Much often, understanding the concepts is not enough to show the effectiveness of your studies. In addition to understanding, students need to memorise and retain the information so that they can use it later on. This requirement increases in theoretical subjects like Indian economy and Business Studies. With the rise of technology and virtual learning, the problem of understanding a concept has been largely resolved. However, students still face difficulties in learning and memorising the concepts for their exams.
This article presents for you the top 5 memorising techniques that you can use to memorise and retain information for a long time.
- Use Mnemonics
This is the most widespread technique nowadays to memorise information and concepts quickly and effectively.
The use of mnemonics to learn things is worked out by creating simple phrases or connecting the information to some sentences that are easy to comprehend.
- You can take the first letter of each word you need to learn and create a work out of it. For example – the countries surrounding the Caspian sea are – Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Russia, Iran and Kazakhstan. Taking the first letter of each word, you can form a mnemonic TARIK to remember all five names.
- You can also associate your information with some song or movie dialogue or character.
- The idea is to memorise the information with the help of anything that may relate to it.
- 2. Write it down
The proven ultimate conventional technique. Write down the information/concept/sentence you want to learn 10 times on a sheet of paper. Apart from engrossing it in your mind deeply, you will also get an advantage of writing it faster without thinking during your exam by virtue of muscle memory. This is the best proven technique to learn anything quickly.
Writing also ensures you full concentration on the topic as it is not possible to write without concentrating, but reading in the same situation is possible.
- 3. Get Yourself Tested
Read, understand and try to memorise a concept by your own at first. Then ask your parents, friends or siblings to test you and ask questions from the concept or information piece you want to learn. Tell them to ask questions till you are able to answer everything confidently. With each successive round of questions, you will start memorising the answers on your own.
This technique is very useful and effective for oral exams and Viva, as apart from memorising the concept you also practice speaking it confidently.
- 4. Recall
Very often, when we see a topic that we have already read, we assume that we know it very well. However, it is not the case. Our brain tries to skip the content and move to a newer one.
Whenever you feel that you know a topic or a concept, close your eyes and try to explain it to yourself as you would explain it to anyone else.
This confirms if your mind remembers the concept or not. In case it doesn’t, re-read the concept, revise it and try to explain it again.
- 5. Teach it to someone
We are at the highest level of our understanding and memorisation if we are able to teach a topic or a concept to someone, without using the book.
After you have finished reading and understanding the topic, try teaching it to your friend or siblings. If you are able to teach it clearly, and the learner is able to clear all his doubts, you don’t need further specialisation in the topic.
In case you have no one to teach, create an imaginary audience.
