Linkword

Linkword is a mnemonic system promoted by Michael Gruneberg in the 1990s for learning languages based on the similarity of the sounds of words. The process involves creating an easily visualized scene that will link the words together. One example is the Russian word for cow (корова, pronounced roughly karova). Think and visualize "I ran my car over a cow."

Discussion of the method
This method is not original. Many teachers and students of language have used the same technique, and many obvious examples have undoubtedly been used independently by many people (e.g. to remember that in Thai, khao means rice, imagine a cow eating rice).

The pros and cons of such methods have been discussed. One of the drawbacks is that it is exhausting—it takes a lot of effort to create a scene for every new word. "Linkword" has the advantage of offering ready made scenes for each word, so hundreds of words can be memorized in a few hours. However, it offers only a basic vocabulary (e.g. 200 words for a survival course and around 1400 words for a 4-level course).

Another criticism of mnemonic techniques such as this is that they tend to assume a one-to-one relationship between the learner's first language and the target language. In reality, words often have more a different range of meaning, and so the student must learn the complexity or nuance of the new words. For this reason, such techniques should be seen as a useful and powerful way to progress in the language, especially in the early stages, rather than giving a complete understanding.

Critics also claim that because the method relies on the coincidental similarities in the sounds of words, it cannot be used to teach all, or even most, words of another language as there may be no corresponding phonetically similar words or visualizations that could be used. In practice, however, there is virtually always a visualisation that can be used, but for some words it is a less direct connection and not as effective. In these cases, there is more need for other learning methods to support the visualization, such as repetition and flashcards.

The system is similar to a well-known trick of some stage mnemonists employed for memorizing huge lists of words suggested by spectators to repeat them in any given order, forwards, backwards, even ones, etc, known as mnemonic peg system. A mnemonist has his own "counting list" of words. Each counting word is bound to the next spectator's word by means of a sentence, as described above. Some mnemonists claim the sillier the binding sentence, the easier it is to remember.

While this method could potentially be used to teach from any language to any language, it is currently used almost exclusively to teach English speaking people other languages. Many different companies offer systems based on this method, but the list of languages offered is almost identical, regardless of company. Learning courses have been developed to teach students Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (both Brazilian and European), Russian, Spanish (both European and South American) and Welsh.