(no subject)
currently training the kids for the upcoming english speech contest. i have very very poor memorization skills. most of the time if anything is going to be retained by my mind it'll happen once i can understand the thing and its connection to other things. ie. i have to be able to get to information through rethinking it up. whereas some people can just memorize, without even paying attention to meaning. but, the thing is, there is something i do know by memory. i learned it in high school, junior year of. its the first eighteen lines of the preamble of the canterbury tales. i learned it because we were to recite it in middle english to our teacher. upon failing to do this and having her harp on me i actually learned it and recited it after the fact during one of those second chance type times.
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
(That slepen al the nyght with open eye)
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.
(http://www.bremesoftware.com/Chaucer/intro.htm)
is there something you've memorized at some point and can recite anytime anywhere?
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
(That slepen al the nyght with open eye)
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.
(http://www.bremesoftware.com/Chaucer/intro.htm)
is there something you've memorized at some point and can recite anytime anywhere?