Strategies for Improving your Memory What can effect your ability to remember something? • • • • • • distractions time of day your comfort level stress your interest in the material your level of motivation Memory tips • Learn from general to specific • Before learning something new, get a general overview to use as a framework on which to hang specific details Memory tips (continued) • Make it meaningful • Why is this information relevant? What is the value in knowing this? • If you don’t see the value• Find it! What kinds of situations could you be in that you would need this information? • Use this as an opportunity to use strategies that will make you a better student Memory tips (continued) • • • • Create associations Relate what you’re learning to something that you already know Construct your own knowledge Try using analogies and metaphors Memory tips (continued) • • • • Learn actively Manipulate or change the information in some way Try creating a mind map, diagram, pictures, or note cards Always put information that you’re trying to learn into your own words Memory tips (continued) • Reduce distractions • Turn off music, phone, television Memory tips (continued) • Monitor what you’ve learned • Check yourself to make sure that you’re learning • Try self-testing yourself using the review questions at the end of the chapter or make up your own Memory tips (continued) • Check your attitude and anxiety • Find yourself thinking how much you hate the course or instructor? Know when your attitudes and/or anxiety are inhibiting learning and try to address them Memory tips (continued) • • • • • Turn abstract ideas into concrete examples Distribute learning Use many short sessions for studying instead of one long session Avoid studying material in the same sequence Try starting at the end or middle of the material Memory tips (continued) • Remember something else • When you get stuck and can’t remember something, try to remember something that is related to it or what you were doing at the time that you learned it. • Stay away from studying similar topics at the same time to avoid confusion MNEMONICS • Mnemonics • It is taken from Greek word meaning to remember • These are the techniques in which new information is associated with something similar and previously encoded, so that they can be recalled easily • Mnemonics are strategies for placing information into an organized context in order to remember it. Why do mnemonics work? • Attention • Ensure encoding • Repetition • Retrieval cues • Dual-coding cues • Verbal and visual representations • Organization • “chunks” • Notice relationships and differences • Use existing knowledge • Elaboration • Think about meaning and make distinctive • Generation • Your ideas makes it personal • Method of loci: It involves taking an imaginary walk along a familiar path where images of items to be remembered are associated with certain locations. The first step is to commit to memory a series of loci, or places, along a path. Usually these loci are specific locations in your home or neighborhood. Then envision each thing you want to remember in one of these locations. Try to form distinctive, vivid images. When you need to remember the items, imagine yourself walking along the path. The various loci on your path should serve as cues for the retrieval of the images that you formed. Cont.……. • Visual imagery: It is another more effective form of encoding because it gives codes of verbal and visual memory simultaneously. We remember the word by associating them with visual images. The more vivid and distinctive, the better will be Cont.……. • Organization Verbal organization is the basis for many mnemonics. We can link items by weaving them into a story or a sentence or a rhyme • Acronyms (Word to retrieve information.) • NASA • National Aeronautics and Space Administration • Roy G. Biv • Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet (colors of visible spectrum) Cont.……. Massed verses spaced learning Ebbinghause has investigated the most effective way to use learning time in order to maximize the learned material. He suggests that a series of shorter learning session are more effective than to have long period. This principle states that spaced practice is most effective than massed practice. It implies on learning of skill also. Cont.……. • Primacy and Recency effect: Primary effect concern the way that we tend to recall most clearly the first information of a kind that we first came across. • Recency effect are the way that we also remember more clearly the last or latest item that we came across Cont.……. • PQRST Method • One of the best technique for improving memory is called PQRST method. Thomas and Robinson explained that this method improves the students ability to remember the subject matter • The method have five stages, Preview, Question, Read, Self recitation and test. All students try one or other step while preparing for examination. • Chunking • Motivation Cont.……. • Reinforcement • Nature of content • Elaboration • Whole Vs part learning • Context Summary • By using memory techniques you can take steps to learn and remember information more quickly and effectively • Most memory techniques require that you change or organize the information that you need to learn. • Repeated reading of text and notes is often not enough. • Simple memorization may help you in matters, like recounting a sequence for opening a combination lock, but it won’t in and of itself lead to deep-learning. Memorization facilitates the road to understanding, but it is not the same as understanding a subject.
