September 23, 2021
September 23, 2021
Your memory is vital to how well you learn and retain information. From an educational standpoint, memory is a key element for academic success. Retaining information throughout lessons and afterward is a huge determinator of success in tests and exams, because your ability to remember and reiterate what you learned helps determine how well you’ve absorbed the coursework.
While some people have exceptional sponge-like memories, others are not as lucky. For those people, remembering things can be a difficult part of learning. The good news is that you don’t need to have a memory like an elephant to succeed in school as long as you practice memory techniques for studying and learning.
What are memory strategies?
“Memory strategies” is the term used to define a set of techniques or exercises that are designed specifically to improve the retention of information. There are various types of memory strategies that can be used depending on what works best for you. Since every person is different, there is no one-size-fits all memory strategy. Some specific types include external aids such as a daily planner or mnemonic devices that help with the storage of new information. The latter type of memory strategies are those that will be the most helpful when studying.
What is the best method of memorization?
As mentioned above, everybody is different, and thus there is no one method that is “best” for memorizing information. Each person may benefit from a different type of memory strategy. Below are 10 tricks to improve memory that you can use to help you succeed in your academic career.
1. Acronym Mnemonics
Using acronyms as a way to remember things is a highly common mnemonic device. Many people swear by this tactic as it helps the brain process information in a specific way to help it retain better.
To use an acronym, you take the phrase or information you need to remember and assign a separate phrase using the first letter of each word. Acronyms can be used to memorize pretty much anything – for example, to remember musical notes, a popular acronym is “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge”, which translates into EGBDF: the notes on the lines of the treble clef.
2. Music Mnemonics
Some people may learn better if there is music involved – singing is a great way to remember things! This could be especially true if you have a talent for remembering song lyrics quickly and easily. Since music offers repetition and a specific structure, it provides you with key elements of information retention. This is also the reason why many children learn the alphabet song. If you’re studying, try to create a song of your own or find one for the specific information you’re learning.
3. Rhyming Mnemonics
Rhymes are similar to music, just without the actual musical aspect. They work by creating a pattern that is easy to remember when studying. Take the information you’re trying to learn and turn it into a rhyme, and it will stick in your head a lot easier than if you were just reading it to yourself.
4. Rhyming Peg System
To memorize a list, the rhyming peg system is a great common mnemonic. Also referred to as a hook system, this type of memory technique involves assigning an image of a word that rhymes with the number on the list.
5. The Memory Palace Mnemonic
The Memory Palace was invented in the ancient Roman and Greek times and has been used ever since to help people remember things. To practice this technique, you use a location that is well known to you, such as your home or school, and associate it with the items you’re trying to remember. This visual addition helps the brain because you’re putting a new memory in the same place as something that is already stored.
To do this, you will imagine yourself standing in your “memory palace”, whether that be your home, school, or workplace. While you mentally venture through the location, take note of features in the area you can use to store new memories. You can then place the new memory into your palace, where your brain will create the association that will give you better recall at a later time.
6. Chunking Mnemonics
To remember large amounts of information, you can use chunking. It’s typically the same technique people use to remember phone numbers – by chunking them together instead of remembering each one separately. Grouping information into sections helps you find patterns that help organize and retain information.
7. Write by Hand
It’s been proven that writing by hand is remarkably better for information retention than typing. As you physically write, your brain becomes more active and you pay more attention to the information that you’re writing down. This technique also leads people to write down things such as lectures in their own words, which contributes to a more active style of learning.
8. Tell Someone Else
One of the best ways to ensure that you know what you’re doing is by teaching someone else, and it can also help you remember better. By explaining what you’re learning and the information you’ve acquired, you have to organize what you’ve learned within your mind, which helps to improve your own understanding of the subject at the same time as forcing you to recall the information more effectively.
Featured image by Green Chameleon on Unsplash