Memory techniques and Roman memory books

[quendidil]

Anyone else here interested in memory techniques? For memorising vocabulary for instance. I recently got Dominic O'brien's audio memory course and his earlier book, I find his Journey method quite effective, but the foreign vocabulary technique I find a little hard to apply for words that don't sound at all like English ones.

He also mentions the Roman Loci method and briefly talks about Ad Herrenium and Institutio Oratio for examples of ancient Roman memory techniques, anyone know where to get these? Either in Latin or in translation.

[GlottalGreekGeek]

Well, I generally memorize foreign vocabulary by repeated usage. Whenever I've tried to shortcut just running into words and looking up the meanings, well, it didn't stick.

Now, for memorizing lines (I admit, not the same type of memory), I like to approach of some famous actor whose name mysteriously escapes my mind. That is, reading out the lines over and over and over again. After reading them out loud enough times, the words are etched into your speech muscles.

[chad]

hi, see this 2005 thread for refs:

viewtopic.php?t=3560

cheers, chad.

[quendidil]

Thanks chad, you mentioned there that you found the modern Major system better than the Classical Loci method, how do you apply it to non-numerical information?

[chad]

hi, ok, take any fact (numerical or not)... to remember it, you can link it to an image in your head. but how do you remember the image?

that's what memory systems like this do, they help you sequence the images you've linked to the facts. i used memory systems at uni, not anymore though, cheers, chad.

[Amadeus]

Salve Quendidil!

I did some browsing and this is what I found. Very helpful! (At least for me.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

http://www.ba.infn.it/~zito/loci.html

http://www.vlaardingen.net/~tom/Mainmenu.htm

Vale!