BASIC MEMORY SKILLS

BASIC MEMORY SKILLS

This specific section is going to address memory in terms of the essentials of improving memory in a general way. We will be adding two other sections. ADVANCED MEMORY TECHNIQUES are very sophisticated and powerful, but they do require a good deal of time and effort to master them. SPECIFIC ACADEMIC MEMORY TIPS will be directed at improving specific academic memory skills. Now first and foremost - BASIC MEMORY TECHNIQUES.

With the case of our general memory - we receive some piece of information, we sense it, see it, feel it, read it, and it goes into our brain and it is stored in the short term memory. Now the trick is to move this information to the long term memory so that you are able to keep it longer than five or ten minutes.

The well known learning curve shows that in five minutes, much of the information we have taken in is lost. After an hour - two thirds of it is lost. And after a day has passed - 90 % of it is lost. This is the curve of forgetting. What we've found is that you can reverse that curve. And there are various techniques to do it.

The first thing we want to go over is how a simple recall method can help you store the information. Now this is information that we'll call ROTE INFORMATION for example when you are learning a section of a speech. In these cases you are learning something that is not just a list, that is not just something simple and direct. Its more of a instance of wanting to remember situations - wanting to remember broader terms.

For this we are going to use a little bit of ASSOCIATION but then we are going to base it primarily on MEMORY REVIEW. This works whether you are remembering lines of poetry or outlines of the sensory system.

First and foremost you want to ORGANIZE the information you are going to be taking in. You have to decide in what manner you want to take the information in. It may be by rote memorization of a section. It may well be some type of outline form.

The first step is to take in the information. And when you take in the information you really must learn to fully attend to what you are doing. Involve yourself in what your taking in. WE use the phrase "Be where you are." Be truly focused.Incorporate as many of the senses as you can. In other words, write it down, see it, even say it out loud sometimes. The more senses involved enhance the memory process.

And now you can reverse the learning curve. This is the key point here. You can reverse the learning curve by RECALL. The number of times you recall something helps move that piece of information from your short term memory to your long term memory.

To point out a specific technique that works the best:

Step number 1 - take in formation.

Step number 2 - about five minutes later, undisturbed, go over the main points of what you are trying to remember. That should only take you a minute or two.

Step number 3 - an hour later, do the same thing.

Step number 4 - three hours later, do the same thing. Just go back over the information a minute or two.

Step number 5 - six hours later, do the same thing. Then that night before you go to sleep, review the material one last time.

 

Then step number 6 - repeat that three times a day for the second and third days. Now you have that information for the long term.

Now to the student first taking this in sitting there saying, Man, I'm not going to do that. That six times the first day, two to three times the next day. My goodness, there's no way I'm going to do that. That's just a lot of work.

Baloney! Think about it. That's 12 times the first day. The second and third days, you only do it 6 times. That's eighteen, let's round it to twenty times. That's twenty times you are reviewing that information over three days for a minute or two. That means you are spending forty minutes studying that information, and you have it. And you know it, you possess it, and it isn't going anywhere. How many hours do people spend studying? Think about it. Typically, people sit down and study a subject for an hour or more to try to learn it. This is simply a more efficient way of doing it in a more piecemeal fashion. And by spreading it out over a period of days and recalling it more and more, you move it into that long term memory and it stays solidly there.

OK, that's where we are talking about memorizing, rote memorizing, where we are trying to take in broader or larger pieces of information.