A Lot of Pictures Are Worth a Lot
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007I was just 5 minutes ago talking to someone on MSN about one of my vocab memorization techniques. The conversation started, as one usually does on MSN, as ‘what are you doing’. It took me a while to explain, but my friend thought it was a good idea. He’s learning English, but the principle is the same. I do it whenever I’m trying to memorize a lot of words. Maybe it’ll work for you!
Step 1: Open a search engine. For Chinese, I use 百度, for Japanese, one might try google.co.jp.
Step 2: Click on the ‘images’ tab (remember it probably won’t be in English though!) and write in the word. Let’s take something from today’s lesson; おめでとう meaning ‘congratulations’.
Step 3: Feast your eyes on all the lovely pictures. Each one has something to do with おめでとう. I found a chubby bride in a wedding dress, a pair of geeky looking girls with medals around their necks, two offical guys in suits smiling and shaking each others’ hands, and a birthday cake with ‘congratulations’ on it. In each one of these photos, the person with the camera has probably said 「おめでとう」 right before he/she took the photo.
You might even try it without the ‘images’ tab, and read through articles if you don’t find any pictures that help. Useful when the word isn’t something that is easily represented visually. I entered 「どういう風の吹き回し」 and even though I couldn’t read most of the articles, just the fact that I saw the phrase repeated in so many different places reinforced both it and its meaning in my brain.
It works for me! It seems a little bit longwinded, but I usually go to extreme lengths to avoid memorizing something by rote. I find the ‘Google-search’ method very helpful in reinforcing vocabulary. Instead of getting a dry boring example sentence out of a dictionary, you’re getting a real use of the word.
Posted by Max in Max in Shanghai |
March 29th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Max-san!
What a great idea! I tried a few words and it was so much fun to see the images! You have great ideas! You must be one heck of a good teacher!! Thanks for telling us about this!
March 30th, 2007 at 6:22 am
Max you are great, your stories are so hilarious i can relate with it. ive read your older post and it made me think that its not just me who struggles to さあばいぶ* learning Japnanese. THanks alot. for telling us your stories watakushi mo Nihongo gambariasho!!!
*survive……hehehehe peace mate.
April 2nd, 2007 at 3:58 am
wow! i really enjoyed listening to the recordings and conversations. i learned some new words, and how to pronounce them! thanks that helps a lot!
thanks i am going to japan very soon, so i have got to learn quickly
April 7th, 2007 at 4:37 am
Strewth. I just ran a few endings: (masenka, darou, mashou, deshou - that brought up a page of eco-club manga)
Then I tossed in itsuhanatsuri (rats - nothing) but itsuha and natsuri each brought up a good number of pictures.
You’re on a winner, Max.
April 8th, 2007 at 8:01 am
Hey Max
Thats a awesome idea
its going to help me with my upcoming tests 
April 8th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Thanks for the kind words everyone, がんばりましょう！
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Great idea! But I have to learn japanese.
I use 百度 or Google.com
August 29th, 2007 at 10:54 am
がんばりましょう。
November 1st, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Thank you very much for the article
April 24th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
I am confused you are from China or Japan??
April 26th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
I’m from neither China nor Japan.