The power of VISUALIZATION

We all know there are different kinds of learners in the world, some being "visual". Visual people would easily apply the visualization method. Here is what I am talking about.

Visualization is creating mental images of a word, or a piece of a word, that you struggle remembering. As a learner of 5 languages, and a teacher, I have some basic connections that I like to share with my students, to show them what they need to learn doing by themselves. Here are some examples:

If you are an English speaker learning Spanish, you might find verbs conjugation difficult. For example, the "I" form of the verbs in the present tense always ends with the letter “O” (como = I eat, quiero = I want etc). Think of hugging yourself, as you are the most important person in your world, and watch the shape of your arms around you. It is the letter O.

The "you" verbs always end in S. Where do you live? In the US!

In both Italian and Spanish, the question word "WHO" will be QUI or CHI, both pronounced K-E-Y. If you hear someone putting a key in the door, won’t you wonder “WHO is it?”

Also, in Italian, Spanish and French, the core verb TO GO, (check blog post on core verbs) in the present tense is irregular, therefore hard to remember. It starts with the letter V (voy, vas, va in Spanish; vado, vai, va in Italian, je vais, tu vas, il va in French). If you can remember the letter V, you will automatically remember the whole conjugation. How can you remember the letter V? Think of the journey of life. As you walk along your path, you will always come to a choice: you can go RIGHT or LEFT? In front of you, is the letter V. (this is metaphor, of course, but how many times will you find yourself making such choice in life?)

Last: the word YOUNG in Italian is GIOVANE. Doesn’t that remind you of Juvenile Detention? Or the word PARENTS, always in Italian, is GENITORI. As if we were the JANITORS of the house (whom we are...).

I could continue with more and more examples, but I think you got the point. The earlier you can start VISUALIZING the language, the easier it will be memorizing new words.

I love to hear the various examples students come up with (how creative!), and I use their visualizations as examples to other students.

You too can learn create hundreds of visualizations, that will help you remember hundreds of words!

SUGGESTED EXERCISE: Pick a word from the dictionary...and visualize. Can you share your image?

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