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!