You Can Do Magic--Quickly Commit English Big Words to Memory

Hi,

I wrote the following to remind my compatriots of an easy way to learn the long big English words by hearts. Correct me where I went wrong. Thanks.

One day, there was this big word "chandelier" on the blackboard while I was stepping onto the platform of a freshman's classroom at a senior high school. As soon as I spotted it, I asked my adorable pupils who put it down there and what for!

And they replied that it was their great maestro of physics, who was also known as English powerhouse. He wanted to teach them how to learn the big word by heart in a hetorodox way.

This is the way he taught it--he pronouced the word like "shun de lee uen dien (?????)," which litterally means in Chinese "shunning far away from (chandelier)." Thus, the students caught on to the meaning and the sound.


I have a different approach from the great maestro of physics on this for fear that the non-orthodox method might mislead my pupils. What I use is to divide chandelier into two parts. The first part, chandel, is a variant of candle, and the other, ~er, stands for a tool or instrument. Therefore, when they are combined together, we get the meaning of "a tool or instrument for candles."


As a side note: since we're not native speakers, we always have a hard time committing those long and big English to memory. I guess memorizing them for a native is as good as breathing! That's why we need to search for a magic way.