How to Remember Names: The F.R.L.R. Method

Welcome back. In today's lesson I'm going to teach

you all sorts of things that are generally going

to make you more awesome. Should we find a better

word than awesome? Fantastic, admirable, inspired.

Okay, what are you talking about Benjamin? Have

you ever had the experience of being in a social

or work situation and not being able to talk

because you can't remember someone's name,

you know that they've told you it before, or that

embarrassing situation where you've got to know

someone for a couple of weeks and it's gone past

the stage where it would be polite to say "Sorry,

what was your name?" I'm sure we all have. Now,

the thing is that this is a totally avoidable

situation because by using some of these tips for

remembering someone's name, the moment you hear

that name you're going to be remembering it and

then you'll cement that name in your brain later

on that day. Not only are we going to be looking

at how to remember names, we're then going to

apply some of these strategies to remembering

the international spelling alphabet. That's the

Alpha, Bravo, Charlie system where instead of

saying the letter to make sure the other person

has absolutely understood what letter you are

talking about, you say a word. That system was

developed by people working on aeroplanes, ground

control to the pilots to make sure the information

was absolutely correct. It's the NATO spelling

alphabet that we will be looking at, which is the

internationally accepted one, but more of that a little bit later.

Okay, so how do we remember people's names? Well, the trick here is to focus

because most of the time when we say "Hello",

your whole perception is taking in that person.

You're thinking, "Okay, what kind of clothes

are they wearing? What kind of mood are they in?

Do they look nice? Is this person going to be

a friend, an enemy?" So it's an instinctive

reaction from us to be almost like assessing that person. When actually,

if we value learning people's names, the focus

needs to be on the name, okay? And then the

impression has to come later once we have got

that name because normally you only get that

person's name once when you're introduced. If

we miss that moment, we don't get the name.

Have a reason, yeah? Remind yourself why it's

useful to know people's names. If you're starting

a new job somewhere and you forget everyone's

names, that's going to be really - make life

difficult. As a teacher, for example, you want to know all of your students' names.

You want to be able to go into a staff room as

any kind of worker and be able to ask questions

without waiting for that person to look at you.

So, remind yourself when you're in a situation

where you're meeting people that names are really, really important. As I said, focus,

pay attention. What's your name? If you're going to ask them what their name is,

ask them that question because you want to know

the answer, not as a piece of small talk, yeah?

What's your name? Am I actually asking that

question or am I just doing it out of, like,

autopilot? Repeat it quickly. Now, you don't

say - you don't have to say, "Oh, Harry,

nice to meet you." You could say - you could use their name in a question. So,

"How long have you lived here, Harry?" Yeah?

Putting their name at the end of a question.

Focus, focus, focus. Yeah? Those first moments,

you're just trying to remember the name.

Now, we can use various mind techniques to do

that towards - it's all about making connections

in your brain so that that one piece of information is linked to different

pathways in your brain to make it more

memorable. Maybe you could think of an adjective

beginning with that same letter. So, we're doing

"Harry", yeah? Can we think of an adjective,

quite a visual adjective or a kind of motion adjective to describe Harry?

You could have "Humongous Harry" and we have this

picture of "Huge Harry" or it could be "Hairy

Harry", yeah? Hair all over him. Okay? So, an adjective with that same letter.

Maybe we notice something about Harry, a

physical characteristic. What's "Harry" like?

"Harry's head", "Harry's head seems to be really

big." "Hairy Harry's head", yeah? "Head", yeah,

he's hairy. "Hairy Harry". I'm just trying to

build a picture, a mental picture of this guy.

"Name associations". Who else do I know, like,

who's like Harry? "Harry, Harry, Harry". Ah,

I know a girl called Harry. My cousin's called

Harry. So, we're just trying to then... We've

got the person, we're trying to, like, link them to other people called Harry.

"When Sally Met Harry", if you know that film

very well. Okay, just trying to build the links.

"What does it sound like?" Maybe the person is

called "Harry Porter". Ah, their second name,

"Porter", it's like they carry things all the

time. So, again, just trying to build as big a

picture as you can. "Get the name in a couple

of times", a couple more times. So, "You into

football, Harry?" "When you say goodbye". "Well,

it's been a real pleasure to meet you, Harry."

"I get back home having a little cup of tea at the end of the day, a herbal one,

so I don't stay awake all night long." And I'm thinking, okay, who did I meet today?

"Harry, Hairy Harry. Hairy Harry who is like..."

Okay, "Hairy Harry's head". "Head", yeah, okay.

And then I'm on to the next person, and I'm just going through each of the people

so that when I see him next, "Hey, Harry, how

are you?" And he's really impressed that I've

made the effort to learn his name. Okay, we're

going to try and apply a couple of these techniques

to learning the International Spelling Alphabet.

So, these are the techniques that we're going to

apply to learning the International Spelling

Alphabet. We're going to focus when we get the

word, we're going to repeat it straight away,

then we're going to build some associations around

that word so that we can remember it, and we're going to remind ourselves, okay?

The International Spelling Alphabet, okay? It

was designed to eliminate confusion so that

different nationalities, when they are saying

this, it all sounds the same, okay? So, you can

understand someone from a different... A different

tongue, a different region of the world who says

this, and you'll recognize these words. So, repeat

after me. "Alpha", "Bravo", "Charlie", "Delta".

Okay, and as I start... So, you're going to

repeat, but as you start to hear these words,

allow your mind to start making some associations

with these words, okay? So, you're going to repeat

it, and then you're going to allow your imagination to create some kind of picture.

For example, "Bravo" is something people say

when they're clapping. So, you could imagine

someone clapping, or maybe you think of something totally different. That's fine.

So, repeat and imagine. "Delta",

"Echo", "Foxtrot", okay? The old-fashioned dance.

"Golf", maybe you're thinking of the car, Volkswagen Golf.

"Hotel", which hotel are you thinking of?

"India", maybe you've got a friend called India,

maybe you're thinking of the country. "Juliet", do you know any Juliets?

You're thinking of Romeo and Juliet. "Kilo",

"Kilo", you're thinking of a kilo of oranges,

flour, butter. "Lima", "Lima". Now, if you have

no association with the capital of Peru, Lima,

then maybe you've got a friend called Lee, and you're thinking of Lee's ma, Lee's mum,

Lima. I've got a friend called Lee. "Mike",

maybe you're thinking of a guy called Mike, maybe you're thinking of a microphone.

"November", what's November like? "Oscar", do you know anyone called Oscar?

You're thinking of the award? "Papa".

"Quebec", "Que", that's a funny sound, isn't it? "Que", "Que". What else

sounds like "Que"? "Queen Quebec".

"Romeo", "Romeo", "Romeo", wherefore art thou Romeo? "Sierra",

"Sierra". Okay, in Spain, the Sierra is like a really dry land.

"Tango", takes two to "Tango", "Tango", "Tango", "Tango". "Uniform".

"Victor", do you know the old BBC comedy,

"One Foot in the Grave"? The main character is

called Victor, very sort of slow but delightful

old man, always complaining about things. "X-ray", going into the hospital, "X-ray".

"Yankee", "Yankee Doodle" went to town riding on a pony, "Yankee",

maybe you're just thinking of an American, slightly derogatory term.

"Zulu", "Zulu", "Zulu", "Lu", you know what a "Lu" is? It's a toilet, "Zulu".

I used to have a dog called "Zulu". Okay, right.

Next thing, so, I don't know if you've started

to make any associations with these words,

I'm hoping you have. Now, the thing is we can

remind, we can learn these words in isolation,

but what we really want to be doing is finding

the link. So, we were like, we are learning

all of them, we know the whole alphabet. Okay, so, you have to have like a picture

for each of these words, but then that picture should go to the next picture,

there should be a connection so that we know

the whole alphabet, and that one letter leads

us to the next, which leads us to the next, to

the next, to the next, until we just know this.

Because lots of people will be familiar with

this, but if they are asked to say a letter,

they won't be able to use it, we need to know it so well.

Okay, so, "alpha", what am I thinking? Alpha,

alpha, it's the first letter in the Greek alphabet,

alpha, there's an alpha course, a kind of a

Christian course. Okay, maybe I can think of

that, I'm thinking of kind of quite a sort of modern church, quite sort of pop music,

and they start clapping, they're saying bravo,

bravo, so I've linked this to this, bravo,

they're saying bravo, there, now I need to get in

my next picture, how does, oh, I've got a friend

called Charlie, one of my best friends, what's

Charlie doing there? He's normally doing something

kind of silly, what does Charlie start doing

there? Charlie starts causing a scene, and

the security guards have to start speaking into

their walkie-talkies, delta, delta force, delta,

delta, we have a problem, Charlie, Charlie

causing a problem, delta over, because delta

is something that's sometimes said down walkie-talkies. Do you see where I'm going?

So, you've got to try and, I don't want to do all of this, because I'll end up saying

some really embarrassing things, and it's better that you do this yourself, okay?

So, that is a little bit of homework for you,

okay, to try and go all the way through and find

a story, yep, linking one word to the next. Why do

we do that technique, okay? Maybe you have to learn

a list of kings and queens, or, yeah, the more

sort of connections you make, the more likely

you are to learn and remember a list. Okay,

so let's just remind ourselves one more time,

we've got alpha, bravo, Charlie, delta, echo,

foxtrot, golf, hotel, India, Juliet, kilo, Lima,

Mike, November, Oscar, papa, M-N-O-P, papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, tango, uniform,

T-T-T-T, uniform, V, Victor, I used to say violin, now I've learned that it's Victor,

X-ray, I'm thinking bones, yep, X, X, U-V-W, have

I done, oh, I haven't, I've missed out whiskey,

where's whiskey gone, U-V-W, oh, I missed out

one, poor old whiskey, whiskey, uniform, Victor,

whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. I hope you've probably been watching this program saying,

Benjamin, Benjamin, you've missed out a letter,

I have, I did miss out a letter, bad Benjamin,

yep, using an adjective to remind myself of my

name, bad. Okay, I'm going to test you on this now,

so I'm going to say something and I want you to write down the spelling of it,

okay, I'm going to stand here so you can't see at all anything, right.

So, let's imagine we're having a phone call,

yes, yes, yes, that's all good, and you ask me,

what was your website again, Benjamin? I said, oh, it's honeyourenglish.com,

and you say, how do you spell that? Hone your

English, you know, like the words, and you're

like, yeah, but I haven't got it. Okay, fine,

I'll tell it to you, hotel, Oscar, November,

Echo, Yankee, Oscar, uniform, Romeo, Echo, November, golf, Lima, India, Sierra, hotel,

dot, Charlie, Oscar, Mike. Okay, show me what you got, honeyourenglish.com,

that's where to go if you want any more help

from me with your spoken or written English.

Thank you for watching this video, I really hope

that you're going to take away lots of useful

ideas for remembering names, okay, because in a

business and a social context, if you can master

the art of remembering names, you know, you're

going to go far, okay? Thanks for watching,

and have fun using the International Spelling

Alphabet, and I'll see you very soon,

provided that you are a subscriber, and so you know when my next video is coming.