As the back-to-school season nears, many students are starting to prepare for an academic comeback. Having an academic comeback is only possible with the help of a positive mindset and effective study techniques. However, recent studies have shown that memorization techniques help you get the grades you want and understand a specific topic.
What is memorization?
Memorization is committing something to memory or learning something by heart (“Memorization Definition - Google Search,” 2024). For people without a photographic memory, this can be a hard process to comprehend, therefore, many psychologists have suggested techniques to make the process easier. One of the main reasons this is such an effective process is that your mind is engaged and working toward learning and memorizing a topic (Verywell, 2023).
Why is it important?
Many argue that memorization is an outdated process and instead of encouraging students to memorize, we should be teaching them skills. However, memorization can help increase productivity and improve cognitive brain function. During a lot of courses, learning a topic involves understanding previous topics which results in loads of back-and-forth taking up time that could be spent studying. Memorizing a previous topic increases time management and productivity. While you try to memorize something, you utilize your brain in a way you wouldn't normally do, resulting in higher brain function that could potentially be helpful in other scenarios in the future. So, although understanding and receiving skills are important, memorization is a manner which can help with success in school (“Teachers: Why Rote Memorization Is More Important than You Think,” 2020).
What are some of these methods?
Story Creation
One of the most effective memorization techniques is the creation of a story. This method works by using the facts you are trying to memorize to create a story. In this method, your temporal lobe and hippocampus work to piece together the missing parts to each other eventually leading to a fact that can be remembered easily.
For example, if you are trying to remember the formula for gravitational potential energy (PE = mgh);
A story can be created such as you being a PE class when you see your mother, and grandmother petting a horse outside the window.
Specific parts in the story can be highlighted to memorize the formula such as PE class, mother, grandmother, and horse (Wong, 2020).
Understand before Memorize
A common mistake students make while utilizing the process of memorization is that they don’t understand the topic. When you memorize information, you unintentionally build “pegs” to hang up similar information in your brain. Having a lot of information about a specific topic and connecting them makes it easier to memorize a certain fact about that topic. The additional facts put the original fact in context and give you “pegs” or “handles” to hang the original fact.
For example, you want to memorize; the Pythagorean Theorem: In a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
If that is all you learn, it is difficult to memorize the theorem.
If you also learn; using this theorem, you can find the length of the third side of a right-angled triangle if you know the other two sides.
This will help you understand the importance of the theorem making it easier to remember (Wong, 2020).
Using Acronyms and Mnemonics
An acronym is an abbreviated form of the first letters of a series. Students are more likely to remember a short word rather than a long phrase.
For example, PEDMAS;
Parenthesis, Exponents, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction
A mnemonic is a short phrase that can be used to remember a rule or principle.
For example, My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us Noodles
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune (Wong, 2020)
Using hard-to-read fonts
Researchers at Princeton University and Indiana University conducted a study where test subjects had better recall when the information was presented to them in hard-to-read fonts. This works because hard-to-read fonts make you think about what you are reading deeply. Despite the advantages of this method, it should be used along with the other methods as this method can be overused and become difficult (Wong, 2020).
Final Notes
In conclusion, memorization is considered a good trick for having an academic comeback. Like everything else, it should not be overused as it could become a problem. It should be used with connection to other studying tips so you could be educated about all different types of studying. Therefore, along with taking notes and reading textbook pages, you can create stories, acronyms, and mnemonics, and use hard-to-read fonts to improve the memorization of a specific course.
Written by: Krisha L
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