COMPREHENSION

Description

It consists in incorporating knowledge into your memory.
Before memorizing something, it’s essential to understand what you are trying to incorporate.

Advantages

• It increases long term memory.
• It benefits the understanding of new concepts.
• It helps you judge critically.
• It lets you use knowledge in new situations.

How memory works

Knowledge is incorporated through two different processes:

• Repetition: repeating the incorporated concepts.
• Association: associating a new idea with another that you already know makes remembering the first one a lot easier.

Applying these ideas

• Ask and solve problems in the subject.
• Involve as many of your senses as you can.
• Look for illustrative examples.
• Practice the knowledge you’ve acquired.
• Contrast what you’ve learned with other sources.
• Reflect on the subject.
• Try to relate it to what you already know.
• Talk to other students about the topic.
• Evaluate your learning.
• Plan your reviews.

Memorization techniques are useful.

Memorization techniques

Mnemonic techniques

It’s a well-known technique, used by many students. It consists in creating words from the initials of a list of other words that you are trying to memorize.

The comic book

It consists in creating a comic book with the information that you want to memorize. This technique, used together with mental images, can have very good results.

Rhymes, verses

It consists in looking for something that rhymes with the information you have to remember, making it easier to do so.

The route

This technique consists in associating certain points of a usual route to the list of words that you want to learn. To do this, you have to:

• Choose the points on the usual route
• Associate the order of the words you want to learn with that of the corresponding points.

To achieve this association you should use mental images. It’s important that you always use the points on the route in the same order.

Numbers technique

It consists in replacing the numbers with consonants, forming words with them. Its success is based on the fact that remembering words is easier than remembering numbers. There are many different codes you can use, the important thing is that you always use the same one.

The chain

The name of this technique represents a chain in which each link is connected with the one before and the one following it. This is also what you try to do with the words you want to memorize.

Symbolic technique

It consists in replacing the numbers with words that represent images that are related to the number.

You should always use the same code. Once you replace the numbers with the words, you create a sentence and memorize it.

This technique, just like the numbers technique, is based on the fact that words and images are easier to remember than numbers.