You Can Learn to Remember: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life pdfdrive com

memorizing cards of chance
EXERCISE SEVENTEEN
Using the letter-number system explained in the text opposite, memorize your

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first randomly shuffled deck of cards, then test your accuracy.
1. Run through your 52-stage journey, just to double-check that it is firmly set in
your mind. Then, quickly flick through the deck of cards without intending to
memorize the order, but simply reminding yourself of the person with whom you
associate each card.
2. Shuffle the deck. Then, take a deep breath, focus and turn the first card face
up. Imagine the person whom the card represents at the first stage in your
journey. Give them an action or prop – if it is Bill Clinton, perhaps he is waving
the US flag.
3. Continue to turn the cards slowly, one on top of the other, mentally placing
each “person” along your journey. Take your time. Once you have been through
the deck, replay the journey in your mind and note down all the people you
remember. Decipher your code back into playing cards. Check your notes
against the deck. Don’t worry if you’ve made mistakes – practice makes perfect!
At the next attempt, time yourself.
memory at school
V
ery few schools devote lessons to teaching how to learn – even though it
would make the lives of students and teachers immensely easier. This is why I
felt it important to include in this book a few paragraphs dedicated to memory
techniques for effective learning. The basic principles of memory can be applied
to all kinds of teaching and learning, whatever your age. Once you have proved
to yourself that you can memorize a list of 10 or 20 unconnected words using a
memory chain (see
p.97
), the journey method (see pp.
102–7
) or any other
method that appeals to you, it becomes easy to see how you can apply the same
techniques to many academic subjects.
How might you use imagination and association to form links that will help
you to memorize the capital cities of all the US states? For example, the capital
of Texas is Austin, so perhaps you visualize an austere Texan standing over you.
On his head is an outsized oil baron’s hat, with a wide band – this helps you to
remember Texas because you know it is famous for oil production.
Likewise, linguistic mnemonics can help us to remember any number of
facts and figures, including the dates of historical events (such as when
Columbus landed in the New World: “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two,
Columbus sailed the ocean blue”) and even scientific subjects, such as biology

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and chemistry. For example, the three enzymes in the body that convert starch
and glycogen to sugars are amylase, tripase and lipase. What mnemonic can
might help you remember the names of the enzymes? You might think of your
friend Amy, who always stumbles over her words: “Amy tripped over her lip.”
Try using the number-shape system (see pp.
110–11
) to remember tables of
information or the atomic numbers of chemical elements. For example, the
atomic number for carbon is six, so we may see an elephant’s trunk (the image
we have chosen to represent the number six) stoking the coals on a fire (coal, of
course, is carbon), or we could visualize an elephant holding a carbon pencil in
its trunk as it tries to do its chemistry homework.
Memory techniques transcend language barriers, so they can also be used to
remember foreign words when we are learning a new language. For example, if
we wanted to remember that the Italian word for a stamp is francobollo, we
might form a mini-story and imagine how amazed we would be if, out of the
blue, we were stampeded by a bull called Frank!