Using Memory Palaces for Chinese Vocab and tones

[fairlieflyer]

Hi everyone. I am starting HSK 4 and need to come up with a better method to rapidly recall tones especially for my speaking. I am considering using a memory palace with 5 rooms (for each tone + neutral) and then assign all HSK4 words to their respective rooms. Some people even use different colours in each room to remember the tone ,say Blue room is first tone words. My problem is how you deal with multi-character words?  eg: 安全 - ānquán. Perhaps it could be split into a 'first tone' room ān and then quán  put into a second tone room. Or maybe just one room with ānquán? The latter could be better as then double tone change rules will be picked up bu this is more the exception than the rule. Any suggestions would be welcome around using *Memory palaces* to learn Chinese and what you've found works and what didn't. Xièxie in advance [NB I also use Pleco, Ankiweb SRS, Skritter, Youtube usually Foodranger and Confucius Inst HSK Study books and practice exams to help me learn]

[Yadang]

Alex Mullen (a world memory champion) describes two ways to deal with multi-character words here.

[imron]

On 2/5/2019 at 9:25 AM, fairlieflyer said:

and need to come up with a better method to rapidly recall tones especially for my speaking

The real problem is that you likely have an incorrect mental model of the language where you see pronunciation as 'sound + tone', when actually you need to see it as 'sound', with different tones being different sounds.  Imagine the English words bat, bet, bit, bot, but.  You would never tell someone to learn them as

 

bt + 1st vowel

bt + 2nd vowel

bt + 3rd vowel

bt + 4th vowel

bt + 5th vowel

 

That would be totally insane, and would make it impossible to remember and quickly recall sounds accurately, and yet that is what people do with Chinese tones.

 

If an English learner was doing that and said to you "I need to come up with a better method to rapidly recall vowels, especially for my speaking", you would tell them, "no, you should stop splitting vowels from the sound and trying to remember them separately because it's complicated and error prone and doesn't reflect how native speakers use the language".

 

Instead of investing a significant amount of time building and maintaining a memory palace (and yes, it will involve a significant time investment), you'd be better served learning to internalise the tones such that you would be no more likely to confuse 'mā' and 'mǎ' than you would confuse 'ma' and 'na'.   I did this by just listenting to mā má mǎ mà, bā bá bǎ bà, tā tá tǎ tà (and so on) over and over again, without trying to associate any meaning to anything just being mindful and focusing on treating each tone as a different sound.

 

Once you internalize tones as different sounds, and start remember them as whole sounds rather than as 'sound + tone', it signficantly simplies things and you won't have any problems with rapid recall, in the same way you have no problem rapidly recalling ma vs na.

 

Anything else is just making things far more complicated than they need to be.

[imron]

4 hours ago, Yadang said:

Alex Mullen (a world memory champion) describes two ways to deal with multi-character words here.

How exhausting!

[mungouk]

Wouldn't a memory palace approach for tones involve some aspect of "searching" the MP and reasoning about what the correct tone should be, before you can say it?

 

In which case you wouldn't be able to use it in connected speech because it would be too slow.

 

I'm only around half-way through HSK 4 level, but I think internalising the sounds as @imron suggests makes a lot of sense.

 

When I started learning, my teacher said "don't worry about the tones, they will just come", and it seems to have happened that way, give or take a few times when I have to ask her specifically what the tone of a particular word is because it doesn't come straight out.

 

 

[Shelley]

I think the "don't worry about tones" approach is to discourage you from separating them.

 

Apart from needing tones for looking up things in dictionaries and similar, I try to just absorb them as part and parcel of that character/word. 

 

I think this is another one of those "here is another step in the way of actually remembering things". Why go to all this effort sorting out rooms , colours and then coming up against this problem of multi character words and working out how to squeeze it all in to this method.

 

Just get down to work, stop prevaricating and study. I know, I know, its old fashioned but I believe it works and has been around for this long because it works, just get out pen and paper and spend time writing characters and words and sentences. This will embed them in your memory and give you the extra added bonus of the muscle memory and the skill of being able to write.

As you write speak out loud, reinforcing the tone as you go.

 

You need to spend more time studying and less time preparing to study.

 

 

[Yadang]

19 hours ago, imron said:

How exhausting!

 

Oh yes, I agree. I'm certainly not endorsing this.

[fairlieflyer]

Hi everyone, thanks so much for all your constructive thoughts and views. I must say I'm intrigued by Alex Mullen/Serge Gorodins approach (thanks Yadang) as I've always found if I get the technique correct at the start, I  can eventually accelerate my learning and most importantly have clear recall in the long term.  I hate studying hard for an exam then starting the next paper having re-learn the prior years work which had poor memory linkages. I usually can instantly recall any location in the MP if its crazy enough without needing to search it, hence the colours or location approach may have some use for me. Was good to see how others have approached pair words problem too.

At this stage, I'll spend a few more days figuring out what works for me then get stuck in. As Shelley mentioned, nothing like hard work! Thanks again , I appreciate the support on the usual rollercoaster of language learning :-)??

Lastly, I think this quote from Mullen said it all: "That said, if there’s one thing mnemonics have taught me, it’s that building effective systems can take time. At first, it may take a while to translate a word into its image+location pair, but it definitely gets easier. And with enough repetitions, those words start to seep into long term memory. That’s the goal, of course."

cheers guys

[fairlieflyer]

I agree with Imron about splitting out the bit, but, bot etc as separate words rather than learn tone variants of the same word. I suspect this is also why native Chinese speakers sometimes can't understand foreign speakers when using a single incorrect tone, as they see the word as a fully distinct and separate. For me, using loci with colours or locations it's then relatively easy to see the word visually and get the tone right each time. (dao4 silver road, dao1 red knife, dao3 green island etc)

[roddy]

1 hour ago, fairlieflyer said:

And with enough repetitions, those words start to seep into long term memory

Out of the mouths of mnemonists...

 

If it works, it works. Any system you stick to is probably a good system. I can't shake the feeling, though, that constructing memory palaces is the long way round. Still, if it's more scenic...

[Shelley]

@fairlieflyer Glad you took my remarks in the spirit they were given, As others have said whatever works for you.

[imron]

2 hours ago, fairlieflyer said:

For me, using loci with colours or locations it's then relatively easy to see the word visually and get the tone right each time

It's still reinforcing a memory model where tones are separate.

 

I was going to ask do you also have separate colours or locations for initial and finals, but I read the article by Mullen - and he more or less does do this (hence the exhausting comment).

 

Even if the mnemonic is super crazy and you can recall it instantly, it's still a two step process - 'instantly recall the crazy mnemonic' -> 'get the tone right' and that stops it from being instant.  Worst case, it's going to be a 5 step process 'recall crazy mnemonic' -> 'get initial' -> 'add final' -> 'add tone' -> 'get the sound right'.  It might seem 'instant' but it's a huge amount of processing you need to do before getting to a result, and it will fall apart for real world usage of the language because you won't be able to keep up (see for example discussion here).

 

If I was going to try and remember a randomly shuffled deck of cards, or π to 1,000 decimal point, Memory Palaces would be the way to do it.  They're great for allowing you to visualise and connect completely unrelated things.

 

But language use doesn't work like that.  It's connected.  It has meaning.  Sure you can use memory palaces to 'remember' large amounts of isolated vocabulary, but that doesn't really help when trying to use it in the real world - and maybe even hinders things.

 

You'll be trying to say a sentence and you'll have unrelated images of sheldon cooper playing soccer, or george costanza steaming food jumping in to your brain not to mention crossover with 'close but different' sounds that will affect your pronunciations (e.g. zh in zheng vs G in George).  And you could claim that it's ok, because that all goes away after multiple repetitions, but why not just skip all the effort in creating that and just do the multiple repetitions with an SRS program or similar to get the same effect with significantly less work.

 

3 hours ago, fairlieflyer said:

it’s that building effective systems can take time.

Memory palaces are not effective systems for learning languages.  They are effective systems for memorization of unconnected things, but language is far more than just memorization of unconnected things, and you're just making it harder for yourself by locking all your vocab in a palace.

[imron]

3 hours ago, fairlieflyer said:

I suspect this is also why native Chinese speakers sometimes can't understand foreign speakers when using a single incorrect tone, as they see the word as a fully distinct and separate

Ask a native speaker the tone for 马 and they will go mǎ and then say all the tones mā má mǎ mà to see which one matches, and then tell you 3rd tone.  That is, they'll figure out the tone by subtracting it from the whole sound - rather than figuring out the whole sound by adding the tone.

[markhavemann]

I strongly agree with Imron here. Mnemonics for tones is going to take up a lot of time and although on the surface it seems like it's addressing the problem, it's not going to work, probably because you are really overlooking the skill that you really need to develop here. 

 

Your memory isn't what needs to be trained or worked on, it's your ear. Rote learning here isn't going to help you and it's definitely not scale-able . Your goal is to eventually learn tens of thousands of words, why not just build the right skills now, because they probably won't just magically appear and you will hit a wall (very soon I expect) with this method. 

 

If, for example, you are learning 以为, go into Pleco and type "yiwei" then listen to all the words that have the same pronunciation but with different tones. Pay attention to the way they sound, to the way the same "word" sounds with different tone combinations. Do this for every word whose tone you can't hear in your head. After a while you will start to hear the sound patterns and be able to hear them in your head without needing a reference. 

 

Once you have internalised the sounds of the tones, I think you will find it MUCH easier to remember them. They are as much a part of the word as a vowel is, and, as Imron said, you don't find yourself needing a memory palace for words containing each vowel sound. 

 

[Flickserve]

1 hour ago, imron said:

Ask a native speaker the tone for 马 and they will go mǎ and then say all the tones mā má mǎ mà to see which one matches, and then tell you 3rd tone.  That is, they'll figure out the tone by subtracting it from the whole sound - rather than figuring out the whole sound by adding the tone.

 

Which means lots of listening practice to be able to know which is the right tone that sounds just right.

 

 My particular method is to listen to short sentences and repeat trying to concentrate on the rhythm and tones of the sentence. At present , I use glossika which helps and I check the tone in Pleco if unsure. But glossika has some limitations. After practice, I used the word 非常 in a sentence to a language partner. I got told off for the wrong tone. Checked pleco, language partner is correct with fei1. Rechecked glossika and yeah, glossika’s voice used a lower tone which I am pretty much sure I did pronounce it similarly. My conclusion is glossika is sometimes too flat with its tones for us learners to discern some tonal details. 

 

Corrective action. Language partner recorded a couple of alternate example sentences for me with 非常really emphasizing the first tone. It’s designed to drill that correct tone. I just drilled them off to burn that first tone into my listening memory and oral muscle memory. To be honest, I can’t remember the example sentences now but I can remember the tones for feichang very well now which is successful internalisation.

[imron]

7 hours ago, Flickserve said:

Which means lots of listening practice to be able to know which is the right tone that sounds just right.

Yep. That's the process by which the tones are internalised.  You need to be able to hear mǎ and then go through 'mā má mǎ mà' and pin which one it is.

 

People will say "I don't have such a good aural memory, I can't just recall sounds from memory like that", but I bet if you told those same people to think of the tune to "happy birthday" or "twinkle twinkle little star" they could instantly recall the sound in their head.

 

"But that's because I heard it hundreds of times growing up", they'd say...

 

Exactly! You heard it hundreds of times and you've internalised it.  Now you need to do the same thing with the tones.

[fairlieflyer]

Thanks all, once again much appreciated. I've done 50 words today using the MP,  and while easily recallable, I agree this would become massive by the time I get to HSK 5-6 and use in real-time. It does however bring into focus the issue just how to learn tones as a single package with each piece of vocab. So I understand better where you're all coming from.

 

In hindsight, it's actually possible to pass HSK3 without having good tonal awareness, which I realise now I probably suffer from. As such my speaking and listening is relatively weak. So...my personal goals from here are to speak clearly and be well understood, then very closely followed by reading, then writing.

 

So, the bit I am struggling with is how to learn characters + tones at scale in a way that can be highly recallable. Luckily I can memorise lots by ramming it in short-term without any method but that's not useful for me medium-long term without easy daily practice as I don't live in China.

 

Two of today words using MP were chéngshí , 诚实 and chéngzuò 乘坐 (charlie chaplin doing weird things...) -  but given the above limitations using MP at scale and not needing to be in order, what method do you individually find most useful for such items ? Ditto with markhavemann's example of yiwei? Would you use mnemonics or full-on SRS repetitions to get you there? 

 

Hope this makes sense and again appreciate your comments and constructive responses.[ Thanks Imron for your post just now about internalising tones which may answer this from your side ]

[Balthazar]

2 hours ago, fairlieflyer said:

In hindsight, it's actually possible to pass HSK3 without having good tonal awareness, which I realise now I probably suffer from. As such my speaking and listening is relatively weak.

 

I think the number of people who actually has "weak tonal awareness" is at least 1000x lower than the number of people who believe they have it. My listening and (particularly) speaking is relatively week too. I think the main reason is that the time I've spent practicing these skills is probably less than 1/10 of the time I've spent practicing reading.

 

As for recollection methods, I don't quite understand what you mean by "full-on SRS". Personally, I do use SRS to help remember words, but only words that I've seen used in context. For me it has been helpful to use a textbook series (I've gone through NPCR 1-5) and pick up the words introduced in the texts there, rather than going through random word lists.

 

Do you have a set of textbooks you are following?

 

At the very early stages, I dabbled a bit with mnemonics (I'd read a Matteo Ricci biography right before I started learning Mandarin). It worked well with the first few hundred words, but I quickly found it more cumbersome than useful after that and would often mix up mnemonics for different words containing at least one similar character. I don't have any particular "method" now, beyond not over thinking my approach to learning and spending more time on actual study that meta stuff.

[markhavemann]

2 hours ago, fairlieflyer said:

It does however bring into focus the issue just how to learn tones as a single package with each piece of vocab. So I understand better where you're all coming from.

Let us know how it goes as you continue with it. Experimenting with different study methods is an important thing to do Even if you find that you reach a limit with it in this, maybe it will give you insight into how to apply it differently or to another area of your learning.  

 

2 hours ago, fairlieflyer said:

In hindsight, it's actually possible to pass HSK3 without having good tonal awareness, which I realise now I probably suffer from.

I hate to say it but I think you could even pass HSK 6 by pretty much ignoring tones altogether (not a good strategy but definitely possible). I knew someone who had passed HSK 5, had decent understanding but was basically clueless when it came to tones. She didn't pick them up magically, she just ignored them and got by. Just like in English you can ignore word stress, sentence stress and have your vowels all wrong but still understand everything you hear and be fairly understandable a lot of the time as there is enough context. 

 

That said, it's much better to speak correctly and have a mastery over the language you are learning. 

 

I think Flickserve gave some good advice with sentences. I try to make part of my learning center around sentences which I listen to passively as much as possible, and shadow 100 of them a day actively. I only choose sentences that come with audio which I extract and put on my phone (adding the text of the sentence as the title or lyrics). Usually the sentence must have a word I would like to learn, or be full of words I know but due to speed or whatever I didn't understand when I first heard it. 

 

The result of this is that sometimes when I "forget" the tone of an unfamiliar word in isolation, I will remember it in one of the sentences that I have collected that contain it. Having listened to the sentence many many times both passively and actively, the word in the sentence, along with the tone (the sound of it, NOT the intellectual knowledge of what group it belongs to) will pop into my mind without trying. 

 

I've noticed that people who do accents often have a "trigger" sentence to help them start off speaking in that accent and I think maybe there is a similar process going on here. 

 

2 hours ago, fairlieflyer said:

Would you use mnemonics or full-on SRS repetitions to get you there? 

I put words into Anki too and now have something like 4000. I am not so strict with myself in Anki when it comes to tones because I've found that if I get it wrong once then I will get it wrong again and again and again. The way that I've figured out to solve this is finding a sentence that contains it and adding it to my sentence database and after a while I'm familiar with the sound (and usage) of the word without seeing it millions of times in Anki. Mostly I've found that Anki is best for not forgetting the characters that I don't see too often. 

 

There are some good pronunciation books for Chinese speakers that have some really nice tone drills that you could do every day to train your ear. Two that I own are: 

https://www.amazon.cn/dp/B07F7V1WNR/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1547863976&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=普通话水平测试使用

https://book.douban.com/subject/11631686/

[imron]

I've found that using the language is the best way to learn it.  I don't necessarily mean using with native speakers - following a text book with sentences you can read because they are simple and contain mostly words you know is also a form of usage.

 

Remembering large number of isolated items of vocabulary is far removed from usage.

 

I'm a big fan of comprehensible input - starting small and adding to what you know, but in ways where at a minimum you are using the language at the sentence level.

 

5 hours ago, fairlieflyer said:

So, the bit I am struggling with is how to learn characters + tones at scale

What is your metric for scale?

 

Imagine the following simplified formula for 'total words learnt'

 

Total words learnt = words learnt per day * days spent learning

 

Many people look at this and think the best way to scale Chinese learning is to increase 'words learnt per day', e.g. they tell themselves "If I learn 20 words a day, then in 100 days I'll have learnt 2000 words, but if I learn 50 words a day, then in 100 days I'll have learnt 5,000 words - that's HSK6 level in just over 3 months".

 

It almost always fails (either through burnout, poor retention, giving up, or a bunch of other things), because they're scaling the wrong thing.

 

It's 'days spent learning' that really counts - especially in terms of cementing in long term understanding. 

 

If you plan on learning Chinese in the long term, focus on scaling days in a row spent learning (see Don't Break the Chain, or my own 100%).  Then you can drop 'words learnt per day' back to a comfortable level (10 a day is nice) and spend more time learning the word properly - including using and understading it in context.

 

If you're not using and understanding words in context, you're not really learning the words.  Note that context can be text books, podcasts, tv show, film, novels, newspapers, etc, just something where the word is being used.  Then you can use that context as the memory hook.  Visualise that context playing out - relate it back to the textbook, podcast, tv show, film, novel or newspaper where you saw it.  No need for Sheldon Cooper or George Constanza - just the visualise the actual thing happening.

 

For a number of years most of my vocabulary acquisition has been done through reading.  I can often remember back to which stories I learnt which words in when I see those words appear again in other novels.