14 Helpful Suggestions for Improving Memory

Fourteen important suggestions that will help you in improving your memory are as follows: 1.Develop will to remember, 2. Keep concentration, 3. Picturise the learning material, 4. Use spaced method, 5. Avoid shocks and emotional disturbances, 6. Use learnt material, 7. Rhythm as an aid to memory, 8. Do not recall when there is some inhibition, 9. Over learning is beneficial, 10. Recitation, 11. Take rest , 12. Get feedback, 13. Develop association and 14. Mnemonics.

There are certain general principles explaining the ways of improving memory.

The common complaint by people is that their memory power is decreasing or not up to the mark. This is more common among student community. It is true that good memory power is essential for success, but in reality the feeling that their memory is deteriorating is wrong. The fact is that the memory of a person does not decrease by itself, unless it is disturbed by shocks of some kind.

The decrease may also take place either due to the disease or damage to the nerve cells of the cortex. If the individual is healthy both physically and mentally, the chance of deterioration in the memory is a rare possibility.

However, due to complexity of the material learnt, emotional disturbances, lack of concentration and lack of inter and such other causes may affect our learning and in turn our memory, and cause forgetting. Hence in order to improve one’s memory one has to learn better, so that his retention will improve and consequently remembering will improve.

Here are some suggestions for improving memory:

1. Develop will to remember:

While learning anything, one must have strong will to learn and remember. Strong will helps for better understanding and in turn for better memory.

2. Keep concentration:

Attention and concentration on the material to be learnt is very important. Concentration helps for better understanding and in turn for better memory.

3. Picturise the learning material/situation:

Develop mental picture of the learning situation. The advantage of visual aids is that they facilitate acquisition of visual images. These images come to our memory picture.

4. Use spaced method:

Follow spaced or distribution method. Avoid unspaced method, so that a good settlement of learnt material takes place and remains in mind accurately.

5. Avoid shocks and emotional disturbances:

Avoid learning while in shock and when emotionally disturbed, because our psychological processes are affected, and hence our memory also.

6. Use learnt material:

Disuse causes forgetting.

7. Rhythm as an aid to memory:

Try to introduce style and rhythm into whatever you learn.

8. Do not recall when there is some inhibition or resistance:

It will be recalled automatically after some time.

9. Over learning is beneficial:

Try to read as many times as possible. Experiments have proved that over learning helps better memory.

10. Role of recitation:

Recitation has an upper hand over passive reading. This is nothing but rehearsal. Recitation ensures active participation on the part of the learner. This helps in transformation of information from STM to LTM.

11. Take rest or sleep after study:

Rest or if possible sleep after a long study will help for fixation and consolidation of learnt material.

12. Get feedback by testing the self, a person will also be practicing his retrieval skills.

13. Develop association:

We must try to connect or relate whatever we learn with what we have already learnt well. For example, to remember seven colors of rainbow-we use word VIBGYOR.

14. Mnemonics:

This word comes from a Greek word ‘nemoniks’, which mean assisting the memory. These are memory improvement techniques rely on the linking or association of, to be remembered material with a systematic and organised set of images or words which serve as remainder cues called memory pegs.

They are:

i. Method of loci:

The word loci mean places. The memory peg in this system are parts of your image of a scene, which can be a street, tree, big building, etc- with more discrete items to remember.

ii. Rhyming system:

The numbers can be used in this system. For example, 1 is a fun, 2 is a shoe, 3 is a tree, 4 is a door, etc. in kindergarten schools, lessons are taught to children by this method only.

iii. Tell stories to yourself:

Make a story of unrelated, discrete items. So that remembering a story is very easy. For example, journey taken up by you and places visited, etc.

iv. Chunking:

It is a very systematic way of encoding information. Suppose we want to remember a list of long letters or digits, break them into pieces of few words, or letters, or digits which mean something to you-like date of birth, some important incidents, events, etc.