Mnemonics is a learning technique that aids information retention. Mnemonics aim to translate information into a form that the human brain can retain better than its original form. Even the process of applying this conversion might already aid the transfer of information to long-term memory. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often for lists and in auditory form, such as short poems, acronyms, or memorable phrases, but mnemonics can also be for other types of information and in visual or kinesthetic forms
Mnemonics is a really cool learning aid for anyone starting out. It's not really discussed in much detail at the early stages of learning Chinese particularly if you embark on an academic course of some sort. Of course there is some reference to the fact that some characters resemble the word(s) they are supposed to define, for example - 人/ Ren2 /man - The character looks like a man standing up so its very easy to remember the symbol associated with the meaning. However, academic courses I believe, and I speak only from my own experience, while they don't discourage it they certainly don't encourage mnemonics.
Mnemonics is widely discussed and used in many great websites that are in existence today. I have used and still continue to use - www.memrise.com. This is an absolutely fantastic site which uses mnemonics to its fullest. I am using skitter quite a lot lately and it too uses mnemonic aids and it also works quite well.
Also, I have now taken it upon myself to put my artistic skills to the test. I am going to attempt to try and create my own little pictogram type sketches with characters contained within. I know there are some already on these websites but for me it will make the learning process for character learning that bit more personal, and fun :) I'll see how it works out. I've started with a simple one , you will forgive me I hope when I say - you get the picture right?
飞/ Fei1/ to fly
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