Easy Tools for Memorising

By C. Radhakrishnan

Dear students, I know very well one question that haunts you all the time ‘how I can memorise whatever I learned?’ Here are some ways that might help you memorise:

• Decide to remember.

• Take regular breaks.

• Review notes regularly: after an hour, after a day, after a week, after a month and so on. (You need an excellent time schedule to make sure that this happens, but it is extremely effective.)

• Use multisensory memories, i.e. remember using as many representations as you can.

• Generate visual images that involve moving, interaction, and colour.

• Use the same background music to review as when you learned, and perhaps associate particular music with particular topics.

• Organise meaningfully using key words.

• Look briefly at a mind map, then put it away and try to recreate it. Repeat until you can reproduce it perfectly.

• Use flash cards with the key content on them.

• Use higher-order mind maps to connect individual mind maps together.

• Review at bedtime.

• Number points.

• Over learn, i.e. learn beyond the point at which you have complete recall.

• Compress the amount of material by chunking and using keywords.

Make you know and feel

There is no need to tell time and again, Self-confidence is the key to success in any aspects of human life and it is very true even in memorisation. Demonstrating to yourself that you really do understand and remember can increase your confidence that your learning is really working. Teaching someone else, or writing mock or practice assignments and tests, can be useful here.

Reviewing and reflecting on the learning process

After every learning session, review the process you followed. What worked, what didn't, what would you do differently next time. Do the same thing at the end of each week, after each assignment, and after each tests. Make notes of what you've learned about learning, and use them to improve your next learning session.

If you have any other successful tool to memorise please let me know.

Happy Learning!