The first stage of learning new sounds, words, short phrases and longer expressions - actually just about anything- involves the creation of a mental image. There are innumerable, scientifically proven benefits to this but I will only mention a few here:

· Your understanding becomes deeper and more comprehensive

· Your ability to think laterally or multi-dimensionally becomes greatly enhanced

· Your brain functions is optimized, enabling you to see and process more information at the same time

· You think faster and more easily out-of-the-box

· You optimize your ability to evaluate and process information

· Your powers of creative imagination grow exponentially

The key to achieving any of the above, however, is making your memory function as effectively as possible. You must ensure that you can recall what you have learnt as quickly and as accurately as possible. Your memory, after all, is the only evidence that you have learned anything at all.

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Thus, how to maximize the memorization process should be one of your primary, principal goals in learning. How you achieve this is by first ensuring that what you need to remember is somehow connected to at least the following four[1] powerful senses.

· Visual

· Auditory

· Kinesthetic

· Temporal

Research into the minds of memory experts, idiot savants, men and women endowed with synaesthesia (the blending of all the senses) have led us to conclude that to develop a powerful memory we need to activate as many of these senses as possible. The ancient Egyptians believed that fully realized humans have 360 senses.

In this course, fortunately, we focus principally on just the above four. In this course, you'll be learning how to link them all together in a 4 dimensional construct.

Linking:

a memory-enhancement image

visual representations of sounds

any kind of action-physical or mental-that

creates a neurological, almost imperceptible

and often subliminal awareness in the body

a compacting of

past, present and future

into an instant.

Don’t be worried if you’re not sure what all this means because in the first 4 lessons all will be clear. This lesson, just an appetizer in this 24 course banquet, takes you through the first stage in the creation of what we call a Holo-MeME ie a Holographic MeMory Encoder. In it, you will learn

1) what a Holo-MeME is, and

2) a number of different ways to

begin the process of creating one.

As you'll see, it’s all quite simple, and very powerful.

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PART 1…So, what the heck is a Holo-MeME?

According to many philosophers, wise men and religious leaders over the world and throughout the ages, mental images are the core to not only memorization but the thinking process itself. They are also the core to memory and creativity according to contemporary studies and research into memory and neurolinguistic processes.

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A Holo-MeME, a supercharged version of a mental image, is one of the most powerful and important tools in your Memorization Arsenal; it’s a larger-than-life, full-colour and uniquely personalized hologram.

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Creatively visualized and incorporating 3 more sense, modalities or dimensions, with the addition of one more, it’s an image, picture, symbol or any other mental representation of what you wish to memorize; it’s an immediate, wordless connection or association between Vietnamese and English, a rich and multifaceted symbol representing the common and most fundamental root of all languages, in particular that of your own native language and that of which you wish to learn; it’s also, like the origins of cuneiform script, hieroglyphics, Arabic and Chinese calligraphy, a conveyer of the essence of what is the universal language, the fusion of the subjective and the objective, the perceiver and the perceived, the fusion of senses with the thing itself.

Here are some of the basic qualities of a Holo-MeME.

1.1: Visual qualities of your Holo-MeME

On the most elementary level, besides being absolutely and unequivocally associated with the meaning, your Holo-Meme should be infused with as many of the following qualities as possible.

It should be:

1. SILLY, stupid or strange.

2. LARGER THAN LIFE

3. ACTION packed (More on this in 1.2)

4. PUNNABLE as required (When memorizing an abstract concept that is difficult to visualize, a visual pun prompts the meaning.)

5. in FULL-COLOUR

6. EMOTIONALLY-charged

7. EASY to see; as clear and vivid as a HDTV set

8. THREE-DIMENSIONAL; as much as your imagination allows

9. possessed of AUDITORY QUALITIES (More on this in 1.3 )

10. TEMPORALLY charged ie give it a dimension of time. (see 1.4 for a more detailed explanation of this and why it is so important)

Let's look at each one of these qualities in greater detail.

1.1.1 Make it silly, stupid or strange

The sight of anything silly, stupid or weird, something that you would not usually encounter it in your daily life, is surely going to make you remember it more easily. I would go so far as to say it would most likely be impossible to forget. How unforgettable is the following mental image that you might use to remember the word "different"

different-dare-to-be2b-prim-

different

Another way of making something slightly ridiculous is endowing it with unusual or unexpected attributes. Advertizing people know the secret to creating memorable advertisements and often affix human features to otherwise drab, featureless products they wish the public to buy. Look at kids' reading books. Just about everything is anthropomorphized. I am sure you'll agree that affixing over-sized eyes and a smiling face on the following mental image creates a much better first and longer-lasting impression than any ordinary blender. It increases memorability tenfold.

blender-smiole2 copy

blend

1.1.2 Make it larger than life

Let's face it! We all remember something better when it’s big. Imagine opening your front door and seeing a fly the size of a horse there. What about a dog the size of a small truck!

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Living as I do in subtropical Southern China, a long way from the cooler climes of my birthplace in the middle of England, I am constantly discovering exotic new fruits and vegetables. The taste of many of them is uniquely memorable, but remembering what they are and their names is often quite a challenge-particularly when one may have so many names. One way I facilitate memorizing of a Ba Lung Gua is to imagine one - a clear meter taller than myself - towering over my hapless self, desperately trying to hold it up.

balunggua-ridge-

ridged luffa

By imagining everyday objects and concepts as concrete things many times larger than their original size you are guaranteed to substantially increase memorability.

1.1.3 Make Sure It Has Some Action or Movement

A still, inert, or lifeless object has less chance of being remembered than one that has movement and feeling attached to it.

On a movie set, when a director calls "Action" he expects all his actors to be alert, mentally and physically prepared. This means that they are ready for anything. Not only do they know their lines but they are so totally immersed in their characters that you and I, ie the audience, are totally moved by their performance. Their attitude, voice and gestures transport us to their world. This is what your mental images have to do.

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Does the following have the right attitude to convince you that this mouse's determination is unshakeable? Eyeballs focused, whiskers twitching, aren't you convinced that it will do absolutely anything to get that cheese?

determination-mouse

determined (adj)

Another way we can impart movement or action to our mental image is to take a leaf from the books of the Futurists or even the style of painting known as Cubo-Futurism. The following paintings[2] are supreme examples of means of creating energy, describing movement and expressing dynamism on a static, two-dimensional canvas.

330px-Goncharova_cyclist 300px-Duchamp_-_Nude_Descending_a_Staircase

We will see in later module how the heightened visual sense in many artists can help us considerably in the memorization procedure.

Can you imagine fury? One way would be to imagine it as in the famous quotation "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"? How easy is it to create a mental image of a woman breathing fire, smoke bellowing from her nostrils? A waft of steam rising above her head? The epitome of fury.

fury

cảm hứng, cơn giận dử, sự cảm phục, sự cuồng bạo

When you have any somewhat abstract notion you wish to remember, any mental image you create for it needs to epitomize all of its essential qualities. Endowing your mental image with action, movement and attitude helps achieve this. More on this is 1.2.

1.1.4 Make it Punnable in a Visual Sense

As Vietnamese, you are most likely masters of this quality already, namely the use of a composite of one or more smallish mental images, each with their own individual core ideas or meanings, to create one larger mental image with a totally different meaning.

Sometimes, as is the case with the following pictures you simply can't resist.

chair--Eameslounch ANd9GcS3h5g-axPnvZTSNv9jGV3b3F2uPEetzM8hoJWjqWsx1WpoQbbdL7s73k53

chairman

cái ghế + đàn ông

The next example, a collage, works on a completely different level. Not only does it capture the essence of the pain one has to endure when admitting to having done something they shouldn't have, it also gives an insight into how foreigners learn traditional Chinese characters, something we need to do if they wish to study the Chinese Classics. The speaker on the left with the speech bubble could easily be replaced by a person talking, while the blade in the heart is perfect.

admit1 copy

admit

thừa nhận

To make it even more memorable and expand the possibilities why not create some movement: see the blade piercing the heart and the blood dripping down with your mind's eye will.

You'll be meeting many more of these in the lessons later.

1.1.5 Make it FULL-COLOUR

Don't rely on monochrome or grayscale. Even if an object is naturally black or white, or both, or grey for that matter, throw in a few more colours of the rainbow to make the object of your studies more colorful, more distinctive and more memorable. Change a grey elephant into shocking pink. Mentally create a panda with blue ears.

1.1.6 Make it EMOTIONALLY-charged

emotion-filled

Some interesting research has been carried out on Working Memory training by scientists with far more letters after their names than I have. Their results suggest that if an emotional dimension is added to learning routines, people have more control over what they are learning. In other words, by training and sensitizing the emotional brain, cognition is improved and the ability to retain information, manipulate it and ultimately have total control over it is greatly enhanced.

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Applying this knowledge to the task of learning new vocabulary, let's first return to the earlier pictures of our determined mouse and the fire-breathing woman.

Visualize the paw of the mouse. See it turn into a clenched fist, punching the air in the manner of tennis players who have just won a vital point in the game. They are not going to give in now. In the veins of the fire-breathing woman's right hand and heart see the blood boiling? These are two simple ways to emotionally charge a mental image. Exploit your emotions to the fullest when you are memorizing.

1.1.7 Make it EASY to see

Over the centuries, in our quest to understand the universe and know better our role in the scheme of things, scientists have been constantly devising ways to see everything more clearly. The first step in understanding is to be able to see.

Electron microscopes use an electron beam to illuminate and magnify microscopic organisms invisible to the naked eye. One such organism is the fearsome looking hydrothermal worm hydrothermal worm copy which would be just another worm. Quite amazingly, they also allow us to see the movement of light flashing from the synapses to and from neurons. neuron-synapse Scientists, as of the time of writing, have now worked out a way to watch how memory forms in mice and zebra fish brains. Philip K. Dick was right. What a visionary! And you can be too. When you create your mental image you need to engage the mental equivalents of the above inventions. Perhaps you'll be inventing some of your own some day, getting a glimpse into the direction the world is heading.

Without the aid of a telescope, Orion's Belt, 120px-The_region_of_Orion%E2%80%99s_Belt_and_the_Flame_Nebula the Chinese Plough 255px-Pleiades_Spitzer_big and the so-called Eye of God 120px-Helix_Nebula would be mere dots in the sky. Another amazing invention is the MRI. MRI--1 copy Put your noggin under one of these and a doctor can see in minute detail, the smallest parts of your brain. Do you really want him to be able to do that?!

1.1.8 Make it THREE-DIMENSIONAL

woman in a blue hat by picasso

Do you recall what the Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla did before building a prototype of any new invention? After imaging what it looked like and mentally creating and assembling each individual component, the genius inventor would then switch it on and observe a working model of it using his imagination. A surefire way to elevate memorability of an object is to move from a 2D pictorial representation on a page to a 3D object either out there- in the open air- one you can physically walk around and view from a multitude of vantage points, or to one you create and see with your mind's eye.

juicerpatent2

Can you visualize all the moving parts of the juicer above? Can you see them all moving? Can you see how it operates and achieves its objective? Don't worry if you can't; instead, why not shrink yourself to the size of a flea and fly around the appliance's interior. You are sure to get a better sense of it by doing this. Scientists, engineers, surgeons and such like, do this all the time. So few humans, living their one-dimensional lives and working in their two-dimensional occupations have the chance to practice their 3-Dimensional visualizing.

Can you imagine more than two dimensions in this painting by Picasso? How many musicians can you see?

picassoThreeMusicians

Three Musicians by Picasso

Cubism was the first attempt to represent three-dimensional forms on a two dimensional canvas; its most illustrious examples allow afford us the experience of an object not just from one but a multitude of viewpoints.

Violin_and_Candlestick

Violin and Candlestick by Braque

Borrowing ideas from higher-dimensional mathematics which was one of the precursors to quantum theory, not just the Cubists but also Surrealists, Futurists, and abstract artists radically modified how we view the world.

A surefire way to elevate memorability of an object is to move from a 2D pictorial representation on a page to a 3D object out in the open air- one you can physically walk around and view from a multitude of vantage points.

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Can you imagine a miniature version of yourself strolling around the Statue of Liberty, getting a really good close look at the huge, beautifully manicured toes of the Goddess of Freedom?

liberty2

liberty

And with that, we move now onto ways in which we add a dimension of sound to our mental image.

1.2 Auditory qualities of your Holo-MeME

3D SPectrum of Sound 300x137 Basic Characteristics of Sound

So, your Holo-MeME is now linked to as many visual qualities as possible, there is a clear picture in your mind of the object or concept you wish to remember and the meaning is unambiguous. What you need to do now is create a two way link between this image and another sense. Learning without thinking ie creating automatic reflexes is your ultimate goal. To maximize the memorization process when studying and become a smarter learner, which is the reason you are here, the next sense you need to make connections with is the auditory.

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At the most basic level, it's all about connecting your Holo-MeME with another encoder which you will have already created to visually represent a sound. This mental image we call an Audiographic Code (or AgC), we examine in greater detail n Lessons 2 and 3 as we learn why they are so important when memorizing English words and how to create them. For the moment, however, let's look at a few ways in which these two-way connections work.

First we need to create some mental images.

How about a house, a cat and a dog?

housesm-- 　 dog-cane cake-gateauxTypes_of_dessert_gateaux

nhà chó bánh ngọt

So, what we have here, without going into any of the more subtle, finer details of each one, are clear and unambiguous representations of what we wish to memorize. Without any doubt, we know what these things are and have one visual representation of them. Do they satisfy enough of the requirements for our mental image? If not, then you need to spice them up a bit. We have 1) what is quite a common style of house in parts of Germany; 2) a suitably cute and adorable looking golden retriever and 3) : a delicious-looking, French style cake made in the way that only the French can do;

I'd like you now to imagine the following, in each case, mentally accentuating the incongruity in the conjunction of the images. Hold the images in your mind for at least 3 seconds then close your eyes.

1) a giant funeral casket (ie hậu sự) sitting on the roof of the house

2) two slightly miniaturized pieces of furniture (đồ gỗ), a sofa and a chair stuck on the dog's tail, much to its annoyance and discomfort

3) a giant tree (cay) perched on top of the cake

cake-gatobu-tree ie Vietcay

Double click on the following icon and listen to the pronunciation of these words a couple of times.

dummy Can a icon linked to a sound be put here????

Then, close your eyes for a few seconds and bring to mind the above images. Using your Mind’s Eye and Mind’s Ear see, hear and repeat the words with your best English or American accent, with your English speaking ‘YOU’.

1) See the house and say hậu sự, joining the ‘u’ and the ‘s’ and not vocalizing the last sound);

2) See the dog and say đồ gỗ, joining the ‘ồ’ and the ‘g’ and not vocalizing the last sound); and;

3) See the cake and say cay (adding a ‘k’ sound at the end.)

Do this several times!

Silently, sub-vocally, under your breath, out loud …..any way OK.

hậu s đồg cay^k

By doing this, you have just effortlessly achieved two very important things.

The first is that you have taught yourself three new words in English (if you didn’t know them already, of course) and how to say them. Of course, the pronunciation may need a little tweaking but you are almost there. Note that I deliberately used a rather potentially striking and somber image to perch on the top of the house since about 90% of the students I teach here in Hanoi pronounce ‘house’ as ‘con hau’ (in English) omitting that very important hissing sound of the final ‘s’. If you have no problems with that final ‘s’ then by all means employ an oyster as your AudioGraphic Code.

The second thing is that you have just semantically encoded these three words through the visual and the auditory encoders. Much more on this in Lesson #4 in which we look at how to memorize many different kinds of ranging from one to nine syllable in length. For now, let's move onto how we incorporate the ever important kinesthetic sense into the memorization (or encoding) procedure.

1.3 Kinesthetic qualities of your Holo-meME

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Kinesthesia[3] is the most primitive of the senses. Originating way before pre-Neanderthal times, it’s the sense that gives you an almost imperceptible feeling as you learn something; a deep-down, innermost emotional or even visceral response. It’s stimulated any time you move a muscle, tendon, ligament and such whether voluntary or not, no matter where, no matter how much, no matter how small, the nerves in your body are detecting and transmitting the message to the brain. A key component in muscle memory and hand-eye coordination, it has a remarkable ability to sense the position, location, orientation and movement of your body and all its parts. We use it as a kind of primordial instinct, a throwback to our prehistoric Neanderthal days, in the same way that animals use magnetic, gravitational and electric fields. They don't have to think in order to migrate, detect prey, etc; they just do it.

Being equipped with the kinesthetic sense is like having a bundle of sophisticated, miniature, high tech gadgets strapped to various parts of your body, both internally and externally. It’s your internal GPS that provides you with a constant update on your location. It’s your compass, telling you in which direction you are heading, similar to the migratory instinct of birds, heading for a warmer winter. It’s your gyroscope, telling you whether or not you are hanging upside down from a tree- as if you needed reminding !!J!! It’s also your theolodyte, that gives you a pretty good estimate of how far you are from the ground, no need to look.

1.3.1 Using Your Eyes

When you are looking at something, your eyes are engaging the muscles in and around your eyes, your kinesthetic sense connecting all the synaptic dots and dashes.

Feel a little crazy as you do the following exercises. It doesn't matter whether your eyes are open or closed because for your Kinesthetic Sense, indeed all your senses, there is no difference.

eye-muscles2

1.3.2 Writing It All Down

When you write something down all the tiny muscles or tendons in your hands and fingers are sending tiny messages to the brain through the feelings they are registering. This, again, is your kinesthetic sense. The same process occurs when you merely imagine you are writing or drawing something; you don't even have to put pen to paper.

writeDown-takenotes

Imagine yourself writing the following word exactly as you see it here.

How did you go about this, I wonder? How did you do it? I wonder if you are one of the huge number of people who raise the upturned palm of their left hand and, using their index finger on their right hand as a pen, write as if the palm of their hand were a piece of paper. Good! But there is a better way.

Try it again, only this time close your eyes and imagine yourself standing to the left of a huge wall 15 meters long and holding a giant brush. Writing in huge letters as you walk toward the end of the wall, try going from the "i" to the "n" without lifting your imaginary brush from the wall's surface. When you get to the final "n", go back and dot the three "i"s and cross the "t".

imaginationwrite-withgirl2

How did you go? What you just did was an important part of the memorization process which involved encoding by and activation of the kinesthetic sense. It has been proven that for the purposes of memorization, the process of mentally writing out a word is just as effective as putting it down on paper.

What I want you to do now is close your eyes and imagine a giant billboard. Onto it, superimpose a mental image that represents your idea of imagination. The following illustration shows where it has run wild in one woman's mind. Use it for the moment if an idea of imagination does not readily come to your mind.

imagination-run-wildmonsters-of-dream-nightmares-

ɪˌ- mæ - dʒɪ -ˈneɪ - ʃən

And so, visualizing this while, at the same time, either silently or out loud, uttering the 5 syllables that constitute the sound of the word, write the word again. By doing so, you will have created visual, auditory, kinesthetic and temporal connections to the core meaning of the word.

1.3.3 Gestures

Although Kinesthetic Encoding is important in the learning of any language, it becomes even more evident when learning tonal languages such as Cantonese (6 or some say 9 tones) Mandarin Chinese (with its four tones and a neutral fifth), Thai (5) or even your own language, Vietnamese, with six official tones but arguably couple more if you include regional variations of the language.

So, how does a language learner efficiently encode flat, rising, falling, rising-falling, falling-rising, suddenly dropping tones etc?

rising falling

risingfalling fallingrising

A useful and productive way to do this kinesthetically is through gestures. Some people learn better when they associate a bodily movement with what they are learning.

For example, one spoken Chinese language course recommends foreigners associating particular movements with new words in order to remember their tones. For example, for ma¹ie your mom, a left to right horizontal hand swoosh above the head of her, as you imagine her standing right in front of you; for ma², ie hemp, a sweeping of the hand in an upward north-easterly direction; and for ma2 and so on for ma³ ie horse a downward then upward swooping of the hand.

In some of the earliest lessons of the Holo-Meme Memory Course you will learn some effortless ways to memorize the ubiquitous tones in English.

YES! English, too, is a tonal language.

The three examples in the following section will be of particular interest to those of you studying Chinese and/or Japanese. Those studying just English might glean some ideas from it nonetheless.

1.3.4 Silly or Incongruous Pictures incorporated with Distorted Chinese Characters or Katakana

I personally prefer to forgo physically acting out the gestures, preferring the comfort and warmth of my own imagination. For example, to remember the tone for horse, I close my eyes, and with my mind's eye, imagine myself jumping onto an old nag and then imaging a sinking feeling as her back begins to sag.

mǎ

If you think this is too much of a complicated rigmarole to go through to remember the tone of just one character amongst tens of thousands then please take note. In the imagination, all of this lasts no longer than a fraction of a microsecond, as everything flashes across my eyes and into the synapses and neurons in my brain. You'll be training yourself to do similar things with new English words and expressions you learn.

Here's another thing you can do. The character for mom in Chinese looks like the following:

妈 or媽

One the left is the Simplified Chinese version while the one on the right is the Traditional. In order to encode that first tone, we could first squash either of them up and flatten it like we did above. Let’s go with the simplified one.

And even though this would probably suffice to remind us of the tone, since the mental squishing then placement of the character can be an integral part of some encoding procedures, we could go even further. Let’s borrow a woman ie the radical on the left, this one from the Pablo Picasso painting entitled ‘Mother and Child’ and perch it on top of her head.

motherandChild---PicassocrownHanzi

mā

Deeper encoding follows if

we superimpose the character

somewhere else in the picture ………

motherandChild---Picassohanzi-x2

….. and then the icing on the cake is tossing out the baby and adding a horse, the element in the character that provides the sound.

motherandChild---Picasso

With the kinesthetic modality quietly going through its machinations all this time, you would probably need little more to memorize this character. However, the most obvious thing to do would be a variation of the exercise you carried out earlier.

Mentally write out each stroke. There are six.

And here is the recommended order.

Here's a rather simple character you should be familiar with, the remarkable and astonishingly versatile bamboo.

麻

In Chinese it is said with a rising tone. How would you go about encoding that? Too easy!!!

ma2hemp2

má

1.3.5 Sensing What The Vocal Apparatus Is Up To

Another way we activate our Kinesthetic Encoder is through our vocal apparatus. It might seem counter intuitive at first, but becoming aware of where our mouth, lips and tongue are located and what each one is doing as our voice box does its thing, greatly assists memorization. And this is particularly true when we are dealing with sounds that do not exist naturally in our own language.

Say the following tongue twister slowly and with deliberation several times. Where is your tongue? And what is it doing?

The thirty three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday.
/ðə ˈθɜːtɪ-θriː θiːvz θɔːt ðət ðeɪ θrɪld ðə θrəʊn θruːˈaʊt ˈθɜːzdeɪ/

And now try this one?

One-one was a race horse.

Two-two was one too.

One-one won one race.

Two-two won one too[4].

And here’s an old favourite for training the mouth to differentiate between the "ʃ" and "s" sounds. Say it slowly!

She sells seashells by the seashore[5].

Whether you found the above fun or frustrating is not the point. It's all about getting you to think and feel about what the various parts of your vocals are doing, and how your brain is functioning, so that you then proceed to forget about it later, once you have developed the automatic reflex.

1.4 Temporal qualities of your Holo-MeME

By bringing into play the temporal sense and adding it to your holo-meme, you will be able to do what all of the most imaginative thinkers and artists do. You compact all you need to memorize into an instant, enabling you to see whatever you need to know in a single glance. By incorporating a sense of time in your memorization process, you maximize it by facilitating the working of many different senses together.

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The idea underlying this is rooted in an idea borrowed from the brilliant mind of Mozart. Reputedly able to visualize any entire musical composition as a painting he could see the beginning and the end of a concerto or opera, regardless of the length, in a single glance. In a millisecond he was able to capture a multi-sensual panorama, visualizing all the sounds* and their combinations and what instruments were being played at any particular moment to produce them.

Consider how the following members of some honorable professions might use the temporal sense in many aspects of their work. Each one needs to know where they are and what they are doing at the beginning and endpoints of every job they carry out, as well as every point in between. Also, at the very least they need a multi-dimensional, cross sectional and exploded view of the problem in order to analyze it and accurately determine, in normal circumstances, how long it should take.

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A top surgeon needs to mentally envisage, at which point in time and place, the first and last incisions of every operation he carries out, as well as all of those in between. After collating evidence, a resourceful detective not unlike the fictional Sherlock Holmes is able, in his mind, to simultaneous connect all the dots through a careful analysis and blending of all the feelings, sounds, smells, images of a particular case. An astute forensic scientist is able to peer into the past, present and future implications of a crime from a careful examination of a bruised blade of grass in a field. A London taxi driver who has passed the Knowledge examination needs to have in his mind, at any one time all the permutations and combinations of 320 routes around London.

And the list goes on.

Here are a few ways various people are able to view the compression of a length of time into an instant.

How a sound engineer or voice analyst might view a short conversational dialogue.

tthe

By zooming in on this waveform and examining its peaks and troughs, a trained voice analyst, without listening to it, would be able to instantly deduce the sex, approximate age, nationality- and even region of the speaker.

sense-voic-analyst

*How a composer might view his musical score.

Go here for an intriguing way in which Stephen Malinowski graphically interprets Mozart's Piano Quartet g-minor KV 478. One is able to ‘see’ what various instruments are doing at any one time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBO-a6ofEpc

And finally, at least for the moment, here is one segment of how you might compact all the sounds from the words in a short simple sentence into one neat semantic unit.

*How you might see a short and simple sentence

For more on this please see your free mini lessons #2 & #3 in which you learn, using a common learning called chunking, how to compact 30 individual sounds into one easily memorizable chunk.

What we have below is a holo-meme through which an entire short dialogue between a man and a woman can easily be memorized. Through this one emotionally, kinesthetically and temporally charged image, you are able, in a single glance you ‘see’, ‘hear’ and ‘feel’ the first and last key words which trigger total recall of every word in each sentence between.

Through the relatively simple act of memorizing it, you have a paradigm by which you can have hundreds of similar conversations containing innumerable grammatical structures, vocabulary items, colloquialisms and the like.

And so we conclude Part 1 of this introduction to creating links and associations between the senses. Many of you are probably already doing it. Simultaneous multi-directional semantic encoding via visual, auditory, kinesthetic and temporal senses is one of the keys to a powerful memory and the core of the Holo-Meme MemorySystem. It’s so fundamental to the learning process- particularly in the learning of another language- that the entire course is devoted to equipping you with a vast armory of tools, skills and strategies enabling you to, organically and naturally

1) maximize how your mind registers, encodes and processes new English information; and

2) learn how to automatically multi-associate this information 4 ways:

a. visually

b. auditorily

c. kinaesthetically; and

d. temporally.

Many of the techniques you learn are based on systems that go back to the earliest cuneiform and hieroglyphic systems, early Greek and 14th century European mnemonic traditions, Renaissance Memory Arts, as well as the core principles of NLP* semiotics and symbology of modern times. [6]

And, whether you are primarily a left or right brain thinker, a visual, auditory or kinesthetic learner- or indeed any other!- this course is going to teach you how to think and feel and imagine multi-dimensionally using a multiplicity of senses. Over its duration you are going to be making some wonderful discoveries, activating even more dimensions, expanding your heart and mind into areas you didn't even know existed.

Without further ado, let's leap into the next exciting section in which we examine various ways of setting up a simple mental image. In this first stage of creating a Holo-MeME, you'll be carrying out a number of relatively simple but important creative visualization exercises. Don’t skip any one of them. Or you will miss out; they constitute a vital prelude to the more elaborate exercises that follow in later lessons.

Enjoy!

PART 2: First Stage to Creating your Holo-MeME

As you'll have gleaned from the above, when creating your Holo-MeME, there is absolutely no limit to what you can use as your primary mental image. Out of the trillions of objects found in nature, mythology, technology, art and the universe etc, virtually anything goes. The possibilities, as well as your choices, are only limited by your imagination, which is, in itself, limitless.

At this stage, for the creation of a Holo-MeME, all you need to do is two things: creative visualizing and assigning a meaning. The real fun starts from Lesson 4 onwards when you start memorizing words.

Here, in this section, to get your creative visualization[7]* juices flowing, I present you with a tiny sampler from just a few categories.

2.1 kitchen gadgets and household appliances

a) assorted kitchen gadgets, utensils and devices

If you, like me, love cooking, but, also like me, don’t want to waste time in the kitchen, then you want to have at your disposal the most energy-efficient (Your energy!) purpose-specific and time-saving kitchen gadgets, utensils and apparatus on the planet.

The place to go for these I found out many years ago to my wonderment and relief is a street in Tokyo known as Kappabashi. A popular place for tourists from all over the world and a chef’s wonderland, it’s known as “Kitchen Town” in English, though I particularly like the literal translation: “Raincoat Bridge.” Oh, and I love the mascot- a curious, even cute-looking supernatural monster from Japanese folklore known as a Kappa.

Kappa_water_imp_1836-SVI-PD-

The other great thing about kitchen paraphernalia, not just from culinary considerations but also from an English learning perspective, is that when you look at particular utensils or gadgets of enigmatic shape and form, more often than not you can’t for the life of you imagine what they're for. They definitely get you thinking multi-dimensionally.

When I first saw this curious gadget Cherry-pitter-1 , I was racking my brains trying to work out what it was good for. I came close to my eureka moment when shown this variant pit-ie fruit . However, it was only when I saw this one pit-remover- with a context ie the cherry that the penny dropped. Called a cherry pitter or cherry pit remover, as its name suggests, it’s for removing the seeds of cherries (also olives, etc). Definitely not something whose purpose is immediately obvious, such an image could be used to remember either the object itself ie the pitter, or the verb ie pit.

Going from the obscure to the obvious, here is an appliance whose purpose could not be any clearer: toast As always with mental images, use it as a mental trigger to unequivocally remember a word or general concept, in this case the verb "toast" or the noun "toaster".

Another easy one is the "slow cooker" here:

slow_cooker

A wonderful example of a mental image that can be visualized, it can be automatically associated with and used to remember the adjective “slow”. In English, the second word can be safely ignored.

Here you have your first couple of exercise in creative visualization.

Exercise:: 1

How many of the following gadgets would you find in your kitchen? Do you know exactly what they are used for?

masher-SVI-PD-Potato_masher tenderize

a b c

nutcracker Baste-with skimmer-SVI-PD--Spider

d e f

funnel-Kitchen_Funnel OPEN-Bottle_Opener

g h i j

Close your eyes and try to imagine your larger-than-life version of each one in full-colour 3D. Move them around in your mind. Trace their contours and feel their textures. Are they rough or smooth? Hard or soft? Flexible or rigid? Cold or warm to the touch? Could they be dangerous? Or are they completely safe? Do you know the English verbs associated with them? If you think you know how you might use one, activate your kinesthetic sense by mentally going through the action.

Exercise:: 2

Match the above mental images (or mentally visualize your own) with the English words below:

1 grate 2 open 3 funnel 4 crack 5 skim

6 baste 7 mash 8 tenderize 9 spoon 10 scrape

Now try to match the English words with their Vietnamese equivalents below?

1 grate 2 mở 3 phễu 4 vết nứt 5 gầy

6 rưới 7 nghiền 8 tenderize 9 muỗng cạo 1.

a) đánh đòn,

b) phá vỡ mở

ống khói,

ghi lò,

mở,

hớt bọt,

cái thìa,

thực hiện đấu thầu,

ngâm,

làm trầy

b) Household appliances

Can you imagine the “modern” equivalent of this household appliance from around 1910?

220px-Vacuum_cleaner_1910

vacuum

What do you think the original vacuum cleaners looked like?

Another way to create a memorable and unusual mental image is to imagine what an everyday object might have looked like when it was first invented. Imagine how awkward they would have been to use.

How about the next contraption from Europe around the Middle Ages?

roast-rotisserie-SVI-PD-Mea

Can you guess the function of the next life-saving device? A not uncommon addition to the repositories of well-to-do Victorian era English housewives?

extinguish-SVI-PD-Advertise

Close your eyes and transport yourself back in time. Imagine yourself cleaning your house with one of the first generation vacuum cleaners in the world, enjoying the aromas of pig roasting on a spit and feeling the joy of knowing that your house is not a fire risk because your fire extinguisher is at hand.

Welcome back to the 21st century! You have arrived just in time for your next exercise in creative visualization and multi-directional thinking.

Exercise:: 3

Match the following mental images (or mentally visualize your own) with the English words below. Then translate into Vietnamese. Please be reminded that the words are merely suggestions. Within reason and a logical framework, mental images can be used to represent whatever it is you wish them to represent.

dry click play shower cool wash sew relax brighten

2.2 animals symbolizing aspects of the human condition

Being an animal that has been on the earth in its present form since about 215 million years ago, the turtle has been quite a compelling candidate for a symbol of longevity for a long time.

longevity (tuổi thọ; sống lâu)

In religion, mythology, and folklore from around the world, the turtle symbolizes other things too, but it is longevity with which we most readily associate it. The world’s oldest known tortoise, said to have been presented to the royal family of Tonga in the 1770s by the man who discovered Australia, died in 1965 at the age of 188.

In Aesop’s Fables each of the animals represents and symbolizes an aspect of the human condition, human strengths or weaknesses. In many languages the most prominent characteristics of animals are used to describe personality traits. In English, there are the following idioms:

as sly (or cunning) as a fox;

as gentle as a lamb;

as strong as a horse.

What simile does the owl bring to your mind? What human quality does it make you think of? The illustration on the left is by the worst artist in the history of mankind ie me while the one on the right is by arguably the greatest artist in the 20th Century ie Picasso. Either could be a candidate for recalling the adjective "wise" in the simile "as wise as an owl" or even the simile itself.

owl222

Exercise:: 4

Try your hand in creative visualization of the following animals. What aspect of the human condition or human quality does each one symbolize? Do you know any idioms or similes associated with each one?

mule ass dog lion mouse tiger dragon chicken peacock

As___________ as a mule

As___________ as an ass

As___________ as a dog

As___________ as a lion

As___________ as a mouse

As___________ as a tiger

As___________ as a dragon

As___________ as a chicken

As___________ as a peacock

2.3 animals representing countries

Animals also have a tendency to insinuate themselves into our unconscious in such a way that we immediately associate itself with a country. Take a quick look at the following rather unique animal. Besides the name of the animal itself, what word, comes to mind, when you look at the following picture?

australia-kangaroo-SVI-PD-

Australia [ɒˈstreɪlɪə] OR (ɔˈstreɪl yə)

The word I am looking for, of course, is Australia. Whenever and wherever I am travelling around the world, it never ceases to amaze me the number of people who exclaim “Ahhh! Kangaroo!” when I mention the fact that I have family in Australia. This cute and unique creature can be seen on our country’s 50 cent coin, we eat them, and for every one human in Australia there are approximately three kangaroos…but I ask you, whenever you meet a Chinese on your travels do you exclaim “Ahhh! Panda!”? Notwithstanding the foregoing, in my repertoire of symbols, the kangaroo, as one of the most distinctive animals on the planet, is immediately and irrevocably associated with but one country. As such, it my obvious choice if I want to remember Australia.

Exercise:: 5

What animal images immediately come to mind when you think of the following countries?

America Kenya England France Spain New Zealand Italy China

I wonder how many animals you could think of. Select from the following if you had trouble:

water buffalo oryx bulldog Giraffe African elephant panda

bald-headed eagle lion rooster bull kiwi wolf tiger

2.4 paintings

(for representing abstract concepts)

One of the most famous, outstandingly and instantly recognizable mustaches in recent history, as well as the face of the man wearing it, is that of the Spanish surrealist and self-proclaimed genius Salvador Dali.

One of his most famous, outstandingly and instantly recognizable paintings is “The Persistence of Memory”. As a fan of Surrealism in my teens and one who refused to wear a watch or have a clock in my room, I used to, quite bizarrely, have a poster of it on my wall. Here are a few details from it.

persistence_03 persistence_02 persistence_01

persistence

As an abstract concept, “persistence” is not easy one to represent in a concrete fashion. Try to think of one! Not easy is it? The entire painting or any of the above details could be used to represent it. As the key to success in any endeavor in life, no less in your English studies, persistence[8] is one quality you need in abundance; you'll also need clear and unambiguous mental images.

One of the many obstacles one needs to overcome when studying a language is the abundance of synonyms. Looking up the word “determination” in an English-Vietnamese dictionary we will find

quyết đoán, đầy mục đích, kiên quyết, nghị quyết, quyết, dẻo dai,

All of these words express the core idea of a quality that makes you continue trying to do something even when it’s difficult.

Hang on a moment! Some of those definitions sound very similar to those for ‘persistence’. The subtle difference, however, is that in “persistence” there is a core nuance of refusing to give up or let go, especially in situations where other people are against you.

So how do we differentiate between the two? The answer, of course, is a mental image which banishes confusion, one which makes that subtle difference in meaning easier to grasp. There are a great many images that encapsulate the idea of a resolution to continue, fixedly, in the direction toward the attainment of a goal but for me, the following captures the essence. The tree is all alone.

determination-Peter_Collom-

“Determination” by Pete Collom

Exercise:: 6

The following are details from some well-known paintings. What do they represent to you? Can you think of any predominant characteristic, emotion or idea associated with them? How do you react to them?

2.5 sculptures

(for representing abstract concepts)

One of the most famous and easily recognizable sculptures in the world is “The Thinker” by the French artist Rodin. You find life-size replicas of it all round the world, reminding us of what the human race needs to be constantly doing if we are to survive.

Thinker_rodine-en

For a 3-dimensional object that you can instantly associate with the verb “to think”, a sculpture depicting a naked man sitting on a stone, leaning forward with his head down and chin resting on the back of the hand is a perfect example. What the hell is he thinking, I wonder?

Less obvious is any link or association your mind might create with the following sculpture by Henry Moore simply entitled the Reclining Figure.

HenryMoore_RecliningFigure_1951

He said "All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator." Keep this in mind when you do the next exercise in which the objects are open to a great variety of interpretations.

Exercise:: 7

What do the following sculptures seem to represent to you? In Vietnamese or English, how many ideas come to mind?

2.6 illustrations from children's books etc

Any well-written children's book is usually accompanied by illustrations that enhance the experience of the reader, making a story come more alive, adding more dimensions to it, deepening the reader's understanding. What if the idea you wanted to remember was somewhat more abstract, say lying? A suitable Simplified Memory Image to represent this would be a picture of Pinocchio.

The story of the little boy whose nose got longer each time he lied is one familiar to children all over the world.

Focus your attention onto his nose. Making it more prominent or unique in some way will increase the chance of remembering it later. Do something like that now.

lie-SVI-PD2-Pinocchio

Depending on how good your visualizing skills are or how much mental effort you wish to exert at this stage, one quick and easy thing you can do is to zoom in on the part of the image which represents the core meaning, and visualize just that: Pinocchio's head with the elongated nose.

lie-detail copy

Close your eyes and visualize either of the suggestions above, imagining what it feels like for normal people when they are telling a lie.

Edward Lear (12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was a multi-talented English artist, and author. He is well known now mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and especially limericks. As well as being highly amusing, these five line AABBA rhymes not only provide excellent training in the pronunciation of some of the more bizarre and words in English, but also hints at the incantatory nature of language through rhyme, rhythm and resonance.

        nonsense pictures
                There was a Young Lady[9] whose chin                                    There was an Old Person of Tring[10],
                        Resembled the point of a pin;                                                         Who embellished his nose with a ring;
                        So she had it made sharp,                                                                 He gazed at the moon

And purchased a harp                                                                   Every evening in June,
                        And played several tunes with her chin.                              That ecstatic Old Person of Tring.

As you can see, they are also accompanied by wonderful illustrations that possess many of the recommended qualities for memorization. This type of mnemonics architecture, which we explore in some of the later lessons, takes you onto another level of Memorization Power that prepares you before you embark on the learning of poems, quotations and short literary passages.

Listen to it here as you watch an animated kinetic typography

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH16kNxAazo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJw2RWskfqY

Exercise:: 8

Try to view the following illustrations from multidimensional perspectives, imagining what is happening. What scenarios do you think preceded them? What do you think will follow them?

2.7 Gestures and Sign Language

i-don-t-know copy

I don't know. I don't know.

A person standing with bent arms and upward facing palms is an almost universal representation- in the English speaking world at least!- of someone who has no answer to your question. Our guy here has got absolutely no idea.

Close your eyes and imagine his eyes rolling upward, lips curling downwards as he cocks his head to the side. Empathize with his feeling of frustration and there will be no doubt in your mind as to his meaning. The meaning is clear.

Clear also is the meaning of the common Indian greeting Namaste. Hands pressed together, palms touching and fingers pointed upwards in front of the chest while making a slight bow, it literally means "salutations to you" of "I honor your presence"..

Here talk2thehand2 is one gesture you don't want to see during a conversation. It’s sarcastically telling you to "shut up". It’s telling you, "Talk to the hand, because the ears ain't listening" or "talk to the hand because the face don't understand!"

Needless to say, what must be avoided in your mental meanderings is a gesture like the following:

gesture-Indian head shake2

Cute and quaint that it is, it exists nevertheless as probably the most ambiguous, multi-meaning filled and confusing gesture in the world. It’s known as the South Asian Head Wobble or Bobble. Only from the context can you determine whether you are seeing and hearing a "Yes", "No", "Maybe", "I don't know", "OK", "Good", or, even, "I understand".

ASL (American Sign Language), which is the simultaneous movement of hands, arms, body and facial expressions to convey thoughts, is a rich source of raw materials we can exploit for the goal of increasing our competitive advantage in learning and memory.

asl-amaze asl-celebrate asl-ambulance copy

amaze celebrate ambulance

Exercise:: 9

Act out the following scenarios. Try to not only see but also hear and feel the meanings they suggest.

The meanings, in no particular order, are:

crazy congratulate choose or pick out confuse

cover command come concentrate corner

khùng. chúc mừng, chọn hoặc chọn ra, gây nhầm lẫn,

bìa, lệnh, đến, tập trung, góc

2.8 symbols and signs

“A symbol is something such as an object, picture,

written word, sound, or particular mark that represents

something else by association, resemblance, or convention.

” WikiPedia

Humans, using their imagination, love creating symbols; and, depending on what significance they attach to them, they can endow symbols with incredible power.

Your name is one of the many symbols that represent you and a source of your power, the power to transform your life and do whatever you wish in life; a tortoise shell, depending on where you grew up, is a symbol of longevity or an omen of some sort; in a boarding school dormitory in the west, the ringing of a bell just before 6pm is a symbol that dinner is on the table and a guarantee that your salivary glands are going onto high alert; Mount Tai is one of the many symbols of China; the tiger, according to the Chinese Zodiac, is a living symbol of strength and power, courage; individualism or passion.

In our daily lives, we are surrounded by symbols everywhere.

There are those we associate with recycling:

symbol-recycle_03 symbol-recycle_01 symbol-recycle_02

If you have a driving license, are honest, polite and like to do the right things, there are symbols which are almost universally acknowledged as ones that tell us we should stop.

stop2b

A red octagon, particularly one emblazoned with even more symbols, in whatever language, further emphasizes the need to come to an immediate halt. Whatever you are doing!

Stop_sign2 Stop_sign_UAE2 stop-sign2 stop-symbol

There are also those which tell us we can go.

go-800px-Marshalite_traffic

If you have a computer and do anything to do with texting, blogging etc, you'll often see symbols such as ( J ) to inform you that someone is smiling.

There are those that tell you that they are frowning ( L )

For the more esoterically minded, there are the beautiful Sanskrit, Balinese and Tibetan symbols each one representing the three sounds read as a, u, m in the three tone composition and believed to denote Brahma, Vishnu, Siva,

om-sanskrit om-Bali_Omkara_black copy om-TibAum

which are represented as follows in Japanese:

om-japanese

And in English:

AUM or OM

And as we approach the end of this lesson, I really need to show you some of my favourite examples of the complex and enigmatic Arabic calligraphy.

calligraphy-arabic-scorpion calligraphy-arabic-peacock calligraphy-arabic-camel

In a quick glance around my office as I write this I can see a Daruma doll, a photo of a chrysanthemum, a papier-mâché tengu, a small statuette of a tiger, a postcard decorated with a stylized snake, a tiny ivory owl, a rose, a lump of coral, a fluffy miniature koala and a bottle of Guilin Sanhua Jiu. Each object is more than itself; it’s a memory, a reminder of a small vignette from a time and place in my life, a souvenir from some of my time and travels both throughout Asia and beyond: gifts from friends, a furry reminder of the place where I grew up, and so on….

Exercise:: 10

Think about some of the objects and symbols in your life and what they mean to you. Look around your room now. How many objects can you see which symbolize or represent something? What role do they play in your life? What do you associate with them? What do they resemble? What do they remind you of?

As we come to the end of this lesson, I’d just like to say that I hope you have enjoyed yourself. I trust you have discovered some of your latent abilities and hidden talents, activated one or two learning modalities that had been lying dormant.

Having realized the importance of simple memory images and Holographic Memory Encoders in the game of learning, you are now ready to embark on the next step in the process of invoking the synaesthete within you as you creatively visualize AudioGraphic Codes. This all starts to happen in the next lesson in which you learn the 3 important rules while applying 7 techniques in 4 steps of the process.

See you there!

This is the end of Lesson 1

Suggested answers to

the exercises below.

仮縫い亀裂、	baste,
漏斗、	crack,
すりおろす、	funnel,
開き、	grate,
スキムミルク、	open,
スプーン、	skim,
柔らかく、	spoon,
マッシュ	tenderize,
アップ、	mash,
こすり	scrape

1 baste,	1 đánh đòn,
2 break open	2 phá vỡ mở
3 funnel,	3 phễu,
4 grate,	4 vỉ lò,
5 open,	5 mở,
6 skim,	6 tách kem,
7 spoon,	7 muỗng,
8 make tender,	8 làm thầu,
9 mash up,	9 ngâm lên,
10 scrape	10 cạo