Group similar irregulars with person-action-object tricks

In 2011, top memory athletes could recall thousands of digits and dozens of decks of cards in order. One of their secret weapons is the Person-Action-Object (PAO) system: every chunk of data is encoded as a vivid story starring a specific person, performing a specific action, with a specific object. When it’s time to recall, they mentally flip through those mini-movies and unzip encyclopedic amounts of information.

You can adapt PAO to language learning, especially for those pesky irregular patterns you encounter. Take English past tenses: fight/fought, buy/bought, think/thought. Instead of drilling each verb table, pick one vivid person—say, Patrick Stewart—and one anchor action object. Whenever you need the past form, you picture Sir Patrick swinging a bat or buying a gold ring. That single mnemonic now serves as a scaffold for every irregular verb in that family. You don’t memorize seventeen tables; you memorize one small story that applies to them all.

This trick scales to gender-based noun declensions, irregular adjective endings, or any cluster of confusing forms. Each flash card you make becomes a miniature film, and your SRS ensures you revisit them at just the right intervals. You’ll transform irregulars from a chore into a creative game and discover that even the worst spelling or timing oddities can be anchored by a single, hilarious little mental film.

Imagine your favorite movie star playing every irregular verb—running, fighting, stealing—and tag them with an action and object to create your personal PAO stage. For each tricky set, pick a person or object, conjure up the short movie sequence in your mind, and turn it into a flash card. Then, quiz yourself in your SRS: replay the mini-movie to recall the verb form. Soon, irregulars will lose their power to confound you. Try it with your next five tough verbs today—it’s more fun than flash cards alone.