Ahhhh Exams
Those things that everybody dreads as they didn’t study for them all year long while they were hanging out with friends to build their social standing which may actually be more important when you flunk.

The key to exam passing is memory; in fact studying how to remember things is a much more productive investment of your time than trying to remember tones of information that simply won’t stick.

In my many years of studying, well 5; I discovered that all I had to do was remember everything in a pile of books I was presented with. The trick was recalling it when the exam came around.

Preparing for SAT exams?; well how do I break this news; preparation is over according to the system that failed to ensure you remembered all that stuff they have thrown at you (like a plate of spaghetti at a wall) over the years hoping that some would stick.

MEMORY GAMES
Memory is a visual process. That’s worth remembering.

I teach English to foreigners and have developed a program called “A walk in the park” (© Copyright reserved John McMaster 2009)

The way it works is this. The student starts with what they know and add to it through a visual process.

First they visualise a typical park with a fountain in the center. I create a statue with something important to the student on it. An example may be; “I like skate boarding”. So I tell them to visualise a skater doing an olly cast in stone on top of the fountain.

I draw a diagram on the board of a typical park; fountain in the middle 4 paths leading away north, south, east and west, a row of three shops on the right and a hotel at the top with a road between the shops and the park.

Then I tell them to start walking and to tell me what the see in their mind on the left or right.

“On my left I see a tree”.

“Tell me about the tree”. I ask. This is when the limits of their vocabulary become very apparent. I assist them when they ask for help and encourage them to keep moving through the park describing what they see in their mind asking for some details along the way.

What is interesting about this process is that 100% of my students remember most of the details they create in their park; but not just for a few days; for years. What’s even more surprising is that I can usually remember any students park details once I see their fountain.

Now in a conventional lesson student would only remember about 20% max of the material they were presented with. Hence STUDY TIME.

ONE MORE EXAMPLE

I had a young student who had to remember a lot of details about all the parks in Poland (hundreds).

I told her to divide the parks into groups equal to the rooms in her house. I then got her to associate something in the room with a particular park. An example was the microwave in the kitchen. Each detail was added to the image in her mind. The dial on the microwave was set to 112 being the square meters of the park. A mountain was placed inside the oven to represent the fact that the park was close to the mountains. A miniature (bonsai) oak tree next to a clock was placed on top of the oven to represent the old oak tree that stood in the center of the park etc. etc.

The student associated items she knew she could remember in each room in her house to things she couldn’t and built a visual journey of each and every park.

She aced her exam and was shocked at how much visual information she called upon during the exam. But even more surprisingly she seemed to just know the answers without venturing through the house for every little detail. It looks like our mind knows how to look after the house once we organise it well; once.

If your not convinced ask yourself in six months what was on top of the microwave and how many square meters was the dial set to :)

If anyone would like to learn more about how to stuff your mind with useless information and cause it to stick please email me or request another article as this one is already becoming too long to remember.

And if you have some tricks for learning that you picked up along the way please share them in the comments for the benefit of all those who may not know that it’s all in the technique.

So my advice to those of you studying for exams is this; go study how the memory really works as it may make every other exam you ever have ‘a walk in the park’;)