How to Memorize Anything (20 page)

The
Music world
has long made use of mnemonics to help students in remembering the orders of notes. There are many fine examples; I will list a few.

• FACE
  — The order of the spaces in the treble clef.
  
• All Cows Eat Grass
  (ACEG)
  —The order of the spaces in the bass clef.
  

And then one for memorizing all the various types of scales:

• I Don’t Play Like My Aunt Lilly
  (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolodian, Aeolian, Locrian)
  

4. MUSIC MNEMONICS

There is a popular belief that learning and remembering information can be enhanced by setting the information to music. In a country like India, where hundreds of movies are released in a year and each movie has an average of 4 songs, music plays a very important part in our lives. Advertisements on radio and TV use music to help potential customers remember their products when shopping. It has been noticed that with sufficient repetition of ads, the shopper starts reciting an oft-repeated phrase from the commercial or starts singing the lyrics of the promotion melody. This has resulted in increased sales of the product.

The most recent example is of the new advt. of ‘Honda’ in which the brand is promoted through a song
‘Dekho dekhe yeh zamana…’
This song has a great recall value not just with grown-ups but with kids. As soon as they hear this song, they know it’s a ‘Honda’ ad.

Some other examples of famous advertisement slogans are:

Amul :
Utterly butterly delicious! Amul!

Cadbury :
Kuch meetha ho jaaye!

L’oreal :
Because you’re worth it!

McDonalds :
I am loving it!

Thumbs Up :
Taste the thunder!

Siyaram :
Come home to Siyaram
.

D
ID
Y
OU
K
NOW
???

From the time we are two-years-old, we learn how to memorize things by singing mnemonics,
For example
, everybody knows the ABC song! We learn to memorize ABC at a very young age. According to an online survey at
squidoo.com
, when memorizing the ABCs, 67 percent used the ABC song, 12 percent memorized it with a rhyme, while 7 percent with no rhyme or song and just with flashcards.

By putting a simple melody to the ABCs, we were all able to memorize twenty-six letters in no time, that too at such a young age! So why can’t we use this technique while memorizing when we are older?

In India, it is a common trend to compose devotional songs to the tunes of popular Bollywood numbers. Has it ever happened with you that while listening to that devotional song, the original song comes to your mind? You can recall the exact lyrics of the original song just by hearing its tune. Similarly, in case you have to memorize a lot of text in a short time, you can put it as lyrics of your most favourite song and sing it over and over again. So whenever you will think of the original song, the new lyrics will come to your mind.

W
HAT TO
L
EARN
? S
ING
A
LONG
!

Disney even caught on to the idea of teaching through song in an episode of ‘Hannah Montana’ released in 2007. In the episode, Miley must learn bones of the human body in order to pass her midterm exams. In order to do this, she figures out that it’s easiest to memorize them if she puts them in place of the words of one of her songs.

You can search it on internet by typing ‘Hannah Montana Bone dance.’ Or watch its video on youtube using the following address:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGdK4T7WUrA

You may also read its lyrics using the following address:
http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/h/hannah_montana/the_bone_dance.html

5. NUMBER PHRASE TECHNIQUE

It is generally considered easier to remember words, especially when they are associated with another object in some meaningful way, than it is to recall random numbers. Numbers are usually difficult to visualize as well. Number mnemonics can be used to memorize information like addresses, invoice numbers, phone extension etc.

In this method, you have to convert numbers in words to make a phrase that is easy to remember.

For example, your friend’s
house number is 134
. To memorize it you have to think of a one-letter word, then a three-letter word, and then a four-letter word. But you have to keep in mind that after putting it together, it should become a phrase. Like:

Now if your friend’s name is Ronit, just imagine you are banging the door of his house and saying
‘I Say Open’
. This way you will remember that this phrase is related to Ronit’s address.

You can also use this method to memorize telephone extensions. Example: Your father’s extension number in office is
2625.
You can memorize it as.

To memorize a big number like the customer Id of your bank account, you can create a phrase.

Let’s assume the number is 2525249. You can memorize it as:

But in the above example, if there is 0 instead of 9, then how will you do it? Can you create a word that has zero letters in it? No. In such a case, you can form a 10-letter word and consider it as a substitute for zero. The new phrase for 2525240 will be:

Suppose an address is a combination of letters and numbers, then you can make phrases that include those letters E.g. an address like: M-5/ A-4: can be remembered as:

You can imagine a big letter M is telling a joke to the person whose address you are trying to memorize.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

Using the above technique try to remember the following details.

Besides this, there are some other very unique pegging methods to memorize numbers which we will discuss in the next two chapters.

IMAGE MNEMONICS

It is a well-established fact that our mind easily remembers images. The advantage of imagining is that it provides an easy way of connecting information that is not readily connected otherwise. Using imagery can make learning more fun and interesting. Image mnemonics techniques generally involve two tasks:

• Forming mental images
  
• Making association between images.
  

The techniques that you learnt in the previous chapters like Chain method, PNN and Hide-and-Seek are basically different form of image mnemonics.

Just to remind you about these techniques, let’s take an example. Suppose you want to memorize the currency of Russia that is Ruble.

You can remember it by using the PNN method imagining that

‘
Because of
rushing
you fell into the
rubble’

(Russia: Rush, Ruble: rubble)

When you start applying these techniques in your day-to-day life, you will realize that many a times you are using more than one method to memorize the given information. That is absolutely fine!

Just as in case of a car. You can’t drive it only with a steering or with wheels or with just an oil tank. All these things need to be assembled together for you to drive it. Similarly, you can pick and choose more than one technique to memorize whatever information is required. With practice, you will soon master all these techniques.

Since many children as well as adults also find difficulty in memorizing spellings, spelling mnemonics are discussed in detail in the next chapter separately.

C
HAPTER AT A GLANCE

• Mnemonics are methods or devices that help in retention of information.
  
• Forms of mnemonics.
  
  • Rhyme mnemonics
    : In this we convert the given information in the form of a poem so that it becomes easy and interesting to memorize.
    E.g;
    In Fourteen-hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
    
  • Acronyms:
    Here first letter from the list of words is taken to form a new word.
    E.g; AIDS:
    A
    cquired
    I
    mmune
    D
    eficiency
    S
    yndrome
    
  • Acrostic:
    In this, the first letter of each term is taken to form such words that make a meaningful sentence. E.g: Oceans of the world:
    I
    ndian,
    A
    rctic,
    A
    tlantic,
    P
    acific can be remembered as ‘
    I am At Peace’.
    
  • Music Mnemonics:
    We associate the given information with music by infusing a melody to it. Jingles in advertising or nursery rhymes like ABC are some examples.
    
  • Number Phrase Mnemonics:
    In this we choose a two letter word for number 2 and a three letter word for number 3, and so on. With these words we make a meaningful phrase to remember the number. This method can be used to memorize:
    
• Addresses
  
• Invoice numbers
  
• Phone extn.
  
• IFSC code of banks
  
• Customer ID numbers etc.
  
  • Image Mnemonics:
    Here we visualize any given information in the form of an image and then associate various images to memorize the complete information. PNN, Hide-and-Seek and Chain method are examples of Image mnemonics.
    
  • Spelling Mnemonics:
    This form of mnemonic is used to memorize spellings of various simple as well as complex words.
    

11

MEMORIZING SPELLINGS

SPELLING MNEMONICS

When it comes to spellings, English can be a very tricky language. Lots of words have letters that are silent or two words might have the same sound but different spellings. There are certain words in which a particular letter is repeated a number of times. That makes it really confusing and in case you miss one letter, it changes the complete meaning of the word. Spelling mnemonics is intended to help us to correctly remember spellings of all kind of words.

For example :

• Believe or Beleive
  

Many people find it confusing whether the spelling has ‘ie’ or ‘ei’. The correct spelling is
Believe.
Just remember it by the phrase:

‘Never Be
lie
ve a
Lie’