Five Simple Techniques to Improve Your Memory and Retention

This may just be all that matters when you are faced with a situation, in an exam hall, in front of a person, your parents\, friends or even yourself. HOW WELL DO YOU REMEMBER THINGS.

An important aspect of studying and becoming an A grade student seriously borders on how well you can remember things after you have come across them or have been taught.

In this post, i intend to share with you just five quick steps to improving your retention capability.

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Most of us might have complained about our memory one time or other. But some of you have been frequently complaining about your poor memory. When we generally talk about poor memory we are really talking about poor recollection. Recollection is possible only if the content is retained in memory. This is possible only if we have recorded it into memory. That is, unless we have not assimilated, we cannot recall at all. That is why William James and many others including mnemonists give emphasis to how we record things into our memory.


Even if we record something correctly in our memory, we may not be able to recall it. This is due to many reasons, the main reasons being problems in retention and stress.


Now let us discuss five simple techniques to improve memory: Four of these techniques are used to improve assimilation and thus to have longer retention. The last one is a simple strategy for recollection.

Chunking
Perhaps Chunking is the oldest method used in memorization. In this method, the items to be memorized are divided into small and easily memorizable chunks or groups. This method works best when the order of the items is not important.
This method is found to be particularly well suited for memorizing multi-digit numbers (eg., ID nos., telephone nos., etc.) and for committing complicated spellings to memory.
Example:
1. The number 472627607 may be memorized easily if it is grouped as 472, 627,607 or as 47, 26, 27,607.
These chunks may then be learned by rote. Learning and retention are much facilitated if you further explore the nos. by finding some relationship among these different chunks. Finding the digital root will also be helpful. The more explorations or relations you do, the better.

2. Words like mathematics may be divided into mat +he +mat +ics, Together may be divided into to + get + her; Important may be divided into im + port + ant. This technique will make us learn much faster.
3. The list Apple, cucumber, paper, ink, cabbage, banana, grapes, beans, stapler, orange can be better learned by rearranging and applying chunking as :-
Apple, banana, grapes, orange, cucumber, cabbage, beans, paper, ink, stapler
-- 4 fruits, 3 vegitables and 3 stationary items.

If possible, organize the material as meaningfully as you can and think out relationships among each group. This not only improves learnability and retention but also aids in faster and effortless recollection.
Psychologists doing research on Human Memory have found that the capacity of Short Term Memory (STM) for humans is 7± 2 that is from the range 5 to 9 items. So you should take care to keep the chunks you create within this limit.

Rhyming
This is also one of the popular and oldest methods in memorization. This technique makes use of the fact that we have a natural tendency to remember rhymes and rhythms. The following is a very popular example of application of this technique which almost all school students are familiar with.
"Thirty days haveth September
April, June and November
All the rest have thirty-one
February has twenty-eight alone
Except in leap year, then the time
When Febs days are twenty-nine."
If possible create rhymes like this and it will not only aid in improving your memory but in improving your creativity as well.

Nice one!