As I continue to progress in my goal of memorizing the book of Philippians in Greek (I added three more verses yesterday on my drive up to Virginia), I noticed something unexpected. My mind was “chunking” the text. Those of you who are familiar with the term “chunking” in discourse studies will think this is a good thing. The problem is, I’m not chunking the way a speaker naturally divides up his text based upon the flow of information he is communicating. Instead, my mind is creating divisions in the text based upon the chunks of verses I add to my memory.
As I go over the text in my mind, the following divisions are present:
- Philippians 1:1-3
- Philippians 1:4-8
- Philippians 1:9-11
- Philippians 1:12-14
As I reflect and ruminate upon the text, I know these divisions are faulty. For instance, the text should be divided in these places:
- Philippians 1:1-2
- Philippians 1:3-11
- Philippians 1:12-? (I haven’t gotten there quite yet).
Despite knowing this, upon recitation, I cannot help but chunk the text into the segments I added them to my memory. Do you have any advice on how to remedy the situation? The ideal solution is to memorize the text according to its natural divisions. Yet, I doubt I will be able to add huge chunks like 1:3-11 to memory in a sitting. I’m open to your thoughts!
ἐνθύμησις 
Hi Jacob,
You might be able to figure out where the accurate subdivisions in a section are, memorize the subdivisions as chunks, and then add an additional step of reviewing them as a section. Your brain should be able to “bind” them together through the review process. It may take a little extra review at the places where they join together, but I think I have done something similar when memorizing verses in English.
Great advice! I’ll start doing this during my reviews, and I’ll let you know how it goes.
Answer below 🙂
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxdOYisj3v14b2hQMnVkWkxyT0E
I have found this essay to be helpful on more than one occasion, and am using it as the basis for correcting the divisions my mind is unfortunately making!
yeah, just keep going and then as recite larger and larger chunks from memory, the discourse structure will be more evident to you
The divisions are becoming evident as I go along. As kellys4christ mentioned, the problem is binding those divisions together naturally instead of having to correct myself as I go. My hope is that, as I memorize more and more, sections will just “pop” out in my mind. We shall see.
The guy who taught me about the discourse structure of Philippians posted just at the same time I did about the discourse structure of Philippians.