemonics. By that I mean that users often seem to decompose characters into smaller elements that have meanings which may or may not be related to the meaning of the character, and then make a story to go with that combination of these elements. Far fewer people simply create mental images based on the appearance of the characters regardless of their actual meaning, even though this is a well worn path (with books such as Noodle Words, etc.) I often don't know the radicals or meanings of the constituent elements in a character, so the the stories based on their meanings is not useful to me. Of course, there are various other types of mnemonics suggested by Skritter users besides these two. It might be an interesting research project to categorize these and see which type garners more votes and also whether any type selected by a large sample of users seems to correlate with higher success in learning the character.

That's some amazing stuff. I'm tempted...

I imagine that if Dr. Yip had had native speaker audio pronounced for each word he was learning each time he saw it, his accent would be better. That said, foreign language pronunciation seems like a plateau of okayness that can take a lot of effort to push through.

@podster I like the etymology-based mnemonics because they reinforce the meanings of the components. For example, I recently started currently studying 搁 and the mnemonic refers to the meaning of 阁. I actually didn't know 阁 before I started studying 搁, so every time I hit that mnemonic I am reinforcing my memory of the meaning of 阁. When I study 阁 by itself I will have a head start.

The only time that doesn't work is when the component is super rare or archaic. In that case I will either go to a further level of breakdown or use a visual metaphor. And when you get down to the basic components that can't be reasonably broken down further, I think visual metaphors might be the only possible mnemonics.

I have to say that when the Skritter guys added support for mnemonics the speed with which I learned new characters really took off. I had already spent quite a while brute-forcing things with huge numbers of repetitions and it took me a LONG time to learn new characters. Now if I come up with a good mnemonic, or find one that another user's written, it sinks in much more quickly.

James

I use mneumonics this time round too (learned CHinese 13 yrs ago and just tryed to learn by rote) and I am having far better success this time around.

I make a story for each character. It sounds tedious and a waste of time to some, but you start to visualise the story - so even though the first couple of times you try to recall a character you say the story eg. 'the winning DWARF smiled as he watched the losing contestant on MasterChef WEEPING, CRYING OUT NOISILY, and throwing her UTENSILS, 'the DWARF CHEAted' she cried' (器）but after a few times the story is a picture in your head (you dont have to say the whole story in your head to write the components). So learning how to visualise the story is a skill I suppose. Once it is in your long term memory (thanks to Skritter...) you no longer have to say/visualise the story.

I use Alison Matthews 'Learning Chinese CHaracters'. She has a story for each of the most common 800 characters (well HSK characters), using the same noun for each character component in each story. She also has a part of the story for pronunciation and tone (so if the Dwarf is in the story it is always 4th tone, CHEAted gives the pronunciation etc).

I followed her book for the first 6 chapters or so to learn the stories for the basic components, now I use her book as a cross reference to text book learning. I now make my own stories up for new characters but still based on her concept. The initial learning how to visualise though was all due to her fantastic book! And I change the stories often to suit me but still based on her concept.

Having the mneumonic feature in skritter is great as i used to have to flick through my notes if i forgot a story, but now can just click on it when reminding myself for a new character!

Some teachers have criticised her book because the stories for the components are not always the originating meaning - but they explain this, and for me if it helps me to remember the characters then it is good enough for me!

Now to check out your links!!

Cheers,
Donna

interesting article and I can see how Matthews' technique works...

“When we see in everyday life things that are petty, ordinary and banal, we generally fail to remember them. . . . But if we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonorable, extraordinary, great, unbelievable or laughable, that we are likely to remember for a long time.”

Just doing this faster or passed my OK phase is the challenge...

but my Skritter time has just been taken up by either interesting reading or procrastination...

there goes my Skritter T-Shirt...

Cheers,
Donna

Dr. Yip is a Malaysian, probably mandarin speaking since young. And a typical Malaysian English accent sounds that way especially for people of his age group, when our television wasn't so exposed to western television programs.

Though there may have been nothing much he can do about his accent, the fact that his vocabulary is so in depth courtesy of the dictionary memorizing is truly remarkable.

I'm not seeing accents as some huge tragedy in the acquisition of Chinese. There's a vast array of accents just within mainland China.

Thanks, James, I will make a more serious effort to use (and contribute to) the Skritter mnemonics. I like etymology based clues for those rare instances where I actually know the meaning of one or more of the parts, but if I have to remember what the mnemonic means it seems I am doubling the amount I have to learn. Maybe I am hitting the wall because I never made a systematic attempt to learn the radicals (and with the advent of electronic dictionaries perhaps I never will.) Another thing I probably should do more is drill down to the YellowBridge dictionary definitions via Skritter. I really like the way they give you so many "hooks" for a word so that one can leverage an existing vocabulary.

Anybody read Outliers? Just 10,000 hours on Skritter and I should be good to go.

When I started, I referred to the mnemonics quite a bit but after a few weeks or so, I started to rely on remembering them without using mnemonics. I don't make up a story by breaking down the individual portions of the character but I am Chinese so I try to see beyond the character. So far I'm doing OK and don't need to look at the mnemonics at all.

Yeah, the mnmemonics are only needed for things that are on the edge of being forgotten - new items, items you have trouble with, etc. Once the memory is solid you can forget the mnemonic.

James