Strategies for College Success

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Strategies for College Success Chapter 8

• Improving your Memory

Original source http//www.life.arizona.edu/acad
emicsuccess/tips/powerpoint/Strats20for20College
20Succ.ppt
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Memory Techniques

• What well be covering
• things that can effect your ability to remember
  something
• basic memory tips
• strategies to improve your memory
• moving from short-term memory to long-term memory
• from memorization to deep-learning

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What can effect your ability to remember
something?

• distractions
• time of day
• your comfort level
• stress
• your interest in the material
• your level of motivation

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Memory tips

• Learn from general to specific
• Before learning something new, get a general
  overview to use as a framework on which to hang
  specific details

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Memory tips (continued)

• Make it meaningful
• Why is this information relevant? What is the
  value in knowing this?
• If you dont see the value-
• Find it! What kinds of situations could you be
  in that you would need this information?
• Use this as an opportunity to use strategies that
  will make you a better student

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Memory tips (continued)

• Create associations
• Relate what youre learning to something that
  you already know
• Construct your own knowledge
• Try using analogies and metaphors

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Memory tips (continued)

• Learn actively
• Manipulate or change the information in some way
• Try creating a mind map, diagram, pictures, or
  note cards
• Always put information that youre trying to
  learn into your own words

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Memory tips (continued)

• Reduce distractions
• Turn off music, phone, television

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Memory tips (continued)

• Monitor what youve learned
• Check yourself to make sure that youre learning
• Try self-testing yourself using the review
  questions at the end of the chapter or make up
  your own

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Memory tips (continued)

• Check your attitude and anxiety
• Find yourself thinking how much you hate the
  course or instructor? Know when your attitudes
  and/or anxiety are inhibiting learning and try to
  address them

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Memory tips (continued)

• Turn abstract ideas into concrete examples

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Memory tips (continued)

• Distribute learning
• Use many short sessions for studying instead of
  one long session

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Memory tips (continued)

• Remember something else
• When you get stuck and cant remember something,
  try to remember something that is related to it
  or what you were doing at the time that you
  learned it.

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Memory tips (continued)

• Stay away from studying similar topics at the
  same time to avoid confusion

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Memory tips (continued)

• Use mnemonics, or memory techniques
• Try creating a song or rhyme to help you remember
  (e.g., Thirty days hath September, April, June,
  and November. All the rest have thirty-one,
  excepting February alone. It has twenty-eight
  days time, but in leap years it has twenty-nine)
• Use acronyms (e.g., to remember the Great Lakes
  use the word HOMES for Huron, Ontario, Michigan,
  Erie, and Superior)
• Acrostics (e.g., to remember hierarchy of
  taxonomic classification remember, Kens Pants
  Caught On Fire, Great Scott! for Kingdom,
  Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Specific
  Epithet gt Animalia, Chordata, Mammalia,
  Primates, Hominidae, Homo, Sapiens Species Homo
  sapiens).
• Visual methods exaggerate the image of what it
  is you are trying to memorize.

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Memory tips (continued)

• Avoid studying material in the same sequence
• Try starting at the end or middle of the material

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Summary

• By using memory techniques you can take steps to
  learn and remember information more quickly and
  effectively
• Most memory techniques require that you change or
  organize the information that you need to learn.
• Repeated reading of text and notes is often not
  enough.
• Simple memorization may help you in matters, like
  recounting a sequence for opening a combination
  lock, but it wont in and of itself lead to
  deep-learning. Memorization facilitates the
  road to understanding, but it is not the same as
  understanding a subject.