It’s easy to be impressed by memory champion who can memorize hundreds of people names in a short amount of time. We may suspect that they have excellent memory. But in reality, they use specific techniques that can help them to recall information. These memory champions don’t have different brain structure or high IQ. Memory technique is basically a visualized journey, by attaching details to highly memorable components along the way. This is the basic of mnemonic strategy. Other than used for competition purposes, mnemonic is a technique that is very useful for any student and they don’t need to perform very comprehensive operations. So, how can we do this?
When using mnemonic strategy, you need to create cards and each of the cards is associated with a concept, object or person. As student remembers a series of card, they can compose a storyline or concept. The key is to have a familiar route and this will take some practice. It is important to remain interested and engaged when using the mnemonic technique. Another good strategy is to attach emotional meanings to something. Emotionally-charged memory is more effective and it is more likely that we will remember the details. Even if a concept seems bland and emotionless, there should be some details about it that can be associated with certain emotion. So, when students seek to remember a concept, they can re-engage specific emotions to better remember the details.
Students who match paragraphs, sentences or words with emotions could remember 40 percent after just five minutes. This is a big advantage, because with the same amount of learning time, students can learn and memorize more things. Students may even go further by associating words with physical gestures or movements. As an example, some electrical engineering concepts can be better explained using hand gestures. Students should do everything necessary to make them remember all the details more easily. Effective strategies for study skills can be applied using different mnemonic techniques. It is often necessary to write things down. Based on these facts, it is clear than using mnemonics require a separate learning process.
So, it is a good idea for students to start learning how to use mnemonics months before the exam. By spending only 15 to 20 minutes each day to learn mnemonics alone, they can experience good development in memorization techniques. For some people, putting colors, sounds, emotions or physical gestures can be a real challenge. If this is your situation, it is a good idea to get yourself well rehearsed to do mnemonics techniques. Even so, you should make heroic efforts to accomplish this. Try to use the easiest mnemonics techniques first. If you are a visual person, you may try to associate abstract concepts with colors and images. Once you are able to master them, try to expand to other mnemonics techniques, so you can perform much better cognitively. Don’t hesitate to make a lot of revisions. One prescribed mnemonics technique may need to be modified based on your unique situations.
