Memory is the key to learning. And yet, for many of us, how we remember things is a total mystery. When I asked many of my students and friends "how do you remember new vocabulary?" they said:
• "I repeat words again and again."
• "I try to use them as much as possible."
• "I remember them right away (but then forget them later)."
It was clear to me that no one, including myself, really understood how they remembered things.
This document aims to teach you about how your brain actually stores memories, the methods that memory experts suggest for memorizing information, and finally present a unified method on exactly how to memorize information.
Memory Theory
This method is a combination of three fields of research:
• Psychology – Over the last 100 years, a wide range of psychologists have offered different theories about how to improve memory retention.
• Practical Memory Skills – The ancient Greeks invented the Method of Loci thousands of years ago and guys like Andy Bell (multiple-time winner of the Memory Olympics) are still using it today.
Psychological Theory of Memorization
There are three major psychological theories that will be discussed here: the Zeigarnik Effect, Chunking, and Miller's Magic Number.
Zeigarnik's theory suggests that interruption actually improves memory.
Zeigarnik's Interruption Theory
Which type of person has the best memory? The result might surprise you: bar waitresses.
Bar waitresses need to keep track of dozens of different drink orders at the same time, as well as the amount of money owed by each customer.
A Russian psychologist discovered something even more interesting (but not as surprising): once a waitress receives her money, she immediately forgets the order. However, if she is not paid, she will remember that order for a long period of time.
From all this psychology comes an interesting result: if you are interrupted while performing an activity, you will have a clearer memory of that activity – your brain thinks that it is not yet finished with this information and so it will store it longer.
Scientists have found that 15 minutes of memorization, an interruption, and then a five minute rest period produce better memory results. We will use this result later in our method.
Miller's theory suggests that chunks of data are easier to remember.
Chunking & Miller's Magic Number
This idea is simple and straight-forward: If we break up information into smaller chucks, we will remember things better. How big should the chunks be?
Miller suggested that chunks of 7 things are an ideal memory serving for the average person. We are able to memorize 7 random things at a time.
If we have items that sound the same or have the same meaning, memorization becomes much more difficult. So you should not try to memorize "economics," "economists," and "the economy" in the same 7-word chunk. Separate similar sounds or similar meanings into different chunks.
Practical Memory Theory
Andy Bell is able to memorize every card in 10 decks of cards in 30 minutes. He can remember 1000 digit numbers. He is really good at memorizing stuff. In fact, when he won the Memory Olympics, he was arguably the best person in the world at memorizing stuff.
So how does he do it? He uses two primary techniques: the Method of Loci and Image Matching.
The Method of Loci suggests that places are very easy to remember so we should associate new memories with places you know.
Method of Loci
This method was developed in ancient Greece and is still used today. The theory is that we have a great memory of physical locations. (Note: This doesn't mean you are good at directions.)
Try this: think about your house. How many rooms does it have? Where is your television? Where's your refrigerator? It's very easy to visualize your home – it's incredibly easy to remember what your home looks like. The same is true for your workplace, your university, your favorite shopping mall, etc.
The method of loci suggests that you associate what you are memorizing with actual locations that you know very well.
Image matching suggests that new memories should be associated with images like food or animals.
Image Matching
When Andy Bell remembers cards or numbers or anything else, he uses image matching. This is a simple but powerful trick.
The idea is this: we can remember pictures and situations a lot better than we can remember letters, words, or numbers. In particular, certain kinds of images and situations are easier to remember.
Images/Situations that are easy to remember include:
• Emotions
• People we know
• Places we know (the Method of Loci)
• Strange or unusual images
So when we try to remember things, we need to visualize an emotional situation involving people we know in a familiar place involving a strange image (associated with the word we're trying to memorize.)
The FarWest Memorization Method
All these theories and strategies are combined into a single, usable method – The FarWest Memorization Method. In this document, we describe how all these theories come together into a single memorization method. Then we describe a detailed step-by-step method that you can use to memorize your new material.
FarWest Memory Theory
When we memorize things, our brain is discovering new patterns. These language patterns can be words, phrases, sentences, as well as larger ideas such as English Goals and Life Goals.
So we need to create patterns that our brain will easily recognize. We are going to break our patterns into small chunks of 7 items because we know our brain can handle those better.
And we're going to interrupt our memorization so that our brain will increase that pattern's importance.
Now, a word or phrase is not really a pattern. And that's why we have such a hard time remembering words by themselves. So we need to create a sentence (a situation) involving that word or phrase.
For example, if I want to remember "She walked her dog," I might imagine a beautiful girl I know in a red dress. She's walking in front of a cabin where I often go for my vacations.
And because we are really hunter-gathering primates, our brain doesn't think language patterns are very important. Instead, our brain likes patterns involving emotions, people, places, and strange new things.
Furthermore, the more we see this same pattern, the more importance our brain will give the pattern. So we're going to repeat the same situation several times.
Finally, we're going to test our new patterns by thinking about our situation and recovering the word or phrase.
The FarWest Memorizing Method – Step-by-step
1. Create New Patterns ("Telling Stories")
(Note: The work done in this stage is very important because you will use this material to memorize but also review in the future. Investing a few extra minutes will have a huge payoff in the future.)
1. Create "chunks" of seven items. This will allow you to maximize your short-term memory. For example, if you want to memorize 41 words, separate that into 5 groups of 7 and one group of 6. (7, 7, 7, 7, 7 and 6.)
2. Find the Chinese for each word or phrase to make sure that you have a good understanding of its meaning – don't learn the wrong definition! Now put the Chinese definition in a separate file – you don't want to look at it again.
3. Find a common sentence that uses the word or phrase (an English dictionary can be useful for this. So can Google News.)[links]
4. Create a copy of the sentence but remove the word or phrase and replace it with "____." This is called your "cloze" sentence.[link]
5. Personalize the sentence using your imagination. This means creating a little story in your mind that you can remember. Your story should be:
a. Emotional
b. Involve people you know
c. Involve a familiar location
d. Involve a strange or unusual image that reminds you of the Chinese English word (for example, the English word "dog" sounds like "da ge" – big brother – so you can imagine your big brother walking a dog.)
6. Draw or find a simple image for this sentence.
7. Repeat for each word in your "Chunk" of seven things.
2. Discover your New Patterns ("Repeat and Interrupt")
1. Set your alarm for 15 minutes.
2. Write/Type the sentences one at a time. When you are doing this, look at the picture that you created. Imagine your situation in your mind – the emotions, the visuals, the familiar location, the unusual "da ge" image.
3. Read the sentence aloud to yourself. Listen to your voice as your say the sentence (this is especially useful for audio learners)
4. Write the sentences as many times as possible. Don't rush – use the time to create the story in your mind.
5. Pay careful attention to words in the middle of your list. People typically forget items in the middle of a list, while remembering the beginning and the end.
6. After 15 minutes, your alarm will interrupt you. Set your alarm for 5 minutes
7. Enjoy a 5 minute break. Stretch, walk around-don't continue working!
3. Recovering Patterns (aka "The Easy Part")
1. After the break, set your alarm for 15 minutes. Now look at the pictures you created and your "cloze" sentences – you should be able to easy recall your vocabulary and phrases.
2. Repeat this for 15 minutes until your alarm interrupts you again.
3. You have now memorized 7 words.
Long-term Memorizing…
This method has helped you to recover words and phrases only for a little while. After several days or weeks, your brain will discard these patterns, thinking that they are not useful.
That's why we need to keep exposing ourselves to the same patterns again and again. We can do this by marketing English to ourselves. For more about how to do this, click here (Long-Term Memorzing).
