Want to know how to memorize vocabulary in 30 seconds flat?

The process is as simple as transforming words and their meanings into dynamic associations.

Once that step is done, you “park” those associations in a Memory Palace.

Then, you stroll back along this simple mental journey on a set schedule to establish long-term retention.

That’s the entire method in a single breath that I’ve been teaching students for over fifteen years.

Of course, the magic to the method lies in the details, which I’ll unfold for you below.

All based on my experiences not only teaching memory techniques for vocabulary, but also using mnemonics to help me learn and lecture in German.

I’ve also memorized over 1700 words in Sanskrit, lots of interesting phrases in Latin and some of the most complex poetry in English I’ve ever read.

Below, you’ll find the exact, step-by-step system that has been tested in multiple languages, proven by science and refined by thousands of my students.

Ready?

Let’s dive in by having a look at this video featuring the habits of a Renaissance word fanatic who travelled the globe to share how he memorized vocabulary using an effective self-study approach that makes words stick in memory quickly:

Now that you’ve seen the habits of the word-master Matteo Ricci, let’s dig into the details of how to absorb vocabulary with precision.

As we get started, please keep in mind that the exact language you’re tackling does not matter.

This fact is true because memory techniques predate the English language.

So whether you’re improving your mother tongue or learning a new language, the following approaches will help, especially when combined.

The Memory Palace technique is the most important mnemonic device for memorizing words. It is specifically useful for language learning, and has helped learners throughout history absorb vocabulary.

What is the Memory Palace technique and how does it work?

Memory Palaces help you learn by turning familiar locations into mental storage units.

In each spot in a home, office or other familiar place, you imagine vivid mental associations that help you recall the sound and meaning of words.

For example, to memorize the German word Bereich (area), I imagined Bender from Futurama with the composer Steve Reich inside Berlin’s Tegel airport.

This kind of association promotes rapid recall because Bender + Reich sound like Bereich.

As I formulated this association, I imagined these two familiar figures interacting in a location familiar to me and even drew a quick doodle to help lock it into the apartment I used as the Memory Palace.

The illustration below shows you where in the apartment I imagined this mnemonic scene unfolding:

If this process sounds a bit abstract, please don’t worry.

Just try to follow along.

Or, if you’re skeptical, check out this scientific study showing how using this technique helps support better memory.

The image above shows me at my desk, which is a station in this Berlin apartment Memory Palace.

Using the method of loci in combination with the pegword method to structure the choice of Bender and Steve Reich, I had not only the bed in this apartment on which to “place” associations.

I also had an alphabetic “toolbox” from which to draw multiple associations.

That’s what using the pegword method gives you.

Some people divide mnemonic pegs from Memory Palaces, but in reality they need to work together. Ideally, you’ll put them into practice with the other vocabulary memorization techniques we’re about to discuss.

Although these techniques aren’t magic, you’ll be surprised by how fast new words start to stick once you’re up and running.

To get the most out of the Memory Palace approach, you need to treat the skills as much more than a visual memory technique.

You need to practice multisensory visualization.

Here’s how I approach this simple and fun learning approach:

When I memorize new words, I don’t just see the mnemonic association in my Memory Palaces.

I also imagine:

I even draw upon the sense of spatial location.

For example, when I memorized “expetendorum” in Latin, I imagined what it felt like to stand in front of a Pet Barn to recall the “pet” part of this phrase.

I felt the sun on my skin and imagined smelling the pet food.

If you don’t feel equipped yet for such mental experiences, these multi-sensory visualization exercises will strengthen multiple aspects of your imagination.

With so many of my students, the trick is to get them to move beyond trying to memorize vocabulary based solely on their “mind’s eye.”

Although I don’t always memorize vocabulary in phrases, it’s generally useful to do so.

Another way to add context to words that you’re learning is to add stories to them. There’s actually a mnemonic strategy called the story method.

For example, to memorize the word “expetendorum,” I not only used the Pet Barn as a Memory Palace.

I had a story in which an X-Man (Wolverine) with a ten of spades on his claws pounded the door while drinking rum. That little story gave the word a larger context and made it easier to memorize the entire phrase I found it in.

The “rum” part was a bit weak so I later improved it by thinking about The Shining, a movie which involves a character named Danny saying the iconic phrase, “Redrum.”

This additional mnemonic hook drew upon additional context and story that settled the word into long-term memory. For you, don’t worry about little errors here and there. Just use what you’ve already developed through association to compound.

When learning vocabulary from a foreign language, it’s important to repeat the words frequently.

But not randomly.

When you use a process scientists call this process spaced repetition you can easily cut down on the amount of repetition you need.

As this study found, without using memory techniques, especially Memory Palaces to help rehearse the vocabulary you’re learning, you basically wind up with rote repetition.

Learning using memory techniques, however, always involves creative repetition. And there’s always a layer of challenge or what scientists call “desirable difficulty.”

In this study, for example, the researchers found that some level of challenge or difficulty increases conceptual understanding.

Since the definitions of many words can be quite abstract, that’s an additional win across the board.

I’ve memorized over 1700 Sanskrit words, a goal I’ve been able to push through largely thanks to chanting them to a bit of a tune.

It might sound silly, but it’s worked for thousands of years.

In fact, recent research further validates the notion that the singing and chanting element also play a role in memory formation.

Anecdotally, my friend Luke Ranieri also used singing to help him memorize the first 100 lines of the Iliad in record time.

Just to drive the point home, you can also watch this video where I sang a Mandarin song I later performed at my wedding:

This song endeared me to my new family and my wife. But it also helped me learn a lot of vocabulary in Mandarin very quickly.

So, pick a song in any language, memorize it using a Memory Palace and before you know it, you’ll have an expanded vocabulary.

The more song lyrics you memorize, the more vocabulary you’ll be able to access from memory and recognize while reading, speaking, listening and writing.

In addition to spaced repetition, it’s important to challenge yourself using tests. Scientists call this process active recall.

Let’s pretend we’re learning English and take the word “account” as an example.

The first step is to select a Memory Palace. Then assign a mnemonic image. I grew up with Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and a host of other characters on the children’s show Sesame Street. So when I think of the word “account,” Count von Count immediately comes to mind.

But we have an additional “AC” to add to that word. So I think of an air conditioner falling out of a window onto the Count. Just like you see in the feature image at the top of this post.

To get the meaning into the image, this air conditioner also looks a fair amount like a calculator (the tool used by an accountant while engaged in the act of accounting).

This action and object-based visualization with a meaningful character from pop culture almost guarantees you’ll not forget that word.

To add self-testing, the process is easy.

Get out a pen and some paper.

Bring the Memory Palace to mind first, then the mnemonic image.

Finally, write down what you’ve memorized.

The Freedom Journal used for language learning will help because I’ve shown you how to combine it with a Memory Palace technique.

Gradually you will notice improvement, if not very quickly.

This specific process has been proven in studies like this one to help form memories faster and I used it a lot, especially for my Mandarin exam, where I also needed to know Chinese characters on top of sounds and meanings.

Cloze tests are another form of self-testing you can explore. I used the test you see above to help me remember Chinese vocabulary for my level III test in Mandarin.

Basically, cloze tests simply leave out a piece of information.

Whenever you self test using flashcards in the way we’re about to discuss, don’t include all of the answer on the back. Always leave an element out so that it’s like a puzzle you have to solve.

This simple omission creates a “desirable difficulty” that will help you memorize the sound and meaning of words much faster.

Not only that, but you’ll get more handwriting into the testing process. As this recent study shows, there is really no debate that including handwriting is key to memory formation, especially in our increasingly digital world.

A lot of people like to use Anki for learning vocabulary.

I’ve never found it that helpful, largely because it’s boring to me and feels like rote learning.

As an alternative, I like to create my own flashcards in ways that use the active recall process we just discussed.

Take the owl in the shoe above, for example.

I created it by hand to learn some cool slang in French.

Instead of repeating the same phrase over and over again, simply by creating the card and then looking at the card 3-4 times, the sound and meaning entered long-term memory much more effectively.

I know that it can seem like a lot of time spent on drawing using this approach. But as this study found, combining flashcards with the other methods discussed on this page, strengthens both memory and academic performance.

Personally, I wish I could have added self-created flashcards to my language learning process much sooner.

When I started learning German, I waited far too long to start reading books and articles.

This is a problem because reading is one of the best forms of spaced repetition you can get.

To give you a concrete example of a strategy that helped me a ton: I’m very interested in music. So in German, I found interviews with one of my favorite bands in this language.

Not only did this choice help give me interesting material to read. It also gave me examples of the kinds of vocabulary used by people in everyday speech.

This makes interviews a somewhat better source of vocabulary than novels and books for kids.

That said, language learning expert Olly Richards has recognized the dearth of good material for language learners to read. His story books for language learners are excellent and the vocabulary selections are geared to giving you words you actually need to progress in a language. And they repeat in just the right doses.

Other ways to read include how you use your Netflix settings while watching foreign language movies. I often re-watch my favorite movies with subtitles on in languages I want to learn, giving me lots of repeated exposure to core vocabulary.

It’s not exactly learning by osmosis, but close. And here’s another study showing the empirical research that optimizing memory involves using multiple strategies together.

The first way to handle overwhelm is to face the facts:

Feeling overwhelmed is normal. There are thousands upon thousands of words to learn and it’s easy to feel daunted to the point of not even knowing where to start.

After all, there are well over a million words in the English language alone.

How could you even make a dent in this number, never mind if you are learning a second or third language?

Well, let me break the process down in simple terms.

1. Your goal is to memorize the sound and the meaning of one word at a time, typically just one definition at a time.

2. You can speed up the process by using a Memory Palace Network.

3. When you know how to navigate the Memory Palace Network well, you “encode” each word using Magnetic Mnemonic Imagery.

4. You use Recall Rehearsal to get the words into long-term memory.

5. You use the Big 5 of Learning to speed up the process and ensure longevity.

Ideally, you do all of the above in a variety of languages. That’s because bilingualism makes for a healthier brain.

Personally, I memorize vocabulary in Latin, Sanskrit, German and Chinese each and every week. I rotate between these languages partly because it’s fun, partly because I’m harnessing the power of interleaving as a memory technique.

Finally, it’s useful to spend some time learning about memory science.

When you understand even just a little about the difference between short-term and long-term memory, it makes it easier to grasp why and how the memory techniques you’re about to discover work. That way, you’ll be primed to embrace them more fully.

Below are answers to some of the most common questions I’ve received over the years, both in response to my vocabulary learning books and my language learning courses.

These insights will help you apply the methods you learned above.

Let’s dig in.

To reach the highest possible speed, you need to combine multiple systems.

You can read my free mnemonics dictionary for a full list, and from there, start developing the approach that works best for you.

Ultimately, you need a combination of memory techniques, testing and ongoing use of the words you commit to memory so they remain fresh.

Go for longevity and ongoing use and you’ll have momentum and consistency, which is even more valuable than speed in my view.

The main benefits are:

Hermann Ebbinghaus set the best model when he first discovered spaced learning and the serial position effect near the end of the 1800s.

His approach involved personal experimentation that led to many studies that confirmed the power of spaced repetition.

However, the exact intervals that are going to work for you require some experimentation. That’s what Ebbinghaus did to find out his own personal “forgetting curve.”

So rather than looking for a magic number, I suggest you dive in and develop your own schedule by noticing when you’re sharpest during the day.

Observe other possible influences too. For example, I noticed many years ago that I memorize new words and Sanskrit phrases best before I eat breakfast.

This observation didn’t mean that I never memorized at any other time of day. It just helped me set a schedule that works very well in my case and was discovered through experimentation inspired by Ebbinghaus.

I believe so, yes, provided that you create them yourself.

Downloading a stack of cards created by someone else might help, but you’ll experience faster and deeper encoding if you create your own.

Consider including drawings and colors to create deeper engagement and reflection as you create them.

People often ask me whether they should first place a known word in a Memory Palace and then “point” to the foreign word from there.

In other words, they try to memorize a list of English words, then have them point to the target language word.

That’s almost always a mistake that chews up time and slows down your progress.

Here’s why:

You already know the word in your mother tongue. What you don’t know yet is the sound and meaning of the new word. So your mnemonic work should focus directly on that.

Use elaborative encoding to build mnemonic associations that capture:

Then place the associations in your Memory Palace, even if you need one for each syllable.

Following this process trains your brain to recall the foreign word itself. It’s much better than forcing you to translate through your native language every time. That will only slow your path to fluency and weaken long‑term retention.

Memorizing vocabulary is not only the easiest skill, but it’s also the most important skill you’ll ever have. It’s also the path to start to remembering all kinds of other things.

Almost all of the most important information we use to survive is transmitted through words. They are the building blocks of all language and information.

If you’d like more help, please get my free course here:

It will help you master the Memory Palace technique and other approaches we discussed above.

Vocabulary is crucial and essential to improvement in all areas of life. Again, words are fundamental to success as a lifelong learner. Especially if you want to become a polymath (like I do).

The only catch is that to grow, you must have a solid foundation.

So now that you’ve got all these tips under your belt, please let me know:

What vocabulary are you going to memorize now that you know these memorization secrets?

The post How to Memorize Vocabulary: A Step-By-Step Guide appeared first on Magnetic Memory Method - How to Memorize With A Memory Palace.