LHS High School Study Skills

Motivation
Get Motivated
Stay Motivated

Monitoring Input
Listening
Note Taking
Reading
Class Participation

Managing Process
Self Management
Time Management
Concentration
Managing Your Learning
Managing Your Memory
Test Preparation

Mastering Output
Test Taking
Dealing with Test Anxiety
Learning from Tests
Preparing Written Reports
Preparing Oral Reports
Class Participation

Managing Your Memory

There are several specific techniques designed to enhance recall and improve your performance on academic work.

Category Method

Often it is necessary for you to recall a list of items.  Try categorizing the items using the following steps:

1. Go through the list and determine how the various items are alike and different.

2. Organize like items into categories.

3. Number the categories.

4. Determine the number of items in each category

5. Review the items by category several times, noting the number of items in each category

Then, when you need to recall the list, use the following procedure:

1. Recall the number of categories and repeat the category names in your mind.

2. Recall the number of items in the first category, and then recall each item in that category.  Knowing how many items are in a category makes it much easier to recall the list.  Your recall also improves because you are trying to recall a relatively small list.

3. Go through the other categories, recalling the items in each one.  Your recall will improve greatly.

Loci Method

Another technique to use for recalling long lists is called loci.  The loci method was developed by the Greeks many centuries ago.  In this method, you associate each item on a list with a particular place.  When your teachers assign you seats by a seating chart, they are using this method to learn the names of the students in their class.  You can use this method by associating items on a list with a place you know exceptionally well.  Consider this example: 

You are trying to learn the names of the presidents in order.  Since you are really familiar with your home's layout,  assign each president a seat in different rooms throughout your home.  Imagine that your home has an entrance foyer leading to the living room, which leads to the dining room, then the den, and finally the kitchen.  You may place George Washington in the chair in the foyer and John Adams in the first seat on the living room sofa, next to Thomas Jefferson.  Continue to visualize placing each president in order throughout your home.  Go over this placement in your mind and review it several times.  When you are called on to recall the presidents in order, visualize the arrangement of your home, and then visualize where you placed each president.  Recall each one by associating the president's name with his location.  If you are a kinesthetic learner, it may even be helpful to write their names on index cards and place the card in the places you have assigned.  Walk through your home picking up the cards in order.  When you are asked to recall their names, visualize yourself walking through the house picking up the cards.

Mnemonic Devices

Mnemonic Devices assist your memory by associating a word or sentence with another word, group of words, or sentence.  They are particularly helpful in recalling short lists.  Below are several examples of mnemonic devices.  Each is a type of epynym, a word or group of words designed to help you remember other words.

• acronyms -- a single word that represents the first letters in other words in a series.  Like for example, HOMES helps you remember the names of the Great Lakes as it is comprised of the first letters of each lake (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior).

• acrostics -- a sentence in which the first letter of every word represents the first letter in another word.  Sentences can be used to represent people, objects, and other items.  For example, My Very Educated Mother Just Made Sandwiches for Us of Nutritious Peanut Butter can be used to learn the planets of the solar system (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto).

• When creating acrostics, use the names of people you know and try to make the sentence funny.  The more ridiculous you make the sentence, the easier it will be to recall.

Bottom-up Learning

Memorizing a poem can be very difficult, especially if it is to be delivered in front of class.  A very effective way to memorize a poem is to learn it from the bottom up:

1. Read all the way through the poem, and learn the last line.

2. Read through the poem and learn the next to last line.

3. Then read it through and learn the third from the bottom (still recalling the last and the next to last lines).

4. Continue this procedure until you have learned the entire poem.  This should happen around the point when you have intentionally learned the last half of the poem; since you go over the entire poem with each reading, you learn the first half automatically.

If your task is to memorize prose, simply divide the material into line lengths comparable to those in a poem.  It is best for each line to make sense, but all the lines need not be sentences.

Learning Pictorial Information

Learning pictorial or illustrated information, such as charts, graphs, slides, an pictures can be very difficult.  When attempting to learn pictorial information, it is helpful to approach the task as if you are solving a jigsaw puzzle (you generally begin with the outer edges and other outstanding features).  Apply this concept to memorizing pictorial information:

1. Divide the material into quadrants.  Visualize the picture being split in half--first by a vertical line, and then by a horizontal line.  

2. Then, visualize both of these lines simultaneously, dividing the material into four equal parts.  

3. Number each quarter.  

4. Notice that the middle of the material is cut by the visualized. line.  This is important, since you should not try to learn the middle of the picture.  Although our eyes are usually drawn to the middle of a picture, that is the most difficult part to learn.  This is because pictorial material is typically very uniform near the center.  It is much easier to learn pieces that are quite different from each other, and the major differences in slides, maps, charts, and pictures usually occurs at the extremities.

5. Scan each quarter of the material, working your way from the edges toward the center, and look for a feature that grabs your attention.  If something catches your eye in the first quarter of a picture, make a note of the name of the picture and the fact that its most distinctive feature is in the first quarter.  Then review the picture several times, paying attention only to the first quarter.  After leaning only one fourth of a slide, picture, chart, or graph, you will be able to name it and distinguish it from all others.

Standard Memorization Matrix

The Standard Memorization Matrix capitalizes on the fact that you learn by associating new information with information you already know.  The matrix includes 26 nouns in alphabetical order, with one noun for each letter of the alphabet.  

Suppose you need to memorize a list of 10 items--clown, hairpin, spaghetti, marshmallow, bathing suit, bird, gorilla, shoe, cigar, and tuxedo.  Relate each item to one of the first 10 items in the matrix; if you can, form a mental image of the two items that includes some action.  For instance, you would relate the first item in the list, clown, to the first item on the matrix, apple.  Create a mental picture of the clown eating an apple, throwing an apple, or being hit by an apple.  Make the image as vivid as possible.  If you do this with each of the 10 items, you will find that you can recall the entire list, without even studying, just by looking at the matrix.