Here's another idea from it that I have heard about before, but didn't really believe would, or could, work. Sceptical old me ! Let's try it out ( in English first) right here and now, live ....
Read this section of a poem out loud to yourself a few times .... it's the last bit of a Carol Ann Duffy poem called Prayer.....
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall, Malin, Dogger, Finisterre.
You've read it aloud a few times ? Now scroll past this picture, which is just a "spacer" so you don't see what's next ....
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the ............... prayer -
Rockall, Malin, Dogger, Finisterre.
OK ... read it out loud again maybe, because I'm going to do it again after this spacer ....
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano ...........
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the .............. prayer -
Rockall, Malin, Dogger, Finisterre.
When I first read about this idea, I thought it was just a memorisation technique .. an easy way to learn the words of a song perhaps .. .. but it's also a way of using your knowledge of language structures as a sort of scaffolding to help your brain piece it all together ...
Anyway, here we go again .....
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano ...........
console the .............. looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the .............. prayer -
Rockall, Malin, Dogger, Finisterre.
have you read it through with all the missing bits ... next step then ..............
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano ...........
console the .............. looking out across
a Midlands........... .Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the .............. prayer -
Rockall, Malin, Dogger, Finisterre.
Well, you should have the idea by now .. I suppose you would normally do this with a written copy of whatever you wanted to memorise, crossing bits out as you went through the process. It certainly seems to be working so far ! Of course, besides the rubbing out stuff, by doing this you are reading the poem lots of times, which must be a help, but having to recall a little bit extra each time is making the memory task do-able.
In a classroom it's done on a board, so it's easy to rub out ..and rewrite if necessary .... one bit at a time.
I hope you will carry on with this poem ...as will I ... to see if it works right the way through, so eventually you are reading a blank sheet of paper ! Strange.
I strongly suspect that this will be harder with a Spanish text. But that's the next step. If any of you out there try it, let me know ( with the comment thingy) if it's worked.
And now, after all that instructional-type stuff .... a song. Yes ... " Fotografía" with Juanes and later on that Nelly Furtado ....