When you’re leaning ______ new language, there are a lot of things to remember: spelling rules, grammar rules, punctuation rules...the list is endless. But there’s ______ that can help you: mnemonics (助记符号).

Mnemonics are techniques to help you remember things. There are a variety of them, ______ rhymes, spelling acronyms (首字母缩略词) and sentence mnemonics.

Rhymes are a great way ______ things. The sounds, unusual words and rhythm of them help you recall ideas. Do you know when Columbus sailed to America? There’s a thyme to help you which goes like this, “______ fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Most people ______ that since they ______ young and never forget it!

Spelling acronyms involve creating a sentence ______ on the letters of a target word. For example, the following sentence can help you with the spelling of the word “because”, “Big elephants can always understand small elephants”. Notice how the ______ letter of each word in the sentence spells out the word “because”. This one ______ to remind you to include the “h” in the word “which”, “Which house is Cath’s house?” To spell Mississippi, a rhythm mnemonic is combined with a spelling one: “miss iss ippi”. And ______ you can’t remember the spelling of the word “mnemonics”, use this one “Mike never eats meat or nuts in case he is sick.”

Sentence mnemonics are also ______. The following can help you with the difference between the words “principal” and “principle”, “A principal is your pal at school, and a principle is a belief or rule.” Or this one to help you remember the difference in spelling between “deserts” (such as the Sahara) and “desserts” (such as Tiramisu), “A dessert has two sugars so it’s ______ but a desert only has one.” The two “sugars” mentioned in the sentence refer to the two s’s in the word “dessert”. Or this one to clear up the confusion between “stationery” and “stationary”, “The car is stationary. An envelope is stationery”.

You can learn grammar rules with sentence mnemonics too. For example, this one ______ help you with the position of adjectives, “Adjectives come before nouns just as ’A’ comes before ‘N’.” And this one can help you learn about the use of apostrophes (撇号), “Apostrophes show possession (拥有).”

Mnemonics can help a lot with language learning. Why not ______ inventing a few of your own!

A study in September has added excitement in the brain science area. In the study, volunteers had electrical stimulation (刺激) in their brains. The study found their memory and problem-solving abilities got better for at least a month. The stimulation was painless and could lead to future treatments (治疗) for memory. It can even help students with their future exams.

Volunteers in the study did better in both remembering words and working out memory-based problems. In the test, they wore a cap and it was connected to electrical currents (电流). Wearing the cap twenty minutes a day was enough to help people remember words better. The volunteers could retell more words a month later.

Working memory is connected to problem-solving and decision-making abilities. Low frequency (频率) stimulation of the brain can help boost working memory. For example, volunteers also did better in taking notes after the stimulation.

The brain training industries are worth millions of dollars. Players are interested in improving their abilities by doing memory exercises. The future is wide open if it is tested to be successful and safe in treatments.

What do you do when you need to look something up? Go to the library? Open an encyclopedia? Click on to the internet? These days, most people go straight to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. But how reliable (可靠) is it?

There’s no denying the popularity and usefulness of Wikipedia. It attracts 78 million visitors every month, and the site is available (可用的) in more than 270 different languages. It’s one of the most comprehensive (综合的) resources available, and it’s got much more information than an ordinary encyclopedia. The site is updated on a daily basis by thousands of people around the world. Anyone with an internet connection can log on and edit the contents or add a new page. And you don’t need any formal training.

Of course, there are some controls. Wikipedia has a team of more than 1,500 administrators (管理员) who check for false information. But with more than 16 million articles to keep an eye on, it isn’t easy. So, while Wikipedia benefits from being constantly updated with information from all over the world, it’s also open to “vandals” (故意破坏公物的人).

Some of the damage is easy to notice. One prankster (恶作剧者) drew devil horns and a moustache on Microsoft chairman Bill Gate’s photo, while another edited Greek philosopher Plato’s biography to say he was a “Hawaiian weather man”.

But other things are harder to spot. The most common form of vandalism involves adding tiny items of false information into the biography of a famous person. Some of this misinformation has even appeared in newspapers, with The Daily Mail, The Guardian and The Independent all having fallen victim (牺牲者) to the pranks. For example, in an introduction for British comedian Sir Norman Wisdom, one newspaper claimed that he co-wrote Dame Vera Lynn’s wartime hit “There’ll be Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover”. He did no such thing. And in another article, it was reported that TV theme tune composer Ronnie Hazlehurst had written the song “Reach”. Once again, not true.

So, if you’re going to use any information from Wikipedia, make sure you double-check it first.