Speed Studying: The Mnemonic Advantage vs Brute-Fore Memorizing

Have you ever sat in the classroom before a big test, getting tenser by the minute because the instructor was late, because you felt everything you studied the previous night was starting to get jumbled and blurry-- you could literally feel yourself forgetting everything you learned?

All too often, the great challenge for many high school and college courses is the sheer volume of things to memorize for the test. This is one of the major things that stops people from going back to school for additional education. However, when one practices the art of Mnemonics, this takes car of most, if not all the worry that comes from that challenge.

Mnemonics is frequently (and incorrectly) known as word-association. In truth, it involves much more than words, as one incorporates senses (smell, sound, taste, touch, sight), imagery as well as instinctive leaps of creativity to forge individually-made, and powerful memory aids. To use many senses not only improves the chances of an item being recalled on cue, it lets the student find the most instinctive way to access the information for exams and presentations.

Mnemonics is a skill whose practice can be traced back to ancient Greeks who used them to memorize long, elaborate speeches without having to write them on paper. It is not, as some slick vendors may claim, a breakthrough technology discovered in recent years. American writer Mark Twain a hundred years ago confided using it quite frequently for his own speeches and personal lists, because it was more insitinctive and simple than a wordy paragraph.

1) Test Stress - The giant guarding the way to a well-answered test is in the bulk of things you have to remember in the little time you have to study. Most of the afternoon or evening is spent reading and repeating, reading and repeating. We hope that the repitition gets burned in sufficiently by the time morning comes, and not disappear when we fall asleep. This is about as realistic and practical as taking a jacket, pressing it against the wall over and over, in the hopes that some time during the night, your sweaty effort and a bit of luck will somehow make that jacket stick to the wall. It is much better, however, to find a peg or hook to hang the jacket, leave it there, and devote your time to other things.

Have you ever seen a question on the test that you could not answer, despite the fact that you were reading it over and over the previous night? You repeated it to yourself at home and at the supermarket like a crazy person, didn't you? But when it was time to answer the question, the answer you "studied hard" for vanished, leaving your mind to grope in the dark. Mnemonics slays this giant, letting you (forgive the pun) literally "forget about it" when you are done memorizing, and relax before the test.

2) Higher Test Scores - Some might point out that memorizing is not really enough for a test. But the truth is that (a) most exams are given in ID or multiple-choice form and (b) Students who use menmonics effectively to study get higher grades on these tests with less effort. Teachers may inisist that we don't need to memorize every little thing, and just have a general idea of the subject, but what do they do after saying that? They throw a giant, 500-page textbook at the students and give them mutliple-choice tests. Hence, knowing how to memorize properly is key.

3) Comprehension - Some teachers might insist that memorizing does not lead to comprehension. My reply is: True, but not directly. When a mnemonics-practicing student is done memorizing the important details of a story or other text (which otherwise would take up a large portion of study-time), most of the study session can be devoted to quiet, relaxed contemplation of the material, and letting the significance of the text sink in. Worrying about remembering the details of a play (names, plot, dialogue etc.) without giving it proper time to impart its message (moral, social commentary, etc.) will make a student ill-prepared to discuss literature of any kind. Not having to worry about the outline gives you more time to think about the text at a deeper level. So if you do this early in the term you will have several weeks to relax and just let yourself contemplate on the deeper and broader meaning of the text.

4) More Personal Time - Have you ever taken a test on the 50 United States capitals? How long did it take you to memorize them all, city AND state? And after you memorized them, did you spend your time watching a movie, going to the beach, or shopping? If you did, did your brain keep chattering over and over in the background, even as you ate dinner with your family, trying desperately not to lose the information you just "learned"? This primitive and inefficient memorization leaves one distracted, unable to pay attention to anything elsethat needs to be done at the moment (like operating a vehicle, for example). A practitioner of mnemonics would easily take a few minutes to memorize the 50-item list (total time depends on the student, but my experience places it from twenty to thirty minutes, much less than an hour). What happens during the rest of the day? Anything he or she has time for! Plus a school experience is just more rewarding when you have time to balance out your life between studies, friends, personal time and family.

5) Creativity - While Brute-force memorizing is tedious, exhausting and makes ten minutes seem like an hour when there is a lot to memorize, Mnemonics actually releases the student's creativity in almost a free-form manner, making study time almost like play-time. Because the student is actually making connections between the subject matter at hand, and seemingly unrelated items, the cues that result are unusual, exotic, and almost always bizarre. It's actually entertaining to make free associations while mastering the chapters for a test. The mind is exposed to connections it would not make otherwise, thus expanding one's creativity.

Exams and presentations are difficult when there is a huge volume of material to master in preparation for them. Mnemonics offers a way to get overcome that challenge with a minimum of hard effort, while leaving you extra time for other things that may be important in your life. I highly recommend, if you are a student or a professional in your field, that you look into a memory-improvement course that emphasizes learning mnemonics. After that, there is nothing you cannot learn, and the sky is the limit.