Improving your memory

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Improving your Memory

MCC Library Central

Study Skills Series

Memory is the ability to understand, store and recall information. All learning

depends upon memory. Everything we do such as eating or reading depends on

memory. Without it, everything we do would be a new experience.

Your brainwaves move at over 150 mph! Each hemisphere of your brain receives

them and sorts them appropriately. It will disregard what it doesn’t need. 70% of

what we learn in a day is gone in 24 hours…. unless you intend to remember it and

practise it.

The three stages of memory:

1. Immediate Memory - This holds information for a few seconds or passes on to

your short-term memory which is sometimes referred to as working memory.

2. Short-Term or Working Memory - This holds 7 items at one time. If information is

not rehearsed immediately, or ‘is not seen’ in your head, it will be forgotten within

30 seconds. Your short-term memory sifts, rejects or selects information to be

stored in your long-term memory.

3. Long-Term Memory - This is the storage system and holds millions of pieces of

data for life. You have several long-term memories – including a visual memory

for what you see, an auditory memory for what you hear, and a motor memory

for what you do.

Your memory and your senses

We can all remember past events by recalling the smell, touch, taste, sound and

sight of something. We store memories coming from all our senses. Some people

prefer to learn through their visual channel because they have strong connections

to their visual memory. Others prefer to learn through their auditory or hearing

channel because they have a good connection to their auditory memory and

others learn best by doing because they have a good motor memory.

However, by learning in a multi-sensory way, that is, taking information through all

your senses to your different memory areas, learning and remembering are

improved.

Why do we forget?

A number of factors affect our ability to remember and recall information. These

include:

Poor reception of information – we have to ‘put it in’ clearly

Concentration on other things – we think about too many things at once

No memory ‘trigger’ – no cue word, vision, sound, action, to unlock the memory.





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MCC Library Central

Study Skills Series

Tips to help improve memory

Some of these suggestions will work for you but not all of them. You will need to try

each out a few at a time in order to identify which ones are most useful to you.

Knowing your preferred learning style, whether you are a visual, auditory or

kinaesthetic learner will help you identify the techniques which are best suited to

you.

Find a purpose and create interest “Why is this useful?”

Use multi-sensory learning techniques. See it, hear it, do it.

Understand it. It’s much harder to learn if you don’t fully understand what you are

reading or what is being explained.

Be determined to learn and pay attention to the information.

Organise information or ‘chunk it’. Put information into sequences or categories

e.g. 3 numbers together, types of food, and colours.

Create associations. It’s much easier to learn things that are linked together,

especially to something you know already.

Create visual images. We learn much better if we can form a picture in our

heads.

Remember the unusual. If something is funny, strange, spooky, bizarre or even

rude, it’s more memorable. Try it out! Perhaps visualise it in cartoon form. It works,

it’s quick and it’s fun!

Record your own information. Read out and record on to tape perhaps.

Listen to music while you work. Try soft music with no words in the

background. Vary the music. Listening to music can help to trigger your memory,

rather like a cue card.

Create images in your brain. Try using Mind Maps or Spider-Diagrams displaying

key ideas and facts only. Highlight any errors, and add omissions in a new

colour. Then test yourself, from memory, see if you can create an image of the

information in your mind.

Try using flash cards. Use key words on one side and meanings/explanations on

the other. Test yourself on each card and set aside the ones you know well.

Repeat this process. The pile of cards you know well should gradually get bigger

until you feel you know all the information.

Draw the information. Cartoons, thumbnail sketches, maps, graphs, pie or flow

charts, tree diagram can all be useful.

Label, number, underline to highlight important information. Divide your whole

topic into easy to follow parts using your own note-taking style.

Try writing your notes out, them and check your knowledge by asking yourself

questions about the information or seeing how much you can recall from

memory.





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01606 720646

[email protected]

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MCC Library Central

Study Skills Series

Try reading in different ways. Try reading the information out loud or step-by-step

so you have time to process what the information means. Try Skim reading it-

read over the information quickly to get an overview, then go over it again and

highlight the important parts with coloured pens.

Remembering more complex information

The Think and Link System: Create a vivid image in your mind. A mental movie using

objects like: an elephant; a jelly; an umbrella; a Bus Stop; a frog etc.

The Room-Information System: You choose a room and get an image of it in your

head. Then give this room a “fact” you want to remember. You then associate the

fact with that room. Remember the room and the “fact” returns.

Rhyming Mnemonics

These are rhymes / sentences which are created to contain information that you

want to remember e.g. ‘Thirty days has September, April, June and November’; ‘I’

before ‘e’, except after ‘c’

Acronyms

There are two types of acronyms:

1. Initial Letter Sentences: e.g. Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain = red, orange,

yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet is used to help recall the order of and the

colours of a rainbow.

2. Initial Letter Words e.g. HOMES = Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior (5 Great

Lakes of America).

From the Website Box of Ideas: http://www.boxofideas.org/ideas/?page_id=2827 © The Dyscovery Centre 2010

http://www.boxofideas.org/ideas/?page_id=2827

Improving your memory

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