What to do?
The first thing to do is to pronounce the Japanese word five times or more. The purpose of this is not for rote memory or memory through repetition. This is not how Power Memory works. The main purpose of this is to familiarize your tongue in pronouncing the words because if you just read and visualize you may be able to recall the words but not be able to pronounce them immediately.
Do NOT read the English and the Japanese word together repeatedly. This is a bad habit and will slow down your learning.
The next step is to read the images and associations I have described. Make your visualizations as vivid, colorful as possible. Add lots of action, sound and emotion.
Feel free to add to the scenes I describe. The more you add to the image effects that you came up with yourself, the easier it is for you to remember.
Also, feel free to come up with your own images if you can think of something that would work better for you. Just make sure that the images are funny, out-of-this-word and jam-packed with things you can observe with your five senses and things that you can react with your emotions.
Another tip. Don’t take to long in visualizing. Studies show that it is the clarity of the image that matters and not the length of time you visualize. If you can visualize the image or scene clearly in ten seconds, holding the image or scene in your mind for another minute or two will NOT make any or much difference. Quality and NOT quantity.
Next, after you have visualized the image or scene, pronounce the Japanese word again as you hold the image or scene a little bit more.The whole thing should not take more than twenty seconds per word. Well, maybe thirty, if you include reading my descriptions. People who have been thoroughly trained in Power Memory would take only about ten seconds or less per word.
That’s about it for storing the words in our mind. But that is not the key to retention. The key to retention is in the recall.
Instead of visualizing things repeatedly what you are supposed to do is to do a repeated recall of the words.
A good habit is to get a stack of small index cards. Write the English word on one side and the Japanese word on the opposite side.
After five minutes take out the cards and read one side. Recall the translation using the scenes you have visualized.
NO GUESSING. NO SKIPPING. If you can’t find the correct translation, flip the card to check out the correct answer and then refresh the images and scenes. Never rely on rote memory.
Always check the images in your mind before answering. This way the images tell you the correct answer. For example, the word “fish” in Japanese is sakana (see Lesson sampler).
If you use the techniques correctly, the image of a fish will trigger the correct Japanese translation. It should NOT be the word “fish” that triggers the Japanese word. This means that you learned through rote memory and when conversing you would need to translate as you think in English and speak in Japanese.
Using the Power Memory method will allow you to THINK in Japanese and SPEAK in Japanese which is better. Power Memory is a mental immersion in the language.
Lastly, do a recall after an hour, then next day, then after two days, then after a week and then after a month. Again, when I say recall, I do not mean to store the images again but to retrieve them from your memory. Only when you cannot recall the correct answer should you repeat the storing.
Hope this helps you a lot. Go now to the lesson sampler to practice what you learned here. Enjoy!
English Japanese Words 