Two Methods of Effective Memorization
September 7, 2019
If you want to expand your knowledge, you must continually learn and retain new information. School and work often require us to absorb a large amount of material at once, which can be difficult to remember. We therefore want to introduce two effective memorization methods that can support your development and help you achieve better results.
1. Remember the Context
Have you ever told someone about an event only to discover that they did not remember it? You then describe the context—where it happened, the day, what you were wearing, and the time—and suddenly it comes back to them. Or perhaps you forgot where you left an object and mentally retraced your steps until you suddenly remembered. This is the power of context. It is difficult to retrieve one specific item from memory when you do not know where to look. Contextual clues—such as when something happened or what it relates to—make retrieval much easier. People often organize memories into categories such as “childhood,” “school,” “work,” or “holidays.” Identifying the right category helps the brain locate the information.
PRACTICAL USE
How can you use this in practice? Add context to every piece of information that you want to remember. For example, if you want to understand the concept of “offside” in football, reading a definition may not be enough. Seeing it during a match gives the concept a concrete setting, so you can later recreate that moment when explaining the rule. This is much more effective than simply reciting a definition. If you cannot observe something directly, draw it or visualize it in your imagination. Imagine that you are part of the scene. When learning a word in a foreign language, look for situations in which it is used. Some websites even provide film clips containing a particular word. Remembering the scene will help you recall the word, and remembering the word may bring the scene back to mind.
2. Learn in Different Places
If you spend hours cramming in one place the night before an exam, your brain associates all the material with a single environment. Later, retrieving one detail from that overloaded context can be difficult. The same applies when you read an entire book in one location: isolating individual ideas becomes harder. Spacing your learning across different times and places creates multiple contexts. When asked about a topic, you may remember, “I studied that in the library, the living room, or the garden,” allowing your brain to search within a smaller set of information. The same principle applies to language learning. Instead of mentally scanning an entire dictionary, you can recall a specific scene from a film in which the word was used. Another technique is to label objects around you with their names in the language that you are learning. When you see or think about an object, you recall the corresponding word. Using several locations can strengthen this effect.
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