Memory Skills, what do you use?

[ian71]

Hi folks,

I've just had to renew all my Gas engineer exams same same after every 5 years and i added a few more specialist ones, Caravans and holiday homes, lots of maths formulas and charts to be able to read and understand, with also pratical and theory exams to pass.

Basicly like most exams you need to learn a lot in a short space of time and lots of it is nonesence and only to pass the exams, so soon forgotten! as its mostly all in the refrence books, you just need to find it.

So how do you folks do it?

Me, i tend to use a lots of lists, and number combinations, ways to link things together,
And my top tip, after a night of study, briefly for 5 mins go over it in the morning!
It sticks so much better, than hours and hours of the same stuff again,

Back to learning Thai, i've just done this for Dictionary order.
It was fairly tricky, i know the Alphabet but did not no the order good enough to look up thai words in thai script,
but i did it this way, could be wrong but off top of my head,

low consonants; 4567,10 11 12 13, 17 18 19,23 24 25 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37,42 44.
mid consonants;1 8 14 15 20 21 26 27 43
high consonants; 2 3 9 16 22 28 29 38 39 40 41

as i said off the top of my head so sorry if some wrong, ah i just recheck, changed a couple, but still not bad, good my memory works.

then linked the numbers with the Pictures of the Thai Alphabet that i already know.
Im hoping now this will be a great new tool, i got the idea for learning the consonant postions from a book(with cd) ive been studying called "Thai, Reading for Speaking by Darryl Sweetland, cost me 454bht (inside cover price 395bht) from the airport going home last year. excelent book.

cheers ian

[Curt]

I forgot the question ...

[ian71]

Im suprised know one is intrested in other peoples ways of Memory skills?

7 more intresting tips about memory tricks and skills.

1, We remember unusual things.
2, We remember things that interest us most.
3, We can only remember a few things at a time.
4, Its difficult to remember things we dont understand.
5, Our memory works by building links.
6, We remember things better if we already know something about them.
7, Learning is an active task, we have to think about how we remember something.

A very intresting qoute i found,

After a period of learning, recall rises for a short while (Ten minutes) and then falls steeply.(80% of details forgotten after 24 hours)!!!!!!!!

However, with proper review after 10 mins, then within 24hrs, again after a week, and then at 1 month, then 6 months, recall can be maintained long term, i find this sort of stuff very intresting as im always learning new stuff or have to renew exams, i like finding ways to make it easier, it makes it very intresting and rewarding.

cheers ian

[billk]

The deeper the processing (ie: the more links) the better. That's why learning to read Thai is the most effective way to learn to speak it, even for those who only want to speak it.

[Tod-Daniels]

I honestly don't know if there is any value knowing the Thai consonant order (often called the Thai alphabet). About the only up-side is you could learn to sing the Thai Alphabet song.

All the paper dictionaries I've got have the Thai consonants 'tabbed' (printed on the edge of every single page). Although it is useful to have a rough sense of where they are to narrow your search in the dictionary down some, I dunno just how necessary this skill set is when learning Thai. Seeing as most people now use the dictionary applications on their phones rather than a bound book, it's even easier not to bother with the consonant order.

I still can't repeat the Thai consonants in order, and for some of them I don't even know the picture 'word' associated with the letter (because it's a low usage word so I didn't bother learning it), yet I know the sound they make as a beginning or final consonant.

I do think there's good value knowing the mnemonics for remembering the Middle and High tone consonants by class, although much less so for the low toned ones. If it ain't a High or Mid toned consonant it's gotta be a Low one.
I remember the following mnemonics;
ÍÑ¡ÉáÅÒ§ - ¡ ¨ ´ µ (®) (¯) º » Í
ä¡è¨Ô¡à´ç¡µÒº¹»Ò¡âÍè§

ÍÑ¡ÉÃÊÙ§ - ¼ ½ ¶ (°) ¢ Ê (È É) Ë ©
¼Õ½Ò¡¶Ø§¢éÒÇÊÒÃãËé©Ñ¹

If remembering the consonants the way you've outlined helps you, then at the end of the day, that's all that matters. Everyone has little tricks to learn (and retain) words in Thai.

I still remember the way I learned the different tones of similarly spelled common words, like between White and Rice, as white clouds are in the sky ¢ÒÇ (rising tone), and rice grows out of the ground ¢éÒÇ (falling tone), between Tiger, Shirt, and Mat, as tigers leap at you àÊ×Í (rising tone), shirts (like t-shirts are pulled down over you head àÊ×éÍ (falling tone) and mats lie on the floor àÊ×èÍ (low tone), between feces and ride because feces falls towards the ground ¢Õé (falling tone) and bikes, horses, moto-cys, elephants, etc all touch the ground ¢Õè (low tone).

Good Luck. . .

That's why learning to read Thai is the most effective way to learn to speak it, even for those who only want to speak it.

I do hafta say, the above quote is BIGGEST "pig in a poke" being sold to foreigners learning Thai. It has been proven to be patently false. Even my own experiences bear this out; I know plenty of people who speak really clearer, really fluid Thai, yet they can’t read even a single Thai character.

I also know people who learned to speak Thai using ONLY Benjawan Becker’s Phonetic system in her books and c/d’s, yet again never bothered to learn to read Thai script. How do blind Thai people learn to speak Thai IF they can't even see to read?

Learning to read Thai is nothing more-nothing less than memorizing Thai words, TONZ & TONZ OF THEM.

Believe me I taught myself to read Thai before I could spit out more than 2-word-tourist-thai phrases. My reading is still leaps and bounds above my speaking level. I read, comprehend and can “back-translate” what I read into English just fine, yet my Thai is American accented and often times 'off-toned'.

To read, all you hafta do is recognize the difference in character make up to discern the different words which are spelled similarly and have those characters (called words) tied to a meaning in your head.

Knowing to read doesn’t really help you pronounce words at all, any more than pronouncing a word correctly lets you know it’s meaning. I mean if you don’t know the meaning of a Thai word, and can’t work it out in context, no matter how great you are a pronunciation, you just plain don’t know that word.

It is my experience that most adults read silently to themselves, so it doesn’t matter one bit if they mis-tone a word when reading, as long as they know its meaning.

I believe 100% you DON'T need to learn to read Thai to speak Thai clearly, be understood by Thais or understand what Thais say to you.

I also believe that learning to read Thai (for me at least) is WAY easier than learning to speak Thai clearly.

Still good luck to the O/P. .

[ian71]

Hi folks,
especially tod, i do really appreciate your input, always a really good eye opener.
For me i dont find it hard learning groups of numbers, even though phone numbers or Maths is not my strongest point,

but linking groups of 3 or 4 numbers together, it was easier to be honest to remeber the group of numbers for the low consonants, 24 numbers than it was for the 9 for mid or 11 for high just by how they are grouped together.

I have to admit i've struggled to find things in Thai Dictionarys, so im happy to try this method and its refreshes my Alphabet learning, it next go's on to vowel position!!!! and gives little exercises to do.

Differnt to a lot of books it gets you to learn low consonants first, with the tone rules and dictoinary position, im finding it a very easy book to follow and normally get very high results on the exercises, lots 100%!!!!

The learning to read point, i agree i can read much more than i can talk but my outlook on this is that however you learn thai you need to have a basic understanding of why you need to do things,

So either just from memory or from Ben Beckers books or non thai script methods your still having to understand the basics to get it correct. Its nearly impossible to learn something if you dont understand it, you need the basics of any topic correct then improvement is rapid.

As you said above if the tones are wrong its mumbo jumbo, i liked your methods for the low and other tones easy to put pictures to the way you've put it (pulling shirt down overhead,falling tone) and what you say about importants of Rising and falling tones.

We all have ways we find doing things easier than others, its good to share and try those other ways, you never no it might just be your little magic trick that works for you.

cheers ian71

[Betti]

I had a great method to remember things but I've forgotten what it was.

[ian71]

I had a great method to remember things but I've forgotten what it was.

Ha ha good one betti

[Joe71]

The Thai alphabet starts off with sounds from the back of the throat then moves forward to sonorants.

I actually don't find looking up Thai words very difficult, doesn't take me long at all. I think mostly because there are less words per letter compared to the English dictionary, as there are more than 1 letter to represent the same sound. So to me it is very manageable.

To answer the Ops questions what did I use to remember the Thai alphabet? Just had a Thai alphabet poster in my bedroom and reviewing what I learn't. Hmmm I guess its just the old fashion way. But it worked for me!!!!!

[Joe71]

Ian you must be some sort of a genius!!! How can you remember like that????? To know that the 24th letter is a low consonant or the 16th is high. All I can say is WOW!!!!