Two methods of effective memorization
September 7, 2019
If you want to enlarge your knowledge, you have to constantly memorize something new. Situations at school or work often force us to acquire a big amount of material at once, what is difficult to remember. That’s why we want to introduce you to 2 methods of effective memorization which will help you in self-development and gaining good results.
1. REMEMBER CONTEXT
Have you ever had a situation that you mentioned someone about e.g. some event, but he/she didn’t remember it? Then we need to describe the context of this situation – where it was, what day it was, what clothes you had, what part of a day it was etc. and suddenly – epiphany! Or maybe you’ve had a situation that you forgot where you had left some object, so you went back in memory to the last time you were using it and then, you suddenly knew where it can be! And that’s exactly the context of the whole situation. It’s difficult to “take” from your brain only one, specific information because we don’t know where to look for it. But if we have more information, we know e.g. how far we have to go back in time. People think in categories like ,,childhood”, ,,school”, ,,work”, ,,holidays”. If we know in which category there is some event it’s much easier to find it in our memory.
PRACTICAL USAGE
How to use it in practice? To every information that you try to remember, create a context. Let’s say you want to know what is “offside” in football. You read the definition and you think that you understand it but you’re not able to put it in practice. You need to find context to this concept, so the best is to see it during the match and then you will always associate ,,offside” with this match. When you explain someone what it is, you just need to recreate it from memory and describe it. It’s more efficient than citing the definition. If you can’t see something, you can draw it or see it through the eyes of imagination, pretend that you take part in it. When you want to remember some word in a foreign language, try to find as many situations when someone uses it as possible. There are websites when you can find scenes from movies where some character uses the specific word. Then when you think about this word, you’ll remember the scene and when you think about the scene, you’ll remember the word.
2. LEARN IN MANY PLACES
If you hit the books the day before your exam, you learn many hours in the same place, so you associate all material with one situation. When you try to recall the context, you will have a lot of information and it will be difficult to find only one, specific you need. It’s the same when you read the whole book in one place – it will be difficult to recall yourself particular concepts. If you spread learning in places and time you will have a few contexts, so if asked of one concept you would think ‘oh, I was studying it in a living room/library/garden’ and then you are looking for something you need between a smaller amount of information. The same if you want to remind yourself a word in a foreign language – then you think about one, particular scene used in the movie, not about the whole, thick dictionary. There is even a method when you name every object around you with a word in a language you learn. Then when you see or think e.g. about TV you recall yourself the given name. Using this method also requires more than one place.