The Power of Visual Help

Some weeks ago, I bought the first three of my visual dictionaries (by now, I own eight of them). They have pictures of situations or different things on every page, ordered by topics. Those pictures are labelled in two languages (the foreign language you wish to learn, and a language you know well for reference). In the case of Chinese (Mandarin), they are labelled in Chinese signs, the reference language, and pinyin (the Latin writing of the Chinese syllables).

Learning vocabulary grouped by context has already been known to be easier and more successful than just learning vocabulary lists. Now, those visual dictionaries take it to another level. By connecting new words with an image, we are more likely to remember the words. Our brain saves images and labels together, which means we have more than just one trigger to access the whole image, and with the image, the word, meaning and spelling.

This leads me to a learning tip I read some weeks ago. When you learn vocabulary, imagine to write down each word on a screen in the upper left corner of your vision (if this doesn't work for you, try the upper right corner--we look up to one of those corners of our vision when we try to remember things). When you need to remember that word, look at your imaginary "screen". You should be able to see it, thus being able to spell it (both forwards and backwards, since you can "read" it off your imaginary screen).

Visualisation can be an immense help for our studying, not only for vocabulary. You could basically transfer anything to your imaginary screen, like mathematical formulas, notes for a presentation, or simply your shopping list. I guess it takes some practice, though. Anyway, I would be really interested in hearing from you whether or not visualisation helps you.