Memoire of Gaijin

Here I am staying in a country as a Gaijin, a Foreigner. My primary purpose is to study certain subjects as a student, however my memory really sucks nowadays. I know it's just a same old story; as you age, your memorization skill decreases ... but I don't buy this obviously.

As once I have read in an article, I can recall an effect called "Foreign Language Effect". This was, if I'm not mistaken, probably written in a Psychology journal or so. The theory stated that your thinking process drastically decreases when you are using a language that is not your primary language. Here I am, writing this weblog in my secondary language, going through what exactly the theory is intended to mention. It takes double or triple just to come up with words or phrases appropriate enough to express what I really want to say or write compared with when I do the same in my primary language.

Studying subjects in Foreign language itself is hard as anyone can imagine. However, the true difficulty lies in somewhere else I believe. Speed for mental processing decreases, so the amount of information that you can receive in a certain amount of time drops accordingly. Thus you will only get at most half or in the worst case, maybe only 5% of information you'd like to attain could be obtained compared with when you perform the same process in your most familiar language.

If you find whatever you read or listen looks or sounds so unfamiliar to you, your mind, subconscious, I suppose, will probably block what you are trying to internalize/memorize. In addition to aforementioned reduced amount of information, now your own mind keeps information away from you although no matter how your conscious awareness would like to understand, analyze and then finally memorize the material that you are reading or listening.

In the process of studying, you might suddently feel the emergence of your primary language though you did not intend to do so. Once I've gone through this phenomenon when I was taking an exam on Histology Laboratory. A microscope was placed at each station and there were 2 questions per each device. The time that is allocated for each station was 10 to 15 seconds. Even if I took the same exam in my primary language, I would probably encounter much difficulty; much less in my secondary language, a Foreign language ...

After this incident, I realized that my internal primary language actually is blocking my mental process that is supposed to be performed in the Foreign language. Then I decided to stop thinking in my primary language, forcing myself not to use it whenever I study or read study materials.

In addition, when you practice Medicine in your secondary language, you must be quite fluent in the language considering risks that you might take if you are not. You should be able to converse with your patients without difficulties, get enough information in order to diagnose and prescribe medications. No mistake is allowed, then your difficulties in the secondary language is no longer permitted or forgiven since you are expected to behave as a professional.

Here again, as facing headaches and an early senior moment, I am still trying to internalize concepts and knowledge in Anatomy, Histology for future Surgery, Pathology courses. Looking forward to studying those Clinical Medicine subjects could be the motivation for me to keep reading otherwise tedious subjects. Yes, a physiologically-minded person will like subjects such as Physiology, Biochemistry or Pharmacology rather than those aforementioned subjects of Morphology.

Any memory enhance supplements except Mnemonics? Let us know...