How To Improve Memory Essay, Research Paper

Mr. Douglas

Enclosed in the following are five techniques that you may want to consider using to help you improve your memory.

 Finding a reason to remember

 Be selective in about what you learn

 Organize your information

 Mnemonics

 Rehearse information through recitation

First, finding a reason to remember is very important. If you have a reason to remember information you just learned, then you have a better chance of holding on to it. For example, let?s say a person has trouble with his/her multiplication tables. And the person loves to lift weights. The teacher would use the information form math and apply it to the weight lifting. Such as 5 x 5=25, and lifting five pounds five time is a total of twenty-five pounds. You see this comparison makes the student learn it better because he/she can use it in more ways than one. This technique has helped me the most when I was learning about percentages in math. I could not quiet get the hang of it, so the teacher applied it to how much money would one save if a $50.00 shirt was 20% off. This gave me the motivation to learn it.

Second, you should be selective in what you learn. You only want to learn the main ideas and leave the supporting material alone. Doing this should make you memorize the information in a shorter amount of time. For example, if you were trying to study Biology, and there is a lot of it just remember the bold face type words it the chapter. Doing this will ease your load and give you less to remember. I used this when taking my driving test. There was a lot I needed to know, so I looked over the main points and just focused on them instead of the whole thing.

Another technique that you may want to try is organizing your information. I use this technique all the time. It helps me feel like there are fewer things to do. Instead of looking at a bunch of words and papers, I get them together according to classes. Organizing your information will make it easier for you to recall it when the time comes. Just as the supermarket puts its things in the isles, and the way books are arranged in chapters.

One of the best ways to help improve your memory is called mnemonics. There are several ways that you can use mnemonics, but one of the easiest ways is to take the first letter in each of the words and make a new word out of it. For example, the five great lakes are Eire, Huron, Ontario, Superior, and Michigan. Now just take the underlined letters in the previous sentence and spell ?HOMES?. This will help you a lot when you have to memorize specific words. I always use this when studying for a Health test, because you have to know a lot of steps and cycles about the body and it comes in very handy.

The fifth technique is called traditional reciting. This is just repeating information out loud using your own words and doing it from memory. This has always helped me learn new vocabulary words. I would read the word and definition, then say it to my-self. It is a great way to memorize words and phrases.

Well Mr. Douglas, I hope that you find some of these techniques I gave you use-full and help you improve your memory.