Recommended Techniques In Doing Memory Work
Recommended Techniques In Doing Memory Work
Whether you are a student or a professional employee, doing memory work is inevitable. As a staff doing typing job, you should have memorized the arrangement of the keys in the keyboard to facilitate faster typing or encoding jobs.
There are ways we can do everyday to help us remember things better. There are ways we can package information and experience so that our brain will be more inclined to remain sharp longer, and so that our memory works better. In this article I included some techniques that can very well aid us in remembering the things we have studied.
•(1) Use of Mnemonic
A "Mnemonic" is any conscious pattern or grouping of items, words, or data intended to aid later recollection. Do you till remember the order of colors in a rainbow ? The mnemonic used is the Name ROY G BIV. R for red, O for orange, Y for yellow, G for green, B for Blue, I for Indigo and V for violet. Or do you still recall the trick for recalling the order of the planets? My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.
In Trigonometry, the teacher uses the mnemonic "SOHCAHTOA", so that students can remember easily the basic trigonometric functions. SOH stands for Sine Opposite Hypotenuse which means that the sine function of an angle is equal to the opposite side divided by the hypotenuse.CAH stand for Cosine Adjacent Hypotenuse which means that the cosine of an angle is equivalent to the adjacnt side divided by the hypotenuse . And TOA stands for Tangent Opposite Adjacent which means that the tangent function of an angle is equal to the opposite side divided by the the adjacent side.
•(2) Anchoring Memory With Visualization
It will be easier to recall titles, names, words if we are going to create in our mind a picture that could be associated best with the words we are trying to remember Take for an instance, we are tasked to memorize Newton's Laws of Motion. The First law states : " A body at rest persists in its state of rest and a body in motion remains in uniform motion unless acted upon by a net external force." In order to memorize this law, try to imagine a ball at rest suddenly kicked by a boy and a moving ball suddenly collided with a stone. This technique is also very effective in memorizing figures in World History. For example to remember the title for General Yamashita as "Tiger of Malaya", try to visualize Yamashita as an angry man.
•(3) Chunking Information
Breakdown memories into bite-sized pieces. As an illustration, most people are only able to remember seven bits of memory, like a phone number at any given time. If you have to remember fourteen different names, learn them seven at a time. This is the reason why making outline or overview before we dig into details aids us in learning and remembering better.
For example, you are tasked to memorize a long poem. You can do it by memorizing one stanza at a time. And for memorizing one stanza, you can do it by memorizing one line at a time.
(4) Attaching associations to each memory
The more associations we attach to each memory, such as client's name, the more neural or dendritic pathways we will have to the memory of the client's name: her husband's name, her job title, the color of her car or her hometown. This is a way of storing and remembering a memory via multiple channels - creating side doors to a memory that may stump us if we just try to remember her name and draw a blank.
(5) Multiple Encoding
Encode your memory with more than just one sense. Say a phone number aloud, see it and write it down. Three senses have now encoded this phone number. This is the reason why hands-on learning works well with children, since their language centers are not yet fully developed.
(6) PQRST :
A simple study method is known as PQRST : Preview, Question, Read, State and Test. This method is a smart way to improve our recall of everything we read. Here is how we can use it. :
Preview :
Before reading an article, quickly scan it, maybe reading only the first and last paragraphs and the first line of every paragraph. Form a "preview" idea of what the article is all about and what it probably gong to tell you.
Question :
Ask yourself, what do I already know about the topic. Have I read about it before ? What questions do I have about this subject that I hope this article answers.
Read :
Actively read the article, keeping in mind the questions you hoped would be answered.
State :
After you have finished the article, review it, remembering what you already know about the subject and asking yourself if the article ultimately answered the questions you had in mind about the topic.
Test :
Quiz yourself on your memory of the article you just read.
(7) Review
Repetition, repetition, repetition. Reviewing something three times well will make not only three times more able to remember what you read but actually will make you twenty times better equipped in recalling it, since repetition brings into play a memory function called long-term potentiation. It is sufficint to say that those three separate reviews will anchor the memory better than one long "cram" reading.
SOURCE :
USER'S GUIDE TO BRAIN BOOSTING SUPPLEMENTS
Written By :
James Gormely and Shari Lieberman
Published By :
BASIC HEALTH PUBLICATIONS