Topic: Thoughts on Remembering

10-second review: Techniques for remembering what you study.

Title: How to Study in College. Third Edition. Walter Pauk. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984.

Summary: The best time to review is within the first twenty minutes after learning something or after a lecture.

You’ll forget the ideas in lectures unless you take notes.

You must be interested in the subject if you want to remember it.

In remembering, “use the fewest to do the mostest.” [For example, when trying to remember new words, reduce the meaning to one, two or at most three words. You’ll quickly forget long definitions. RayS.]

Learning is based on what you already know. [In reading education, we say that the more you already  know about a topic, the better you will understand what you read about it. RayS. ]

Organize your learning.

Say aloud in your own words what you want to remember from reading or lectures.

Take five-minute breaks in what you are studying; don’t try to do it all at once.

“If you remember with words alone you’re using only half your brain”; add a diagram or picture.

Mnemonics can help: How do you remember the names of the Great Lakes? “Super Machine Heaved Earth Out.” Lakes Superior, Michigan Huron, Erie, Ontario.

Comment: In spelling, Harry Shefter (Six minutes a Day to Perfect Spelling: see Amazon.com to purchase) shows how to remember words most frequently misspelled by using mnemonics. If people misspell “argument,” they will do so as “arguement.” Shefter suggests the following: “ArGUMent: “Never chew GUM in an arGUMent.” He blows up the “trouble spot” (arGUMent) and adds a silly association: “Never chew GUM in an arGUMent.” He points out that usually words are misspelled because of the indefinite vowel, a vowel which could sound like a, e, i, o, or u. It’s not clearly pronounced. Example “cEmEtEry.” His silly association: “EEE!” She screamed when she passed a cEmEtEry.” Many people pronounce the last “e” in “cemetery” as an “a.” RayS.