How To Memorize 7x More Words With Stories

Summary: Learning with stories is becoming more and more popular. In this article, you will learn why stories are a fundamental part of human beings, how they are linked to our memories and how we can use them to remember 7x more words in language learning.

“We know how this ends. You’re going to die and so will everyone you love. All the change in the universe will cease, the stars will die, and there’ll be nothing left of anything but infinite, dead, freezing void. Human life, in all its noises and hubris, will be rendered meaninglessly for eternity.

But that’s not how we live our lives. (…) The cure for this horror is story. Our brains distract us from this terrible truth by filling our lives with hopeful goals and encouraging us to strive for them. What we want, the ups and downs of our struggles to get it, is the story of us all. It gives our existence the illusion of meaning and turns our gaze from the dread. There’s simply no way to understand the human world without stories. (…) Stories are us.” – Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling

Oh hello you!

Glad you stayed after this dramatic introduction.

Stories. I’ve heard this word a lot lately. You don’t write text anymore, you tell a story. You’re not a content creator, you’re a storyteller. You don’t take decisions, you own your story.

Somehow, the word story taps something in us, and a sudden wave of euphoria swashes through our bodies. 

For some very good reasons! Let’s explore what makes stories so fundamental to humans, how they can unleash superhuman potential of your memory, and how you can use them to multiply your results in language learning.

Stories Are in Our DNA.

Humans are the only species that can tell stories. Of course, other animals – and even plants – also have their own communication systems. But only humans can talk in the past and in the future and pass on information in great detail.

Yuval Noah Harari made a lovely example in his book Sapiens:

A vervet monkey can tell their fellow: “Watch out, a lion!” – but only a human can tell to his fellows that he saw a lion watching buffalos near the river bend in the morning. With that information, his tribe can think about whether to proceed down to the river to chase the lion away or not.

Stories enable us to take informed decisions, take into account other points of view, create legends and tales, reshape the past and reimagine the future. They help us picture abstract concepts and give us something to believe in. Without stories, there wouldn’t be states, money, laws, roles, religions or relationships. Without stories, humans wouldn’t be at the peak of evolution.

Stories And Memory

How Stories Can Unleash Superhuman Potential

There’s a guy who can memorize 100,000 digits.

Yes, 100,000 digits. I can’t even imagine anything that amounts to 100,000.

But Akira Haraguchi can, and so he memorized and recited 100,000 digits of pi in 2019.

Is he a superbrain? Maybe he is. But he’s not the only one who can remember stupid amounts of numbers like that. There are literally championships where people compete against each other in categories like: Who can memorize most numbers within an hour? (Just as reference point: German lawyer Simon Reinhard can memorize 2000.)

All of these people have one thing in common, and it’s not DNA. It’s their memorization technique, which is always linked to –surprise! – stories.

So, how does this look like?

In an interview with the German magazine Zeit, Reinhard explained his method as follows:

  • Assigning a symbol to each number: Reinhard has a symbol for each 3-digit number: For example, 653 stands for a tree and 866 stands for a emblem.
  • Creating a route: Imagine a route you know really well, for example the way from your home to your workplace. Put various stops onto that route, for example: a traffic light, a fence, a house. It’s important that those stops always follow the same order.
  • Placing those symbols on that route: When memorizing digits, you imagine yourself walking that route,  and placing symbols (aka numbers) onto the respective stops as you walk. For example: Hearing the number 653 at a certain point of your route can mean placing a tree next to a fence.
    As you reproduce the digits, you basically revisit that route and decodify the symbols on the way back into numbers.

How To Use Stories In Language Learning

Why Do We Remember Stories So Well?

In 1960, 2 Standford professors conducted a study where students were either asked to remember words

1) randomly listed 
2) or embedded in a story.

Those who learned the words in the context of a story could memorize 7x more than those who were just given a list.

This can have various reasons:

  • Our brain tends to remember emotions over facts. Other studies have shown, for example, that we remember narrative texts a lot faster than factual ones. The more emotions, the better.
  • Our brains are wired to connect dots: When we hear a part of a story, our brain has the need to find out how it continues and how it started. Stories ignite our curiosity.

The Mistake in Classic Language Learning

At its most basic level, language learning is really just telling a story, only with other words.
When we talk to each other, we tell stories. When we talk to ourselves, we tell ourselves a story: We modify our memory, we imagine our goals and wishes, we justify our choices. Storytelling is happening all the time.

So, if language learning is really all about telling stories, why don’t we start there?

See, the thing with classic language learning methods at school/ in courses is this: They lack the ingredients that are so crucial to our memory: Emotion. Excitement. Curiosity. Relevancy.

These are the mistakes we make in language learning at school:

  • We learn without context: We’re given contextless vocabulary lists. Lists don’t make us curious. Our brain isn’t excited to discover how they continue.
  • We talk about things that have 0 relevancy to our lives: There’s no point in speaking about a rugby championship when in fact, you can’t even distinguish rugby from football – when you’re not even into sports.
  • And even IF we work with stories, they don’t spark any emotion: When did you really feel sorry for a textbook Jean-Pierre that forgot his shirt on a camping trip to Normandy? Textbook stories don’t spark emotions, and thus, our brain struggles to retain information.

Here's How To Do It Better

I’m sure you know at least one person who’s always struggled to learn languages, but then went abroad for some time and came back and spoke fluently.

That’s in part because being abroad is like writing a novel: It’s going on an adventure, doing exciting things and braiding these moments together into a story we tell ourselves and others.

Here’s how you can recreate this experience in your daily life to learn languages:

  • Find stories that get you emotional. Whether you’re looking for a compelling novel or series or trying to find answers to your burning questions in non-fictions books, podcasts or series – find something that ignites that spark of curiosity. The more interested you are, the more emotional you are, the more you will memorize.
  • Talk about what matters to you. Not to Jean-Pierre. You’ll remember a lot more words if you talk about YOUR favorite childhood vacation.
    How YOU saw the sea for the first time.
    How YOU felt when you ran 10 k for the first time.
    How YOU fell in love.
    How YOU got your heart broken. How you lost yourself and found yourself again.
    How YOU felt when you finally held your degree after years of doubting yourself.
  • Write, write, write: Write about the conversations you had in a day. Write about your inner dialogue. Write about the story you’re telling yourself. Write about what’s going on in your head.

    The things you’re telling yourself and others day to day are the exact things that get you excited, that are relevant, that make you emotional. Find the words for YOUR story.

    AND: While talking to a teacher or a fellow language learner is fantastic way of practicing your language skills, writing has another benefit: It’s a slow process. In spoken conversations, we often go for the first word that pops up in our mind. But writing gives us some time to take a step back, to see if there is a better, more precise way of expressing something. It elevates the way we talk. It helps our express our ideas more accurately, more articulately, more fluently.

If you'd like to Learn Spanish And Love Stories, This is for you!

Listen up if you’d like to learn Spanish! I’m currently creating my online community Story and Language Lab, where you are going to get:

If you’re interested, sign up here for the waiting list and get more information soon!

A Language Profile

A plan to define your goals and needs and a roadmap with the steps that will take you there

Learning Material and Smart Tasks

  • Weekly learning material based on the group’s interests and adapted to different levels. Designed for an immersive learning experience using the power of stories.
  • Writing and speaking challenges matching the weekly texts and designed to address your vocabulary, grammar and conversation needs

Bonus Material

  • Bonus: Access to a 200-page grammar hub
  • A chat function to practice your everyday Spanish

Curios?

Visit Story and Language Lab for more information or sign up here to be the first the be notified once the community launches!