How I Memorize Stuff
June 9, 2010
A couple of months back, I attended Wheaton’s annual Theology Conference, at which N.T. Wright was the featured speaker (and topic, really). During a chapel message that he gave, he challenged the students to work at memorizing the book of Ephesians. At about the same time, I had just finished memorizing Romans 8 to fulfill a course requirement, and as a result the idea of memorization got my attention.
I decided to work at memorizing the book of Philippians using a simple strategy. When Wright encouraged the Ephesians thing, he said that we should try to do it by taking one verse a day, meditating on it, and looking both to the verse before it and the one after it. Each day we’d move forward a verse, and by the end of 150ish days we’d have memorized the book.
I like that idea, but that’s not enough for me. For me, the key to memorization is two-fold.
First, I’ve got to hear myself say it out loud. I call this the American Flag Principle. I don’t know about you, but I can recite the salute to the American flag with ease, and I’ve been able to do so since halfway through kindergarten. After saying it every day, it stuck. I apply the same idea to memorizing other stuff; by repeating a verse out loud several times, it just sorta starts to stick.
Second, I need to say it lots of times without looking. That is, I need to work at quickly being able to say the entire verse with my eyes closed, and once I can do that I need to repeat it a bunch of times. In fact, after memorizing Romans 8 entirely, I’ve noticed that if I go a few weeks without saying it, I’ll forget much of it and need to relearn it. Repeat, repeat, repeat…and don’t look.
So there you have it, my two principles. What do you do? Do you make up a song? Come up with a mental picture? Write it down and take away a word at a time? Teach me how to memorize stuff.
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5 Comments to How I Memorize Stuff
by ABLeo
On June 9, 2010 at 3:54 pm
When I think of memorizing things, I immediately am taken back to my days in foreign language classes memorizing long lists of vocabulary words. I know everyone had some sort of system of ingesting mass amounts of new vocabulary, and I was no exception. What I came to learn — and have since employed with great success in my life as a college student — is similar to your second point, though perhaps strips it to its bare principle: I had to "test" myself. With my foreign vocabulary, after reading through the lists a few times, I would cover up the English translations, and see how many of the words had stuck in my mind. For those words that didn't, the act of struggling over the word seemed to serve as a cognitive tool for helping my brain, as it were, lock it in. So the next time I came across the word, something in my brain triggered, and I remembered.
My second "trick" could roughly be described as "multi-contextualization." After running through the process above, I would then switch, and cover up the foreign words (so that I was now translating from English to the foreign language) and repeat the process. The ability, in other words, to be able to move back and forth between the languages and to be comfortable using the vocabulary in a variety of settings (i.e. written, auditory, and oral) helped ensure what I memorized could be recalled with ease, and could then transcend mere memorized characters and sounds to be true, working knowledge. What is more, the multi-contextualization helps one retain information long-term in a way brute repetition does not, at least for me. Probably has something to do with locating the information in multiple brain centers.
by Steven Rossi
On June 10, 2010 at 10:33 pm
The second one has definitely been helpful to me in the past when learning languages, as well. When first learning Greek, for instance, it was really easy to simply memorize the translation of Greek words into English without ever trying to recall the Greek translation of English words (particularly in that there are very few times that you'd ever need to translate something from English into a dead language, so it's not totally a necessary skill). I realized that by translating back from English into Greek, I was much more apt to recall the information at a much later time because, as you said, it became working knowledge rather than a cheap fact.
I wonder which is easier, memorizing long lists of facts (i.e., vocabulary) or a long passage (like Scripture). Interesting…
by Nathan
On June 18, 2010 at 11:26 am
When I was younger, memorizing had been one of my greatest talents! LOL Kidding aside, I find it easier to memorize. I even had pneumonics for me to easily remember everything and relate every word I need to memorize with the things that surrounds me. And the technique really helps!
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