What are mnemonics?
Well, first of all they are not a spelling
mistake! Mnemonics are simply techniques, tools or devices that we can use to
remember things which would otherwise be difficult to remember.
It could a short song, a phrase, or
something that can encode the difficult-to-remember information in a way that
it is easily remembered.
According to Dr. Mercola of America,
mnemonics are one of the most effective techniques to improve your memory. They
assist by imposing meaning, structure, and organisation on material that your
memory does not inherently have.
Interestingly, the mnemonics can be used
by anyone at any age.
So how can you use mnemonics to improve
your memory? Here are some tips:
Create your own acronyms
An acronym is a made up combination of
letters, and each letter suggests an item you need to remember.
To form an acronym, you’ll need to use the
first letter from a group of words. For example, WHO stands for World Health
Organisation, and ASAP for as soon as possible.
Now let’s assume you want to memorize the
colours of the rainbow; Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. Just
take the first letter of each item and arrange the letters to form an acronym
that you’re familiar with such as: ROY G. BIV.
Chunking
George Miller, a professional Harvard
psychologist, introduced the chunking concept in his published study on
short-term memory.
According to Miller, a person can remember
between 5 and 9 things at one time. Well, it can be difficult remembering all
those numbers, things, or items. So this technique works by taking several
items you have to learn, and then decrease the number of items you’re holding
in memory by reducing the size of each item.
For example, if you want to remember the 8
digit number 29684107 easily, you’ll break it up into smaller groups such as
29-68-41-07. You are now remembering 4 numbers which is easier than 8.
Use rhymes, rhythm, repetition
This is, without a doubt, a great
technique to make information more memorable.
The rhythm, rhymes, repetition, as well as
melody aid your memory simply by making good use of the auditory encoding and
your brain’s notable ability to hoard the audio triggers. With little
creativity and fun, they can be applied to general information, single words,
formulas, and even the most complex models.
Use of visualisations and association techniques
Visualisation and association are amongst
the best memory tricks. Visualisation can help you convert the abstract
information into easy-to-recall mental pictures.
Creating the pictures is a powerful way to
focus your mind, a process that helps create original awareness of the
material. The images often stick to your memory better than smelling, hearing,
or touching something.
It’s very simple to create visualisation;
just close your eyes and imagine what you want to visualise. With this trick,
you can recall definitions, lists, math formulas, articles, foreign vocabulary
and character dialogue amongst many others.
So please remember – your memory isn’t
necessarily failing you, but you might be failing your memory if you don’t
practice new learning methods.
Remember, Mayfair Cares.
References
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2003/01/04/memory.aspx
https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/social-sciences-practice/social-science-practice-tut/e/miller-s-law--chunking--and-the-capacity-of-working-memory