欄桿拍遍，無人會，登臨意

Memorizing through association

“欄桿拍遍，無人會，登臨意。” is the only part of the entire piece of
辛棄疾 poem, “登建康賞心亭", I have always remembered since my
high school years. 　

There are many different memorization techniques, but the trick is
finding the ones that work for us. Brown and Miller, in 1996,
developed a categorization of memorization techniques:
Memorizing through association, through visual, auditory, and
kinesthetic system, through grouping, through repetition, or
through mnemonic techniques.

Everybody would agree that memorizing through repetition was
probably the only mode to memorize the “課文” during our early
elementary school years. We memorized it by repeatedly reading it
over and over again. In my elementary school, however, we had a
teacher who started to teach us some memorization techniques. I
recall the most impressive one was that he told us how to memorize
the names of Taiwan’s 16 cities and counties. He picked one word
from the names of each city and county, and created a “lyric” by
using all the 16 words: “ 蘭竹桃花苗, 投義化中南屏, 湖雲北中高”.
Up to present time, I am still able to say it all in just one breath.

In the middle school, our biology teacher taught us how to memorize
the names of the 12 cranial nerves. He created a “lyric”and sang it to
us: “一嗅二視三動眼, 四滑五叉六外旋, 七顏八聽九舌咽, 十迷走來十一副,
十二舌下神經線.” “

Good Examples of memorizing through mnemonic techniques in
English are such as :

Mnemonic word HOMES, a memory trigger for the great lakes
(“H”uron, “O”ntario, “M”ichigan, “E”rie, “S”uperior.).

or

"My Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us Nine Pancakes" stands
for the nine planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus, Neptune, Pluto).

In my high school, we were always demanded to memorize the
“文言文課文 “. One afternoon, during an extended recess time, we
were allowed to have our “self study” in the Botanical Garden, which
was just across the street from the school. I brought my “國文課本”
there as we were instructed to memorize couple of the ancient poems
for the next morning's quizzes. This is one of them:

辛棄疾‧登建康賞心亭

楚天千里清秋，水隨天去秋無際。

遙岑遠目，獻愁供恨，玉簪螺髻。　　
落日樓頭，斷鴻聲裡，江南游子。　　
把吳鉤看了，欄桿拍遍，無人會，登臨意。　　

休說鱸魚堪鱠，盡西風、季鷹歸未？　　
求田問舍，怕應羞見，劉郎才氣。　　
可惜流年，憂愁風雨，樹猶如此！　　
倩何人喚取，紅巾翠袖，搵英雄淚。

Besides memorizing through reading it repeatedly, I tried to find
some “association” that could remind me later on. It was hard as
I could not find any except for “欄桿拍遍，無人會，登臨意 “. I picked
up a stick and kept striking a metal rail along a small lake, ie.
“欄桿拍遍". I struck the rail very hard as I was quite frustrated
when trying to memorize these words “遙岑遠目，獻愁供恨，
玉簪螺髻 “. Of course nobody around to respond to my action, ie.
“無人會 ", or asked me why I came here, ie. “登臨意 “. However,
because of that frustration and "association", I am now still able to
memorize the phrase “欄桿拍遍，無人會，登臨意 “ in this poem,
although I have never been able to remember the rest of the poem
without looking at the entire text.


Yeh Tze