Using the Matteo Ricci's Palace of Memory Method in Teaching English at Secondary School

Using the Matteo Ricci’s Palace of Memory Method in Teaching English at Secondary School Author: Alexandr Lagazzi, 4. M Supervisors: Alena Podlešáková, Jan Čapek Academic year: 2013 / 2014 School: Gymnázium Na Zatlance  Declaration I declare that the thesis was written by myself and that I have used only the sources and literature listed. I agree with publishing or making the thesis available to public and / or for purposes of study. In Prague, November the 6th 2013 Alexandr Lagazzi  Acknowledgement I would like to thank both Mrs Alena Podlešáková and Mr Jan Čapek for the supervision, patience and comments on the thesis. I value the help given throughout the process of brainstorming, researching and writing as crucial for a successful outcome. Next I would like to give my thanks to Shaolan Hsueh and Florian Dellé for letting me use their work as examples from experts in the field and all the inspiration that I have acquired by doing so.  Abstract Chinese language has almost one character per every word, therefore the memorization and the active use of the language for a speaker with a native Indo-European language background must be harder than for a Chinese person. Nonetheless, Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary to China, was able to teach Chinese thanks to an ancient mnemonic method, which he transformed and applied to Chinese. I will search in history for the connection of this method with the field of languages, and apply this old method in teaching English words to a modern secondary school classroom. By doing this, I will try to prove whether this ancient mnemonic method, used in the 16th century by Matteo Ricci in China, is still applicable in today’s secondary school teaching environment, where I will focus on acquiring words in English as a foreign language. Abstrakt (česky) Čínský jazyk používá téměř jeden znak pro vyjádření každého slova. Přesto, že osvojení společně s aktivním užití tohoto jazyka sinotibetské skupiny je podstatně těžší pro rodilého řečníka indoevropských jazyků, Matteo Ricci byl schopen se naučit čínské znaky a plně ovládat jazyk na takové úrovni, že ho sám začal vyučovat. Krom mimořádného jazykového nadání a překladů klíčových latinských textů do čínského jazyka se tento jezuitský misionář zapsal do historie téže užitím starověké mnemotechnické metody, kterou aplikoval pro své lekce v čínštině. Cílem této seminární práce bude zkoumat využití této metody v oblasti jazyků a snaha ji uplatnit při výuce anglických slov v moderním prostředí vyššího stupně základního vzdělání – střední školy. Návrhem prvních tří lekcí pro rodilé mluvčí jiného jazyka než anglického se budu snažit prokázat, zda tato starobylá mnemotechnická metoda, kterou úspěšně používal v 16. století Matteo Ricci v Číně, je stále použitelná v dnešní středoškolské výuce k výuce anglických slov.  Table of Contents Declaration 2 Acknowledgement 3 Abstract 4 Abstrakt (česky) 4 Introduction 6 The historical background of the Method of Loci 8 Explanation and basic understanding of the Method of Loci 10 The application of the Method of Loci in China by Matteo Ricci 12 Possible application and usage of the Method of Loci in today’s secondary teaching environment 15 Practical part 17 Conclusion 24 Works cited 26 Appendixes 27  Introduction The human brain is a complicated and interesting part of our body. Our memory allows us to remember anything that we can perceive – anything that we are able to hear, see, read, taste, experience, dream or even just imagine. Moreover, it allows us to store the information that we choose to remember. Therefore, memory has been a fashionable topic for humanity since the age of ancient Greek philosophers. Many treatises were written about this topic (Cicero’s De Oratore; Quintilian’s Institution Oratoria; the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium; Aristotle’s On Memory and Recollection and Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Commentaries of it; Matteo Ricci’s Treatise on Memory Arts; Sabbatini, Paolo, Xu Chengxi and Luigi Ricci’s Un Libro a Sei Mani) and even more exercises of maximizing our remembering capacity were drawn, leading to various mnemonic disciplines and even the birth of memory sports. This thesis will explore various mnemonic methods and focus on their learning potentials in order to draw a scheme of lessons that will focus on the implementation of such methods within the process of acquirement of English phrasal verbs. In what follows, I will focus on the Method of Loci because of my own experience of its usage within learning a language and its history, which gave me a certain idea of the basics of mnemonic methods and their development through time. After a look back to its history in the search of inspiration I will link the method from its inventor to its describing users, those being, relatively, Simonide of Ceos and Cicero, Quintilian, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Matteo Ricci and many more. By connecting their opinions and criticism of the method, nowadays explained in various works, written for instance by Jonathan Spence or Francis Yates, I define the application of the method in the present secondary school teaching environment as successful. The application of such method is already to be seen as successful within memory sports, where competitors and experts like Idriz Zogaj and Florian Dellé describe the usage of mnemonic methods as a powerful tool of memorization suitable for everyone. In my practical part I will try to prove whether the scheme is applicable to a secondary school teaching environment and is fitting the capacities of its students. I suggest the application of mnemonic methods in the field of learning a language because of their lack of a necessity of complicated abilities of the learner: every student is capable of memorizing an enormous amount of information. A language, because of its possible usage and application through everyday communication is perfectly attractive for a mnemonic method to be applied on. Moreover, with little practice and a simple scheme a learner can acquire the methodology of mnemonic methods within the process of learning languages and apply it to any other field of interest. Nonetheless, mnemonic methods do not require any facilities apart from strategy and some time for practice. Finally, my last chapter concludes by summarizing the aims and suggestions of the thesis and their possible impact, if applied and attained, on the field of learning English phrasal verbs in the secondary school environment.  The historical background of the Method of Loci Mnemonic methods were commonly used in ancient Greece and the Roman Empire both for studying and teaching purposes. According to Francis Yates, the inventor of this method is considered to be Simonides of Ceos (556-468 BC), a Greek poet belonging to the Hellenistic Alexandria (17-18). Three rhetorical treatises of main importance had also re-introduced and discussed the method: Cicero’s De Oratore, Quintilian’s Institution Oratoria and the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium (2; ch. 1). As Cicero describes, Simonides of Ceos put in use the method for the first time after miraculously escaping from death. While he was celebrating with some relatives at a banquet, he received a message that two young men wanted to see him and walked out of the house, leaving his friends celebrating inside. Right after he left, the roof of the building collapsed, killing all the people sitting under it. Simonides was able to benefit from the tragedy later on by inventing this mnemonic method, using his ability to identify the corpses of his dead relatives by correlating their identities to their positions and giving therefore the name of Loci, which means position in Latin, to the method (2: 351-4). Simonides of Ceos invented and developed the method to its today’s form, but the usage of the method remained mainly within the dialectical and rhetorical context, in which it was taught for centuries. Referring to Thomas Aquinas’ treatise, during Renaissance in Europe, Christian monks started to focus on this method because of their devotion and willingness to understand the Bible. After deepening the understanding and memorization of the holy text itself, the monks would meditate and interpret the sacred book by reviving all the passages in their minds. They soon fully acquired the principles of the method and started to teach them to humanistic scholars. Rhetoric, monastic and religious practices developed together the Method of Loci, along with many other mnemonic methods, into the so-called Art of Memory. Saint Thomas Aquinas himself was a strong promoter of this art by recommending its use for finding and strengthening a person’s virtues (93). Mnemonic methods were widely practiced in Europe around the 15th century, but due to their increasing complexity together with the birth of the printing system their usage slowly deceased. With the introduction of the Gutenberg Bible in 1455, monks did not rely only on their memory like they had done for centuries, but focused on the printing and typography system instead. Whilst the church lost its monopole on education, the process of memorization discontinued to be a crucial part people’s lives and became almost unnecessary. Moreover, a cultural and political revolution started and changed Europe by discovering new techniques, continents and cultures, while ancient methods and ways of thinking, learning and teaching became unused and retired back to monasteries with their monks and missionaries. Not even one century after the discovery of America, as Sabbatini, Chengxi and Ricci state, one of the most educated missionaries of Italy Matteo Ricci specialized in mnemonic methods and sailed to China to promote Christianity (83). In the following centuries mnemonic methods became less and less utilised in Europe and together with the technologies developed by humanity, which quickly became facilities, erased any necessity of improving our system of mental memorization. Inventions and developments including, but not limited to, the following: computers, the definition of information together with the creation of units of memory quickly became our everyday method to memorize things without effort and therefore replaced mnemonic methods.  Explanation and basic understanding of the Method of Loci One of the three ancient rhetorical treatises, written by an anonymous author who was for a long time thought to be Cicero, explains that the art of memory is divided into various techniques according to the type of memorization process employed. The main technique, being also the one characterising the Method of Loci and the Matteo Ricci’s Palace of Memory, is architectural mnemonics (31). After interviewing Florian Dellé, the founder and author of a website about memory sports, I understood that architectural mnemonics consists of a process of memorization that implements a certain setting of places, where recalling images, objects or even abstract thoughts becomes easier thanks to their connection within their placement inside the space pictured. Regarding the choice of such mnemonic methods to possibly apply, my predictions were fulfilled by his confirmation that both graphical and textual mnemonics are also related and strongly connected with architectural mnemonic, but the connection of images put in memorized places is mostly more effective and widely used, even among athletes of nowadays mnemonic competitions (Dellé, e-mail). Explained by Ricci himself and later on cited by Spence, the Method of Loci is a basic architectural mnemonic method that, in order to memorize things, suggests connecting images with their locations. Matteo Ricci, during his studies and later work, developed this method into his Memory Palace. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci creates a fictive location, most commonly a palace or a house, where a learner can place certain images in various rooms within, connecting therefore those images with exact places. The method implements a building because of the human brain’s ability to imagine ourselves exploring different rooms in a real and well-remembered place; also because of the possibility of building complexity – a large palace can contain a vast amount of images. In order to remember anything using this method, a learner should establish this connection between certain images and their positions created by the learners themselves. Those positions being certain rooms or places inside the palace, which learners get to know so well that they can easily picture them in detail. The images would then repose until the person wishes to reclaim them by his memory: simply by walking through the rooms – in fact walking through his memory (1-6). According to Florian Dellé and his explanation of techniques on his website, the method of Loci is one of the most effective and therefore essential methods used within memory sports. Contestants trying to memorize words, cards or even names and faces rely on this method. As an example, the Major System, which is a method focusing on the memorization of numbers, put in combination with the basics of the Method of Loci gives a significant increase in the number of memorized digits of the contestant (Dellé, "The Major System"). Moreover, Random Words, a trendy memory discipline focused on the memorization of randomly given words can be mastered just by the apprehension and usage of the Method of Loci (Dellé, "Memory Discipline: Random Words"). It is to be seen then that both beginners and masters of memory sports rely on the application of this method, using its basics in order to improve other methods and therefore their results in a various range of memory sports disciplines (Dellé, "The Method of Loci").  The application of the Method of Loci in China by Matteo Ricci Referring to Sabbatini, Chengxi and Ricci, whilst teaching Chinese students, mnemonic systems and translating various books from Latin into Chinese, Matteo Ricci deepened his knowledge of the spoken and written language. He was forced to describe the process of building a memory palace in a way closer to Chinese cultural mentality in order to succeed in his teaching. His efforts crystalized into a system that was simple, dynamic and at the same time implemented strict rules: while building his memory palace a Chinese student’s mind should be working as logically as while writing a Chinese ideograph. Calligraphy requires discipline and planned steps – exactly as the student’s architectural structure of his own palace. By creating numerous floors the mind would percept and divide the physically pictured words in their places in the same way as lines define a sheet of paper. Given this construction strategy the journey through the palace would recall the logical simplicity of the process of writing and its memorization will not be necessary, because the student will apprentice the journey within the building and quickly get used to it as a common habit. That will then give to the students the opportunity to memorize even more images, thanks to the elimination of the unnecessary struggle of learning the journey or the architecture of building itself (84-91). Moreover, as Spence points out, a certain numeric importance was given by Ricci to the students by the implementation of counting rules inside the palace: every tenth image would be marked with the Chinese ideograph for the word ‘ten’ – shi, written十, which not only strongly reminded the students of a crossroad, because of its linguistic meaning that expressed two lines or roads crossing each other, but also recalled the idea of the Christian cross, which brilliantly allowed Matteo Ricci to continue in his primary goal of conversion to that religion whilst teaching his students (22-3). Regarding the images themselves, as Spence mentions, Ricci suggests in his own treatise that they should be vivid, detailed, colourful and most importantly meaningful (52-61). This suggestion correlates with the claims of a memory competitor, Idriz Zogaj, whose demonstration to the public of Göteborg shows the ability of our brain to picture anything even in a three dimensional shape, allowing us to play with all the details and even dressing up our pictures with more of them. That perhaps is the main key to the memorization of the images and the link to their meaning (Zogaj, 7:15). According to Spence’s explanation, Matteo Ricci, not afraid of letting his students imagine pictures awakening emotionally strong perceptions, exaggerate the differences between every detail or point out the social and cultural status of protagonists, if used (26). Ricci in this way has made the first four images establish a heavy connection with the real world outside the memory palace. Those four images represented four Chinese words, illustrated in Spence’s book: the ideograph wu, written 武, meaning ‘war’ (25); the ideograph yao, written 要, meaning variously ‘to want something’, ‘to need something’, ‘importance’ or ‘necessity’ (94); the ideograph li, written 利, meaning ‘profit’ (163) and finally the ideograph hao, written 好, meaning ‘goodness’ (263). Matteo Ricci placed those four ideographs’ images inside the reception hall of his Memory Palace, which had to be spacious enough to contain them all with at least three steps of distance from one another, placed therefore in the four corners: wu in the southeast corner, yao in the northeast corner, li in the northwest corner and hao in the southwest corner (see Table 1, pg. 27). The vividness and life given to the images’ bodies would then help the students going through the reception hall to recall immediately the meaning of the words. Spence elaborates that, with the first character 武 wu, Ricci suggested to literally split the ideograph into two parts, those that it is originally composed of: the right, upper part ge, written 戈, and left, lower part zhi, written 止. Those two words meant accordingly to their mentioned order ‘spear’ and ‘to stop’. The image of the word ‘war’ therefore consisted of two warriors in colourful uniforms, fighting one with the other and acting in a pose where the uppermost, holding a sword, is trying to kill the companion underneath him, who is grasping his wrist, fighting to stop the stroke and survive (24-6). The second character, 要 yao, is split similarly as the first, but the image is more elaborately pictured in order to maintain its final interconnection between its meaning and look: the upper part xi, written 西, means ‘west’ and is divided horizontally from the lower part nu, written  女 and meaning ‘woman’. The final image with the meaning of ‘necessity’ may look just as simply as a woman from the West, but hides different interpretations under her coat. The simplest explanation drawn by Ricci is a game of words, stating the woman’s origin from Xixia (an ancient western kingdom of China) and giving her an exotic, Muslim appearance. Some may interpret the image as a so-called huihui, where the word Xixia is just a geographical hint, supporting the meaning of huihui, which was commonly used in spoken Chinese for addressing the scarce community of Jews in China (93-6). 利 li, the third character, cut by Ricci vertically through its centre, divides the word ‘profit’ into two characters, he, written 禾, on the left side; and dao, written刂, on the right side. With the ideographs’ meanings of ‘grain’ on the right and ‘blade’ or ‘knife’ on the left, the ideograph li was pictorialized and described by Ricci as a ‘man holding a sickle, ready to cut the crops in the field’ (162-4). The fourth image, the combination of the already mentioned word nu – ‘woman’, written女, and zi – ‘child’, written子, is the illustration of the ideograph hao, is written as 好 and means ‘goodness’. In the reception hall of his Palace Ricci created a young maidservant that is holding a child. Her hairstyle was typical for young Chinese girls and her playing with the child emphasizes her age. Nonetheless this is an image of the Virgin Mary (262-5). Altogether, the images of the two warriors, the huihui, the farmer and the Virgin Mary repose in the reception hall until a student’s mind wishes to recall them. The details, the colours, the lightning, the costumes and their actions make every acting protagonist in the hall’s corners very unique and alive. The capacity to split an ideograph into two parts, every one of them defining something else according to the language, and their fusion back into one, more powerful, but not of different meaning is crucial for the establishment of a vivid link between the words, their content and their place in the Palace of Memory. The logical connections are strengthened by the images in order to create a cycle of linked pictures, words and places that are easily remembered just as if they were realistically experienced. This capacity of Ricci, acquired from his learning in the western, Roman Catholic society and journeys to China was what made Matteo Ricci such an important person for both Italy and China. The bridge established by his teaching, translating and living in both countries in consequence formed an enormous cultural heritage, even though initially just between the two mentioned countries, this bridge was, however, reinforced and rebuild throughout history. Eventually it became one of the most powerful connections between Asia and Europe, putting slowly its original religious aims aside in order to promote the exchange of cultural, economical and intellectual legacies.  Possible application and usage of the Method of Loci in today’s secondary teaching environment Focusing on the aspect of making mnemonic methods available to Chinese students for religiously conversional purposes allowed Matteo Ricci to diminish the existing cultural, religious, geographical and linguistic distance between him, being the teacher, and between the Chinese population of his students. While teaching and studying together with Chinese students, Ricci was not only able to see the qualities he had in common with Chinese students, but also to incentivize the importance and usage of such qualities while teaching and / or studying together. Only after doing so he was able to use the differences between him and Chinese students in order to collaborate on a general formula of teaching. The aim of this thesis is to establish another ‘general’ technique that will be based on Matteo Ricci’s Palace of Memory and other works connected with mnemonics described by myself so far, in order to improve the English teaching environment. To summarize, the crucial point of Ricci's teaching skills was his ability to firstly divide one ideograph, according to the ideographs it is composed of, into two different and original words; secondly create an image of those two words representing the ideographs’ original meaning; and finally the placement of the image symbolizing a total of three words inside the Memory Palace. In the present teaching environment, students of Chinese language can use this method backwards: they can memorize an image, which shows the meaning of a certain ideograph in order to remember two or more words (except from the already mentioned ideograph) that together in a combination of meaning and calligraphic connection give the original word, or in other terms the significance of the image. The memorization of a total of three words linked to each other in symbolic significance and meaning is therefore a powerful method for foreign language learners of Chinese to increase their vocabulary with more ideographs. My aim is to apply this linking method, used in Chinese language classrooms, which can be further supported by building a palace of memory in order to help students to memorize English phrasal verbs. As for my own experience, the application of such methods in order to facilitate and enhance learning Chinese was proven effective. Learning the language using a combination of printed memory cards, mobile applications and mnemonic methods (including the Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci) in addition to standard lessons of Chinese enhanced the experience of study to an incentive to further continue. This allowed me to practice both written and spoken Chinese daily, and therefore to constantly improve it. Apart from printed facilities or mnemonic methods, electronic devices and applications are a useful tool for learning. ‘Chineasy’ is an example of a great idea successfully put into usage within the Chinese learning environment. According to her talk on TedX, the writer of the book Shaolan Hsueh suggests that the methodology of connecting an image on a memory card with a character will quickly establish a strong connection and allow the student to manage approximately 30 ideographs in less then half of an hour. Even though this method focuses mostly on the tuition of reading and writing in Chinese by giving a set of 8 radicals, which combined with each other and / or with themselves then give 32 characters per set, it allows a student to learn the basics of the language and being able to use Chinese for common purposes of discussion within one year (Shaolan, 1:15). Again, the establishment of an interconnection of meaning and images, which in this case can be used in order to build other interconnected ideographs, is very useful and simple to use, even among very young students. Bearing in mind all the rules, suggestions and methodology of this mnemonic method and its usage in the field of teaching languages I will focus on phrasal verbs as a special category of the English vocabulary. Phrasal verbs most commonly have an unpredictable meaning because of their usage of a common verb together with a particle and / or a preposition. Nonetheless, I firmly believe that the meaning of such a connection can become more predictable if linked to an image that will, in the same way as Ricci's ideographs’ images, symbolize its meaning and the two words that are combined. By doing so students will recall by their memory the phrasal verb and establish a logical connection that will become predictable and therefore easier to memorize. Moreover, this system will allow the students to organize all modal verbs remembered precisely by grouping them into rooms or even floors of their Memory Palace: for instance by the common verb (for example all the modal verbs remembered with the word "look": "look up", "look after", "look forward" and so on) or by the preposition used (for example all the modal verbs remembered with the preposition "up": "look up", "bring up", "back up", "blow up" and so on). More experienced students can create switchable rooms within the palace, or categorize modal verbs by any other criteria they will find convenient. Finally, by comprehending the methodology’s logic the students can assimilate a certain example of ways of thinking and connecting ideas that may develop into further application not only within languages.  Practical part In order to support my claims of possible application of mnemonic methods in the English language teaching environment I have designed the first lesson of English phrasal verbs implementing basics of the Method of Loci and its linking technique previously described in order to maximize the students’ learning potential. In order to support the memorization of the pictures and therefore the phrasal verbs together with their meaning, it is of crucial importance to keep the figures simple, the colours bright whilst in contrast with each other and a certain familiarity of every image. Focusing on phrasal verbs, Table 2 (pg. 28) summarizes the first 15 most commonly used phrasal verbs according to Bryan Stoakley’s online publication "The 50 Most Common Phrasal Verbs". I will draw a list of images for the first 5 of them. To prove that the system is fully applicable to any other phrasal verb in English, Table 3 (pg. 29) shows a list of the first phrasal verbs per each letter provided by an upper-level English language book (Mann, Taylor-Knowles, 246-250). I will then describe a brief sketch of the image for them as well, aiming to point out the ability that any student can learn by implementing this method, that being the improvisation and spontaneous connection of a random phrasal verb and its possible image. The following explanations of the images are the result of such process.  Go on Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 1 - image for the phrasal verb ''go on'' The first phrasal verb's given meaning is "to continue in doing something". As shown in Figure 1, in order to stick to the structure and methodology of the mnemonic method, I suggested pictorializing a road leading vertically towards the landscape in the north with the word "on" written on the surface of it, similarly to real road signs. On its right side, again like in reality, there is a green traffic light switched on, with the word "go" written inside of it. The meaning of continuation is therefore clear to the viewer. With the words incorporated within the objects in the picture, the image remains compact and keeps the meaning of each word together with the phrasal verb. In fact, when a driver sees a green light, he afterwards continues the journey. Image 1 (pg. 30) shows the coloured, final version.  Carry out Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 2 - image for the phrasal verb ''carry out'' According to the book, the second phrasal verb means "to perform a task / assignment". Therefore, as demonstrated in Figure 2, I chose to maintain the original meaning of the verb "carry" giving a box of "tasks" to a person who is going out of a building. To stress the presence of the word "out" within the phrasal verb I decided to add some trees and grass to the landscape, making a strong contrast between the grey building and the outdoor nature. A sign saying "exit", being put on the building's roof, implies to the viewer that the man is going out of the building, and simply carrying out numerous tasks. Image 2 (pg. 31) shows the coloured, final version.  Set up The third phrasal verb means "to establish someone as something, to help establish". In this case, as shown by Figure 3, I thought about taking the meaning of the noun "set", most commonly used in collocations like "a set of plates" – meaning a collection of certain things, and suggesting the connection with ideas: therefore a set of ideas is constructing, by pointing through an arrow to the upper side of the image, a building reminding the viewer of the typical business architecture. A sign saying "Business Co." makes clear that three businessmen’s’ idea are starting a company. Image 3 (pg. 32) shows the coloured, final version.  Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 3 - image for the phrasal verb ''set up'' Pick up Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 4 - image for the phrasal verb ''pick up'' While drawing the fourth image, as to be seen in Figure 4, for the phrasal verb's meaning "to learn / obtain", I again maintained an already established linguistic connection. The verb "to pick" is popularly used within the collocation "to pick flowers", an action that is to be seen already from youngsters. The flower, which is being picked by a hand that finishes in an arrow pointing again toward the north, symbolizes the word "up", while the petals give examples of knowledge taught at school (the process of learning, reading, writing, calculating etc.). Image 4 (pg. 33) shows the coloured, final version.  Go back As the fifth phrasal verb means "to return to one's origin", in Figure 5 the image consists of a person walking and taking the path according to the roadside sign stating "hometown", as a symbol of belonging to a place of birth and therefore of origin. The symbol "back", taken from the classic radio symbols such as "play", "pause" of "forward", and is clearly reminding the viewer of the usage of that word. To summarize, a person going back towards his hometown is returning to his origin. Image 5 (pg. 34) shows the coloured, final version.  Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 5 - image for the phrasal verb ''go back'' Suggestions for the lesson’s methodology In order to create a lesson plan it is possible to choose a set of random phrasal verbs and organize them to create better connections. Taking the first 5 phrasal verbs’ explained and pictorialized images as an example, the teacher could explain the meaning of the images and then connect this set of verbs to a room of the palace, or in better words, to a certain place. As the most suitable surrounding I suggest keeping the outdoor background of the images impact, in fact to draw a path that includes all of them. A road, going from the south-west corner to the north-east corner of the picture and containing a green traffic light symbolizing the phrasal verb "to go on", followed by the flower of knowledge ready to be "picked up", a traffic sign directing to his hometown, where the viewer is "going back" with the purpose of "setting up" his own company is just an example of such surrounding. As the process of drawing pictures with the phrasal verbs’ meanings is possible purely due to creativity and fantasy, imagination is the only real limit. Not only that the pictures can be combined and designed together in order to keep a certain order, for instance as I stated previously, according to the verb or preposition used; but also such mechanism creates an active process of innovative thinking, where the student is aware of his capacities and abilities whilst according to them designs the images in order to fit his own personality. This thesis suggests to use the original meaning of the verbs together with the pictorialized meaning of the prepositions combined, in order to conform back an interconnection of meaning of the phrasal verb. A vivid, coloured and contrasted picture is then the key for the memorization of the images. In conclusion, the process of creating the picture is already training the student's memory by recalling the meaning of certain words and therefore will shorten with practice to its minimum.  Conclusion In this thesis, I suggest the application of ancient mnemonic methods within the secondary school English teaching environment, in order to enhance the learning potentials of mnemonics through the study of phrasal verbs. By the study of the history of mnemonics and the application of such methods within the field of learning languages I decided to search for existing traces of mnemonic methods such as the Matteo Ricci’s Palace of Memory, which lead me into the world of memory sports. I have become aware of the fact that many people are using mnemonic methods for common purposes without even noticing of doing so, whereas memory champions are able to master such abilities and push their memorization to extreme levels. As shown in various treatises form the ancient Greek philosophers, surprisingly, mnemonics is a question of strategy, methodology and practice more than pure talent – in fact, every person willing to give it a try has a fair chance of becoming capable of memorizing vast amounts of information. Being a Chinese language student myself, I tried to apply various mnemonic methods in order to improve my learning potential. The Method of Loci, as used and described by Matteo Ricci (referring to whom it was called the Palace of Memory) fascinated me the most. The interconnection established between images, words, symbolism, language and culture seemed to be impossible under normal circumstances, whilst if supported by this method, it seems to be strong and vibrant. The aim of this thesis is to draw a scheme of lessons implementing all those methods, facilities, strategies and methodology. For doing so, I went back to my Chinese lessons, where I looked into some fresh, innovative ways of learning. Again I have discovered that most of them, being it a flashcard system or a game, implemented the usage of images and / or places. Afterwards I have decided to focus on English language, because of its vital importance of every secondary school student. Phrasal verbs, lacking a logical connection between the actual verb of common use and the particle or preposition they consist of, served as an example of the theoretical establishment of a memorisable link between words and meaning. In order to support this link and its memorization I therefore suggested the usage of the Method of Loci. The student applying such methodological process that, once learned, is applicable to any other field of interest, should be able to understand the methodology to create one fully personalized and working system, which will grow along with the student’s needs. The establishment of an interconnection of the words’ meaning, their images and locations within a memory palace is in fact a powerful mnemonic tool that, as memory championships prove, quickly becomes an ability that facilitate the process of memorization itself. Not only the speed of establishing such interconnection improves with time and practice, but also the methodology and linking system itself as well. Bearing in mind higher learning capacities of younger learners, compared to older ones, this thesis implies a simplification of the mnemonic method in order to fit the capacity of any kind of learner – being of simple understanding and colourful visualization allows the learner to enjoy the memorization process and therefore obtain an incentive in motivation for learning.   Works cited Anonymous. Rhetorica Ad Herennium. Trans. H. Caplan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1989. Print. Aquinas, Thomas. Commentaries on Aristotle's "On Sense and What Is Sensed" and "On Memory and Recollection" Trans. Kevin White and E. M. Macierowski. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 2005. Print. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De Oratore. Trans. E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham. Vol. 1, 2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1969. Print. Dellé, Florian. "Memory Discipline: Random Words." Memory-Sports.com. N.p., 13 Aug. 2009. Web. <http://www.memory-sports.com/random-word-systems/>. Dellé, Florian. "Re: [Memory-Sports] Thesis on the Method of Loci." Message to the author. 29 Nov. 2013. E-mail. Dellé, Florian. "The Major System." Memory-Sports.com. N.p., 18 May 2009. Web. Dellé, Florian. "The Method of Loci." Memory-Sports.com. N.p., 28 Mar. 2009. Web. <http://www.memory-sports.com/the-method-of-loci/>. How to Become a Memory Master: Idriz Zogaj at TEDxGöteborg. Perf. Idriz Zogaj. Tedxtalks.ted.com. N.p., 24 Oct. 2012. Web. 29 Nov. 2013. <http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/How-to-become-a-Memory-Master-I>. Mann, Malcolm, and Steve Taylore-Knowles. Destination C1 & C2: Grammar & Vocabulary. Oxford: Macmillan Education, 2008. Print. Ricci, Matteo. Treatise on Memory Arts. N.p.: n.p., 1624. Print. Sabbatini, Paolo, Xu Chengxi, and Luigi Ricci. Un Libro a Sei Mani. Shanghai: Zhejiang UP, 2010. Print. ShaoLan: Learn to Read Chinese ... with Ease! Perf. Shaolan Hsueh. Chineasy.org. N.p., May 2013. Web. 18 Jan. 2014. <http://chineasy.org/films/ted-talk.aspx>. Spence, Jonathan D. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. New York, NY: Viking Penguin, 1984. Print. Stoakley, Bryan T. "The 50 Most Common Phrasal Verbs For Mr. Stoakley’s KNUE Courses." Pera College. Wordpress.com, n.d. Web. <http://peracollege.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/the-50-most-common-phrasal-verbs-b-t-stoakley.pdf>. Yates, Frances Amelia. The Art of Memory. London: Vintage, 1992. Print. Appendixes Table 1: The reception hall of the Palace of Memory The Warriors The Huihui 武 wu – war 要 yao – want, need, importance, necessity 止 zhi – to stop 戈 ge – spear 西 xi – west 女 nu – woman Profit & Harvest The Virgin Mary 利 li – profit 好 hao – goodness 禾 he – grain 刂 dao – blade, knife 女 nu – woman 子 zi – child  Table 2: The list of commonly used phrasal verbs Ranking Phrasal verb #1 Go on #2 Carry out #3 Set up #4 Pick up #5 Go back #6 Come back #7 Go out #8 Point out #9 Find out #10 Come up #11 Make up #12 Take over #13 Come out #14 Come on #15 Come in  Table 3: The alphabetical list of phrasal verbs (only the first for each letter is cited) Phrasal verb Explanation of meaning Answer back Reply rudely to someone who has more authority Back down Stop asking for something or stop saying that you will do something Cancel out Stop something from having any effect Die out Become weaker or less common and then disappear completely End up Be in a particular place or state after doing something Fade away Disappear slowly Get across Make people understand something Hang out Lean out of a window so that the top part of your body is outside Keep up Continue to do something Lash out Speak angrily to or against someone Make into Change someone or something so that they become something else Open up Make it easier to travel or do business in a country Paper over Hide a problem rather than finding a satisfactory solution to it Read up Get information on a particular subject by reading a lot about it Scrape through Succeed in doing something, but not in a very impressive way Take after Look of behave like an older relative Use up Use all of a supply of something Walk out Leave bored or angrily a meeting, performance, etc. before the end  Image 1: The coloured version of the image for the phrasal verb ‘Go on’  Image 2: The coloured version of the image for the phrasal verb ‘Carry out’  Image 3: The coloured version of the image for the phrasal verb ‘Set up’  Image 4: The coloured version of the image for the phrasal verb ‘Pick up’  Image 5: The coloured version of the image for the phrasal verb ‘Go back’ 2 9 11 34