What are mnemonics for
learning German grammar?

 

Roughly spoken, mnemonics are mental memory aids, so they are a kind of memory hooks (in German: Eselsbrücken, literally translated as "donkey bridge"). And therefore you see a donkey on this website. He will symbolize this concept. 

Here is an example of a " Eselsbrücke": A lot of people who want to memorize the order of the planets of our solar system, simply learn the following sentence by heart:  My Very Educated MotherJust Showed Us Nine Planets. So the order of the planets is the following: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

In the next chapter I'll explain how and why it works. 

 

Why do mnemonics actually work
(when learning German)?

The reason why you're able to remember EVERYTHING better with the use of mnemonics is because of a very simple principle: 

Instead of pigheadedly repeating abstract information (in this case: the order of the planets) so many times that you finally know it by heart, we build a meaningful and understandable sentence with the initials of the individual elements. Once you've heard or read this sentence, you don't easily forget it anymore. With a simple trick, we learned very quickly the order of the planets of our solar system. 

To most people it looks like magic, because with mnemonics it's possible to memorize virtually EVERYTHING very easily. The explanation is very simple though. Meaningless information is quickly forgotten, because it's not possible to integrate it in our memory. On the other hand, it is possible to link meaningful information with other information in our memory and therefore we are able to remember it a lot better. This phenomenon is also called "TO UNDERSTAND". 

Below once more the most important principle of mnemonics:

By using simple tricks, meaningless subject content becomes meaningful and thus understandable, so that it stays in our memory with a lot less effort. 

 

Now, you'll probably wonder:

• Where mnemnics come from?
• How powerful are mnemonics in actual fact?
• Are mnemonics helpful when learning German?

The answers to these questions are given here, if you read a bit further.

 

Where do mnemonics come from?

Plato (428 - 348 BC., the most famous student of Socrates, who gave rise to the systematical occidental philosophy) designated the memory as the mother of the Muses in his dialogue "Theaitetos" and her name was "Mnemosyne". In English this simply means "memory" or "commemoration". In the 19th century, the word "mnemonics" was generated from the connection of the name "Mnemosyne" and "technique". But let's return to the 5th century BC once more: 

According to a written record of Cicero, back then, a certain poet called Simonides (556-468) was invited by a friend to a banquet.  During this banquet, a terrible accident happened: the whole banquet hall collapsed, and Simonides was the only survivor, because he wasn't in the hall at that moment.

According to the written records of Cicero, Simonides was able to identify the unrecognizably bloodied, injured bodies because he could remember the seating arrangements. This experience led to his discovery of the principle of a mnemotechnique, by which mental images are created from memory contents and located at certain spots in your imagination. This resulted in the so-called  loci-method. (loci = locations). 

Since ancient times, new mental techniques were developed continuously, in order to facilitate the systematical memorizing of information and to increase memory performance many times over. 

This general memory art was brought to such a perfection, that there are now real "memory masters". International championships take place on a regular basis, where the masters prove their incredible skills. 

These days, when you enter "mnemonics" at Google, you'll encounter many websites on this topic. There is a huge demand for memory trainers, who charge a lot of money for hosting seminars for managers. Most of the time it concerns the learning by heart of names, historical data, phone numbers etc. 

It certainly has little to do with the learning of a foreign language. Such general implementations of mnemonics aren't very helpful when you want to learn German. So, let's focus on the concrete question in which way mnemnics can be useful for learning a foreign language. 

 

A humongous success in the learning of foreign languages! 

In 1651, for the first time ever, a certain Johannes Buno authored a Latin grammar, which was provided with mnemonic memory aids throughout. He developed additional new techniques for this purpose and his courses of Latin were an incredible success. In the context of my research, I've seen the original book in the Prussian State Library in Berlin and it is really incredible. Everywhere you find mnemonic images and other techniques, which often "burn" the grammar rules in your memory at a glance.   

Buno said himself that his students studied the Latin grammar with heart and soul and learned furthermore 2000 words in two months! But is such a thing actually realistic? Well, scientists are researching this since 1975. Just keep reading, if you want to learn more about this ... 

 

The results of the language acquisition
research are umambiguous

In 1975 the American cognitive psychologist Richard Atkinson tested the so-called "mnemonic keyword-method" on students of the Stanford University. In my e-book "Learn German grammar with mnemonics" I explain how this method actually works.

During the tests, the students had to learn Russian words. One group learned them by using the mnemonic keyword-method, the other group learned them in the conventional way, so without special learning tricks. 

Atkinson summarized the study in the follwing way: "As a matter of fact, on each of the testdays, the keyword-group learned more words in only two learning trials than the control group in three learning trials." 

When the students were once more tested 6 weeks later, the probability for the students of the group, which learned by using mnemotechnics to give a correct answer was more than 50 percent higher than for the sudents of the control group!  

This experiment attracted a lot of attention to the research of mnemonics for the acquisition of foreign languages. Nowadays scientists consider it as uncontested, that these techniques are absolutely effective. A person who learns by using mnemotechnics, is able to remember learning contents better than other persons who don't use mnemotechnics. 

But what does it concretely look like for learning German? 

 

Mnemotechnics for learning German grammar
are unequivocally up and coming  

Everybody who learns German, needs to learn a lot of  abstract rules "simply by heart". A big mistake of modern didactics is certainly  the fact that they neglect the necessity of learning by heart. Instead they rather want students to understand what they learn.

At first sight, this sounds good, but the fact that there is nothing to understand about grammar rules is ignored. Not any person, who learns German, is able to UNDERSTAND why the verb "danken" takes the dative. The Germans don't understand this either, but they've learned as a child to use it in the correct way. When you want to learn German now, you need to learn the rule that "The verb "danken" takes the dative" by heart, in one way or another. 

I've been teaching German since many years and I can assure you that I didn't encounter any student of German yet, who had an effective technique for this or other rules. Hence there is a big chaos in the heads of many students of German. No surprise that many of them are in despair ...

In 1989 Horst Sperber published a doctoral thesis with the title  "Deutsch lernen mit Mnemotechniken" (learn German with menmonics). In this work firstly he researches how often mnemotechnics are used in German classes and secondly how the use of mnemonics can be beneficial for the teaching and learning of German.

The results are unambiguous. Mnemonics for learning of German grammar are virtually unknown, and only on rare occasions a few memory aids are imparted during the courses. There is nevertheless no doubt about the effectivity of mnemotechnics for the learning of German. His conclusion is the following: "The level of unawareness of these or similar techniques (= mnemotechnics) is regretful, in the light of these research results." 

Although you find some "learnning tips" in German textbooks, they are very rare and often they are of so little use that they can't be designated as mnemonics. 

It's sad that mnemotechnics for German as a foreign language are an insider's tip as yet. But it's also obvious that more and more students and teachers of German discover these techniques and learn to love them.  This website consitutes a vital contribution thereto.

 

Mnemonics in 
"learn-German-smarter"

Well, when I learned to know mnemonics a few years ago, I couldn't understand that there was nothing or very little available for the learning of German grammar. So I started to optimize the existing techniques for German as a foreign language and to develop new techniques at the same time. 

It became clear to me that the development of mnemotechniques requires some creativity, and often students of German are overstrained. Therefore I have developed many applications that are ready to use and I'm continuously contriving more techniques, which can immediately be implemented by anyone. 

I developed graphics for  highly theoretical concepts, in cooperation with a professional illustrator, which will help you to learn German grammar rules "at a glance", in the truest sense of the word, similar to Johannes Buno's textbook in those days. Additionally you'll find video materials, in which I explain certain rules very precisely and meanwhile I include extremely powerful memory aids. Once you've seen such images, it's impossible to forget the rules again, even if you'd want to :) 

This website offers the most innovative and effective materials on the theme of mnemotechnics for German as a foreign language, as far as I know. If you find something similar anywhere else, I'd like to ask you to inform me through my contact form . I'm always happy to learn about new advancements. 

The opinions of the visitors of this website indicate clearly that for learning German, the future lies in mnemotechnics.

The whole concept of this website revolves around the development of techniques which enable you to REMEMBER  the German grammar rules in a LASTING way. 

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