Pedogogical question: help with memorization techniques. (fwd)

[Robert Davison, City Polytechnic of Hong Kong, 788-7534]

despite the fact the the suggestion goes against the students' home
learning methodology, i'd have said that the best way to memorise words
is to use them. of all the languages i have learnt in the last 15 years
(Russian, serbocroat, slovene, french, cantonese, malay,...), i find that
i am most fluent (and hence have better command over words in the memory
(preferably active)) in those languages which i actively speak, rather
than just parrot-like (psitacosically?) rote-learned. the alternative is to
make the student learn words which s/he has a personal interest in - eg
the student likes to collect train numbers, so perhaps s/he can learn all
the parts of the locomotive, coaching stock, etc. (Peter Herrity Style).[i
apologise for the use of ethnocentric language here, but i have no idea
what an "hourly", "quiz" and a couple of others are.]

robert davison
dept of information systems
city university of hong kong
isrobert at cityu.edu.hk