Tips for Memorizing
No matter how easy or hard the class, no matter the topic of the course, you can’t get away from them: Lists are everywhere. Whether you’re required to memorize the Elements, the systems in the human body, or the capitals of the fifty United States, any time you take tests, you can expect to have to memorize long lists.
The good news: There are many mnemonic tricks available that help you do just that. One of the easiest is known as the 1-2-3 Method. Here’s how it goes. Place your list in front of you. If the items on the list do not already have a number, then number them all, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, until you get to the last item. For illustration purposes, we’re going to assume you’re memorizing the systems to the human body. We’ll just focus on the first five—again, for illustration purposes. The first five items on your list are: 1) Skeletal 2) Nervous 3) Digestive 4) Reproductive system 5) Respiratory Now, envision something that rhymes with the number. Not the item—the number. In this example, you need a rhymer for one, two, three, four, and five. Let’s say that our rhymer for “one” is “pawn” from a chess set. Our rhymer for “two” is “shoe.” For “three,” it’s “tree.” For “four,” it’s “door.” And for “five,” it’s “hive” (as in a bee hive). Now the key is to “hook” each number to the item that is on the list. We do so with the words you just came up with. So for “one,” we think of “pawn” and we want it to connect us to the skeletal system. In this example, you can envision a bunch of tiny skeletons on the pawn spots on a chess board. So now, as soon as you think “one,” the picture you get in your mind is a chess board full of skeletons…and you recall that “one” is the skeletal system. “Two” is “shoe.” Our picture here could be a shoe that is versy shy and shaking….because it’s a nervous shoe. So when we see the number two and see a nervous shoe, we remember that “two” should be the nervous system. “Three” is “tree.” Our picture might be of a tree that is eating and digesting animals from the forest. Now, when you see a 3 on your paper, you’ll remember the tree digesting things and think of the digestive system. “Four” is “door.” Since we want it to remind us of the reproductive system, picture a pregnant door in the hospital, giving birth to a tiny door. This should cause a 4 to immediately bring to mind the reproductive system. And “five” is “hive.” For this, you could imagine a person’s lungs breathing in and out hundreds of bees. Hopefully this would cause the 5 to remind you of the respiratory system. As you think of these pictures, the more outrageous they are, the more likely you are to remember them.
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Awesome idea! I’d previously used techniques linking each item on the list to the next one, but that has the disadvantage that, since they are all linked together, if you forget one item you forget every thing that comes after it. But this would get around that problem.
Hi,
Great idea and quite effective for memorizing lists.
Are you based in the UK?
I ask this because in Canada PAWN doesn’t rhyme with the number one but GUN does!
Thanks,
Sandra