Intro to the Memorization Concepts of Basic Association, Pegging, and Imaginative Association

Ahola, Spanish enthusiasts.  Here's a taste of what's to come later on the website once we pass the alphabet and numbers and get into geography and vocabulary, ojala'.  This first picture is by one of our students Laurel Mentor, and it starts off our Latin American geography series.  In the picture below, we know this is the 1st country South of the U.S. because we have connected the idea of the number 1 to a tree through "basic association," the principle of connecting one thing to another through a logical, basic free association of similarities.  A trunk of a tree looks like the number 1, not like the number 6 or 8, or any other number.  Then we "peg" the idea of "Mexico" to that image but putting a "Mix" of trees in the picture, because "Mix" sounds like the beginning of the word "Mexico" with the letters "M" and "X."  Finally, in addition to this "basic association" and "pegging" we use the more advanced memory technique of "imaginative association" to incorporate the Spanish word for "tree" into this image as the central event.  A baby bird is making "art" in a "bowl" in the tree because the word for tree in Spanish is "arbol," (art + bowl = arbol).  The baby bird's parents found a blue bowl to make a nest out of instead of twigs, and then they brought the baby a brush and canvass to make art on to decorate its bowl shaped home.  That's imaginative association--it works like super glue in the memory.  So here's the picture, gracias a Laurel: