Helpful Memory Aids For Memorization
For over many centuries now, memory techniques have evolved in how they are used and learned by people. We all know that the process of remembering information is called ‘mnemonics’. We also know that mnemonics isn’t similar to magic tricks but due to its proven efficiency, it’s considered a technique pertaining to memorization.
If you haven’t realized yet how our memory works, a person’s memory effectively functions to how it associates objects and information. But of course, what we need to practice is how we focus on things and such and eventually associate or link them with other information that enables us to remember what we need to remember.
One way of remembering things easily is to rhyme words. How do you think we’re able to carry riddles and rhymes during our nursery years in school up to the later years of our lives? Just reading this question alone makes you remember one or two nursery rhymes you’ve learned, right? This also answers how toddlers are able to cope with what they learn in school at this very early stage of their lives. This is also the very reason why rhymes are considered as common memory aids.
Another effective memory technique is the use of initials or the first letter of the word. For example, for a group of items, you can take each first letter and make a word out of it. Remember ROY G. BIV? If you do, you’d know right away that this is not a name of a person but it stands for the seven colors of the rainbow - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. Notice how you have easily recognized the initials? Now you’re nodding.
You need not to make a name always out of the initials from a set of items. You can make a word or anything which can easily help you recognize the words equivalent to items. But in some cases, there might be too little number of vowels versus the consonants. Let’s have the items pasta, rye, fish, cheese and table. Together they look like this: PRFCT. We can add the letter E in between the initials to make it a word; in this case, it can be read now as PERFECT. Of course, when you remember the word PERFECT, you’d easily recognize which item stands for each consonant. Simple? Yes.
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