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Acronyms |
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Forming an acronym is a good strategy to use to remember information in any order that can be remembered. An acronym is a word that is formed from the first letter of each fact to be remembered. It can be a real word or a nonsense word you are able to pronounce.
Here is how to form an acronym.
- Write the facts you need to remember.
- Underline the first letter of each fact. If there is more than one word in a fact, underline the first letter of only the first word in the fact.
- Arrange the underlined letters to form an acronym that is a real word or a nonsense word you can pronounce.
BODMAS , sequence in solving or evaluating math equations
B rackets | Of | Division | Multiplication | Addition | Subtraction
Sometimes two or more of the facts you must remember each begin with the same first letter. For example, the acronym “capp” can be used to remember the following fruits: pear, apple, peach, cherry. You can use the first letter “p” in the acronym to remember either “pear” or “peach” and the second letter “p” to remember the other. |
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Acrostic |
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An acrostic is an invented sentence or poem with a first letter cue.
The first letter of each word is a cue to an idea you need to remember.
R ichard Of York Gains Battle In Vain
Referring to Colours of the Rainbow – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet |
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Rhyme-Keys (for ordered or unordered lists)
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First, memorize key words that can be associated with numbers.
Example: bun = one; shoe = two, tree = three, door = four, hive = five, etc.
Create an image of the items you need to remember with key words.
Four basic food groups-- diary products; meat, fish, and poultry; grains; and fruit and vegetables
Think of cheese on a bun (one), livestock with shoes on (two),
a sack of grain suspended in a tree (three), a door to a room stocked with fruits and vegetables (four). |
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The Method of Loci (for approximately twenty items) |
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Imagine yourself walking through the location, selecting clearly defined places--the door, sofa, refrigerator, shelf, etc. Imagine yourself putting objects that you need to remember into each of these places by walking through this location in a direct path.
Again, you need a standard direct path and clearly defined locations for objects to facilitate the retrieval of these objects.
For example, you could imagine Beethoven walking up to the door of your location and seeing a dollar bill stuck in the door; when you open the door Bach is reclining on the sofa and Mozart is eating out of the refrigerator. |
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The Image-Name Technique (for remembering names) |
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| Simply invent any relationship between the name and the physical characteristics of the person. For example, if you had to remember Jacky Chan’s name, you might ingrain the name in memory by associating “whacky” with Jacky. |
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Remembering Numbers |
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One of our common problems before a test is to remember dates and numbers.
One technique is encoding the number. "Number elaboration" involves converting the number to a more familiar format. For example, to remember that the Paleozoic Era lasted from 230 million years ago to 65 million years ago, think of it as a zip code, 23065.
"Number association" involves linking numerical information with other information that´s personally important to you. For example, to remember the number of nations on the United Nations Security Council, associate it with the uniform number of a favorite athlete (whom you image running across a UN conference table as diplomats stare in astonishment).
These strategies should give your memory a boost. Sometimes you just have to repeat and repeat a fact until it sticks in your mind. But turning the unfamiliar into the more familiar can speed up the process. |
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