Jonathan Swift account inGulliver’s Travelsthat in the Great Lagado Academy, located in the imaginary country of Lapot, the students remembered the mathematical formulas by writing them with a special ink on wafers and then devouring them on an empty stomach. Although in real life memorizing is not so easy, we suggest somesimple techniques to improve your retention.
1. Chained.To remember ordered or disordered lists of words (such as ALARM HOUSE PIANO HOUSE SOFA TORO BESUGO) experts recommend imagining together and vividly 2 first objects, and joining the rest as you make a graphic story where the images of each element are connected with the following.
2. Numbers.Thehanger rule, which consists of a list of fixed words in order, each associated with a specific number. In Spanish, the following sequence can be used, based on the physical resemblance between numbers and objects: 1-pole, 2-bicycle, 3-tricorn, 4-saddle, 5-hand, 6-golf club, 7-flag, 8 -glasses, 9-person, 10-ball. With this method, to memorize the date 1746 we would use the image of a pole (1) where a flag is placed (7), we got on a chair (4) and removed it with a golf club (6).
3. Rhymes with …Forming couplets or verses that include the words to remember facilitates their memorization.
4. Acronyms and Acrostics.Sometimes it is very useful to form words (acronyms) or phrases (acrostics) that contain the first letters or sounds of the list or words to remember. For example, to remember the list Boron, Oxygen and Sodium the word BOS can be constructed.
5. Languages.To learn a word in a new language, first select a Spanish keyword that sounds like the foreign word. Next, imagine an image in which the keyword with the Spanish meaning of the foreign word is involved. For example, for the English word “parish” – which means “parish church” – we could choose as the keyword in Spanish “Paris-sh …” And then invent the image of a church in Paris and someone trying to ask silence at mass doing “Shhh”. So the next time you see the word “parish” you should be able to remember the image of the church and someone asking for silence.
6. Was your name?To overcome the hard drink of forgetting the name of a person who has just been introduced to us, there are several tricks: repeating the name several times during the conversation, looking for an association of the name with that of another known person, attending to some feature physical characteristic of the person and associate it with the name, or look for a meaning to the name or surname.
