MNEMONICS
It was your French class. To remember the word for church, eglise, your teacher taught you to think of a church made of eggs.
Mnemonics, those little memory aids that are the mainstay of vocabulary and foreign language instruction, may not be entirely foolproof. Over time, people who use key-word mnemonics--familiar words that sound like the word that you are trying to memorize--remember less than those who use simple rote memorization. "They are just forgetting more," says Alvin Wang, Ph.D., of the University of Central Florida.
Wang and his team asked students to learn words using both key-word mnemonics and regular rote memorization. Mnemonics were better at improving recall immediately after the trial. But a week later, students who used rote memorization recalled significantly more test words.
Wang thinks that the imagery associated with the keyword technique may be getting in the way of recall. It fades quickly, taking the test word with it.
