15 Ways To Improve Your Memory.

Memory is basic driving force of our life, its a understood thing that without a good memory, things can get hard for anybody causing many problems.

On average, humans can remember approximately 7 things at any time in their working memory. So we sometimes need simple strategies either to work around this fact or to maximize this limited capacity.

Strategies we think are important in order to improve your memory are as follows.

1. Write things down:

If you write something by hand, all that complex sensory information increases the chances the knowledge will be stored for later. In short, writing by hand forces your brain to process information in a more detailed way, which helps you successfully load that information into your memory. Storing things on paper can be referred when needed.

2. Chunking:

Chunking means to grouping small bits of information together to shorten the number of individual things to remember. For example it is easier to remember a long number sequence "2,5,0,8,1,7,9,5" when it is chunked into three groups(i.e. in a calendar form, or equal parts) like this "25, 08, 1795" or "250,812,95".

3. Spacing out your learning:

When revising, it is more effective to space out your study sessions instead of cramming everything in at the last minute. This leaves you enough time to forget and re-learn: a process that helps you cement and embed knowledge in your memory.

You can also use 2, 3, 5, 7 revision rule for your exam preparation, which means you will full revise before exam the day, revise 2 days before revision day, then again revise 3 days before the 2 day mark, similarly 5 days before 3 day mark and finally 7 days before 5 day mark. This will lower the burden and will help you improve the memory.

4. Acronyms:

Acronyms is an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word (e.g. ASCII, NASA ). In acronyms each letter acts as a clue to remember something else. For example ASCII stands American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Many mathematics teacher use BODMAS as way to help students remember the order of operation, B-Brackets, O-Orders (powers/indices or roots), D-Division, M-Multiplication, A-Addition, S-Subtraction. respectively.

5. Test Yourself:

Once you have spent time learning the material, it is helpful to test yourself. This allows you to think deeply about the material, and it also has the added advantage of providing practice for performing under exam pressure. This is called retrieval practice, sometimes referred to as the Testing Effect.

6. Drink Water:

Another simple way to boost your ability to remember things is to ensure that you are drinking enough water. Not being fully hydrated can have a significant impact on your mood, memory and concentration. Also, it has been suggested that taking water into an exam can further enhance exam performance.

7. Get Enough Sleep:

When looking for ways to improve your memory, it is important to consider your sleeping patterns. There is a wealth of research that suggests that sleep plays an important role in memory. Whilst sleeping, new connections form between your brain cells, which aid memory and learning. This not only means that sleep improves our ability to recall information, but it also enhances how well we make links between new and old information. It has even been found that during exams, getting 8 hours of sleep a night leads to better results than staying up all night for last-minute revision.

8. Teach it to someone else:

If you are revising with someone else, take turns in teaching each other the material. This is known as the ‘Protégé Effect’ and can boost the teacher’s memory and recall. Teaching someone else requires you to learn and recall information in a clear and organized way. A fascinating study showed that people’s ability to recall information was significantly increased when told that they had to pass on the knowledge to someone else. To benefit from this effect, students don’t even need to teach someone else; they just have to believe that they are going to, in order to improve their memory.

9. Silly Sentence:

Silly sentences works in a similar way like acronyms, with the firs letter of each word acting as a reminder for another word. For example for remembering the order of the planets we have My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Noodles: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupitar, Uranus, Neptune.

10. Ask why:

One of techniques to improve memory is to ask yourself ‘why?’. This is what psychologists call ‘Elaborative Interrogation’. One study investigating this had students remember a list of sentences (i.e. ‘the hungry man got into the car’). The first group simply read the sentence. The second group was given an explanation (i.e. to go to a restaurant), and the third group was asked to come up with their own reason why the man got in his car. The results? Students who were prompted to ask ‘why’ remembered 72% of the sentences when tested later, compared to only 37% of the other two groups.

11. Say things out loud:

If someone is teaching you something, try repeating out loud what you have been taught. This is an effective strategy to improve recall and enhance memory, more so than just repeating the content in your own head.

12. Make it a Story:

Telling stories can help students remember information. This is because stories tend to be easy to remember as they are often interesting, emotional and have a familiar structure. The emotional connection that students may develop towards a story can help enhance their memory.

13. Read More:

Psychologist Daniel Willingham, who is an expert on memory and how children learn, offers many tips on how to improve memory. One of Daniel Willingham’s tips for improving memory is to encourage students to read more. He states that "the more you know, the easier it will be for you to learn new things".

14. Superior Focus:

Willingham also believes that ‘memory is the residue of thought’. People are more likely to remember the things that they have concentrated on. That’s what makes capturing their attention so important. If they focus on the wrong things, their memory will be impacted. Ensuring good concentration is hard. There are various tips on what students can do to improve their focus, which teachers can implement in their classroom to help enhance a students’ memories.

15. Practice, Practice, Practice:

The more you practice something, the more likely that it will become automatic. Once things are automatic, they take up less space in your working memory, meaning you can do it on autopilot (like brushing your teeth - you’ve done it so many times you don’t require much conscious effort to do it).

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15 Ways To Improve Memory