Strategies for College Success

Improving your Memory

 Memory Techniques
 What we’ll 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
What can effect your ability to remember something?
Factors affecting our ability to remember:

 distractions
 time of day
 your comfort level
 stress
 your interest in the material
 your level of motivation
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
Memory tips (continued)

 Make it meaningful
 Why is this information relevant? What is the value in
knowing this?
 If you don’t 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
Memory tips (continued)

 Create associations
 Relate what you’re learning to something that you
already know
 Construct your own knowledge
 Try using analogies and metaphors
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 you’re trying to learn into
your own words
Memory tips (continued)

 Reduce distractions
 Turn off music, phone, television
Memory tips (continued)

 Monitor what you’ve learned

 Check yourself to make sure that you’re learning
 Try self-testing yourself using the review questions at the
end of the chapter or make up your own
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
Memory tips (continued)

 Turn abstract ideas into concrete examples

Memory tips (continued)

 Distribute learning
 Use many short sessions for studying instead of one long
session
Memory tips (continued)

 Remember something else

 When you get stuck and can’t remember something, try
to remember something that is related to it or what you
were doing at the time that you learned it.
Memory tips (continued)

 Stay away from studying similar topics at the same time

to avoid confusion
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, “Ken’s Pants Caught On Fire, Great Scott!” for
Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Specific Epithet =>
Animalia, Chordata, Mammalia, Primates, Hominidae, Homo, Sapiens
[Species: Homo sapiens]).
 Visual methods – exaggerate the image of what it is you are trying
to memorize.
Memory tips (continued)

 Avoid studying material in the same sequence

 Try starting at the end or middle of the material
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 won’t in and of itself lead to deep-learning.
Memorization facilitates the road to understanding, but it
is not the same as understanding a subject.