First of all, welcome to my first ever tips post!! I hope this is useful to someone. My school has had us do this thing called “Declamation” since I was seven, which means that I have had to memorize a new poem or monologue every month for the past seven years. It feels like I have memorize and recited everything in the world! Along the way, I have picked up some tricks to memorize things that have helped me, so now (hopefully) they can help you! Keep in mind that all these tips may all work great for you, but some may and some may not; I’m just sharing what has worked for me. All right, on to the post!
GETTING READY
1. Read what you are going to recite
Whether it is a poem or a presentation, before you can memorize anything you have to know what you are saying. Read over the entire thing, even if you wrote it yourself. Absorb everything you are reading; this will set a foundation to help you memorize it later. If you don’t understand what you are saying, you won’t remember it.
Also under this point: If you are declaiming a poem or monologue, look up videos of other people doing it! Trust me, this is extremely helpful for getting a feel for what the emotions should be.
2. Split up the work
This can be by stanza, paragraph, or whatever you’d like. The important part is that these pauses you choose feel like natural breaks to you. This will help you a lot; doing it all as one big piece will be frustrating and confusing.
3. Record yourself saying it
Open up voice memos, and record yourself saying the whole thing. Now listen to it a couple times. This gives your brain another way of taking in the words, and you might even memorize some of it on accident!
GETTING STARTED
1. One line at a time
Seriously, don’t try and learn a whole stanza at once, you’ll thank me later.
2. Have fun with it!
Sing this line. Dance around your room saying this line. Say it in a funny voice. Try anything and everything, you’ll find what works for you. I personally line to give each line a little tune with a beat to it, it helps me make everything flow.
3. Put it together
Once you have learned all the lines to a section, practice it together. This is where that little tune/rhythm comes in handy; there’s a reason why song lyrics are so easy to memorize. Get the stanza memorized well enough you can say it without looking twice, with time in between not looking at your paper.
4. Put it down
Let this stanza sit in your brain! Don’t go over it, don’t look at it, let it be. In 5-10 minutes, try it again, and see how well you did. If it wasn’t great, review it and wait another 5 minutes before you do this again. If it’s good, then repeat these steps for every other section, until the whole thing is memorized. I like to use my recording here to make sure I have it all memorized by speaking with my recorded voice.
FINISHING TOUCHES
1. Film yourself
Practice it with the pacing and body language you plan on using for the real deal, then watch yourself! It’s going to be cringey to watch yourself, but it helps get it where you want it to be.
2. Practice!
Practice, practice, practice! This heavy duty time should come about two days before the performance/presentation of your piece, because forgetting the whole thing while you’re practicing the night before due to over practicing and stress happens.Get it so good at this point that you could say it in your sleep.
3. Breathe
You’ve got it! don’t psych yourself out; the night before, just practice it twice or three times. If you start messing up where you usually don’t, stop, your brain has had enough. The day of, say it once in the morning, then stop. It’s hard, but resist the urge to say it over and over and over in your head, it’ll hurt more then it’ll help.
Now go and own it, you’ve got this!
Ok, I hope you guys enjoyed this! this was my first venture into the world of helping others on studyblr, so hopefully it wasn’t a fail! Please let me know if these tips helped you at all, or if they didn’t, and what worked for you. Alright, hope I helped!
i see a lot of the same (sometimes unhelpful) tips being thrown around, so here’s my two cents:
1. write shopping lists/to do lists in your target language - often you don’t learn this vocab but it’s conversational & v useful! also writing yourself notes (lil pep talks on the bathroom mirror, for example) can work.
2. buy a small whiteboard and practice verb conjugation (esp. romantic languages) or script writing
3. talk to pets in target language if possible!
4. look for quotes in your target language - often the turns of phrase are more colloquial, and is a good opportunity to see how things are translated from your native language
5. find a fairly easy news headline (in target lang) and try to re-write it w/ vocab you already have. you’ll quickly find gaps - this is a good thing! (if you’re feeling extra spicy, try writing a small subheading or description about the article).
6. create an imaginary friend who you speak with on the shower, or on the train, doing the laundry etc. talk w/ them in your target lang (in your head, obvs) about your day, future plans, etc etc.
~for more advanced learners~
7. when you’re more advanced, and have some grasp of past/future tenses, buy a children’s/tween’s/YA book that you’ve already read. highlight and annotate the shit out of it. you’ll know the general gist already, which makes context clues easier to find.
8. change wikipedia settings into target language - same goes for any social media site. this can be a mega challenge, but is so good for vocab, plus you’re more likely to remember the info since you worked so hard for it.
9. write a review for a book/film/record/whatever you’ve most recently consumed. maybe start a diary of them, or just have an ongoing word doc.
10. find a bilingual edition of poetry/literature if possible. you might find you can spot translation differences, but you’re sure to find some new vocab.
