Having trouble remembering that new word? Sing it!

Not only does signing your favorite American song help you make subtle changes in your American Accent (see this post for details), but you might do well with remembering new words by singing them. We all have pop songs, advertising jingles and tv theme songs from our childhood taking up valuable memory space in our brains, but perhaps we can harness our ability to remember words set to music to our own advantage.  Researchers in Scotland set up an experiment which involved teaching groups of people words in Hungarian.  Those who were taught using a method of signing the words had the best results when asked to remember them later. You can read more details here.

When you come across a new word you'd like to remember or a word for which you need to change your pronunciation, if you can find a song with the correct rhythm, you can sing the word to store it for later. For example, let's say you need to learn the stress pattern for the word technology. This word has the stress on the second syllable, technology.  Take the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and change the words to "Now I sing technology, now I sing technology."  Tying the correct word stress and pronunciation to a tune might help build pathways in your brain to correctly pronouncing this word in running speech.  And it might also be fun.

Listen to the "technology" song here: