Learning is the first thing in memory. Without learning nothing can be remembered. There are certain tested learning techniques. Apply these techniques in your studies and see the results for yourself. They are explained below.

Learning through comprehension

If you comprehend the meaning, the pattern, the cause and effect, etc., you can learn any lesson easily and quickly. Not only that, you can retain it for longer periods and retrieve it when you need it. On the contrary, you will forget less comprehended lesson in no time.

Spaced learning

Learning should be spaced over a period of time. Learning a lesson one hour a day for 3 days will definitely be better than learning the whole thing in three hours for just one day. Learn in a fun way. Never take it as a compulsion.   

Learning through recitation

Learning through recitation is very effective. Once you have learned a lesson, revise by reciting it loudly. This will strengthen your learning by engaging your auditory memory. This will improve your speaking habit and pronunciation too.

Learning through writing

Learning through writing is also very effective. Once you have learned a lesson through visual channel, revise by writing it. This will engage your muscle memory to strengthen your learning of the lesson. This will also improve your handwriting.      

Whole and part learning

Whole learning and part learning are two methods we can adopt. Some people are good at whole learning and others are good at part learning. Find out for yourself which method best suits you with the help of the following exercises.

                                                                 Exercises:

Take two poems of 16 lines divided into four stanzas, each stanza having 4 lines. Name one poem A and name the other B.

                                             (1) Learn poem A by whole method

Read the whole poem from the beginning to the end just once. Reproduce the poem as much as you can. Record the time (T1) you have taken, and count the errors (E1) you have made.

                                             (2) Learn poem B by part method

Read the first stanza just once. Reproduce it as much as you can. Read the second stanza only once. Reproduce that too. Do the same thing for the remaining stanzas. Now reproduce the entire poem. Record the time taken (T2), and count the errors (E2) made.

If the values of T1 and E1 are less than that of T2 and E2, learning by whole method suits you better. While learning by whole method, make efforts to grasp the meaning of the lesson. Once you know the meaning, find out all the major underlying ideas of the lesson. Then link all these ideas to the meaning of the whole lesson.

If the results are just contrary, you better opt for part learning. While learning by part method, divide the whole lesson into meaningful parts. The parts may be paragraphs or sections. Learn each paragraph or section with its underlying ideas. Put all the ideas together to derive the meaning of the whole lesson.     

Learning through reinforcement

You learn better if your learning is reinforced by certain conditions. You learn better when you reinforce your theoretical learning with practical conditions. Learning through reinforcement can be beneficially adopted in science subjects. 

Learning through distinct marks, figures and background

You learn better if you relate your lesson with distinct marks, figures and background. While reading your lesson, underline all the words or sentences that you think are important. Or mark them with marking inks of different colors. Assign them serial numbers and put the numbers in your memory file. Or take the beginning letters of all the marked words or sentences and create mnemonic chains out of them like you do with VIBGYOR.

Learning through association

You learn better and remember longer what you have learned if you learn it through association. Linking technique and guided imagery are all good examples. You can adopt these techniques to make your learning more effective.

Learning just before sleep

While sleeping, you don’t experience anything with your conscious mind. In other words, you don’t learn much in your dreams. You can take this advantage. Learn a lesson just before sleeping and revise it when you just wake up. Practice this and you will be amazed to see the results. 

Confident learning

Confident learning means developing your confidence while learning a lesson. Think that you will learn the lesson. And believe in what you think. Confidence develops only when you believe in yourself.

Never think that you have a poor memory. There is nothing like bad or good memory. Your memory depends on your training and your efforts put in the training.

Yours forever,

Rajendra Sagolsem


 
What is Memory?

Memory is a mental process. It has three parts such as,


  • Learning,
  • Retaining, and
  • Reproducing.

We all give importance to the reproducing part of memory. We all seem to think that improving memory is improving the reproducing part. For your information, we can’t reproduce a thing that has not been learned and retained. Can you remember a person you have never seen? You just can’t. Likewise, you can’t remember a lesson you have never read. Can you? Even if you have read a lesson, you can’t reproduce it unless you have retained it too in your memory. So when we talk of memory, we should understand all the three parts.

What is learning?

Learning means registering or recording. It means entering data into our memory system. Whatever we see, hear, smell, taste and feel through our five senses and whatever we think and imagine are all registered and retained in our memory system. When you read a lesson, you register it in your memory. When you meet a new friend, you register his name, his face, his body structure, and his behavior in your memory. Whenever you do something, you register it in your memory. We are just like a video camera that goes on recording the events. The moment we were born, our camera started recording every event. It didn’t stop even a single second. Whatever it has recorded so far are stored in our mind.    

What is retaining?

When you have read a lesson, you have registered it. However if you don’t retain it in your memory system, you won’t remember it. Suppose you have written down on a piece of paper the name of the new friend you met. This is equivalent to registering or recording. You put the piece of paper in your pocket. But when you meet the new friend after a long gap, you search for the piece of paper on which his name was written. You don’t find it. Now can you call his name? Never! Whatever you register or record should be retained properly so that you must be able to remember it whenever required.

What is reproducing?

Yes, this is the part in which we all want to excel. You know something? Joe Louis says, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” We all know the only precondition for going to heaven is to die. If we are alive, we are still on earth. Likewise, to excel in the reproducing part of your memory, you have to excel in learning and retaining as well. This amounts to saying that our ability to reproduce something perfectly or nicely is the result of the quality of our efforts put in learning and retaining it in our memory system.            

Physical basis of memory

Memory is a function of brain. We can also say the other way round. Brain is the physical basis of memory. Without brain, memory is not possible. So we have to take care of our brain. For proper functioning of our brain, we have to do some special exercises and take special diets.

The brain

Human brain has three main parts,

  • Brain Stem,
  • Cerebellum, and
  • Cerebrum.

Brain stem has three parts – Midbrain, Pons, and Medulla Oblongata.

Midbrain controls the eye movements. The Pons links the two hemispheres of the cerebrum. The medulla oblongata elongates to form the spinal cord and regulates breathing, heartbeat and blood circulation.

Cerebellum is situated just behind the brain stem. It controls the body movements. Therefore it has a body movement memory called Muscle Memory or Kinesthetic memory. Athletes have well developed cerebellum.

Cerebrum is part of the human brain where thinking and feeling take place. It is divided into four areas or lobes. They are:

  • Frontal lobe: This area deals with abstract problems.
  • Parietal lobe: This deals with sensory data.
  • Occipital lobe: This deals with vision.
  • Temporal lobe: This deals with memory, hearing, and language.

Cerebrum has two systems that work in tandem. They are called Neocortex and Limbic.

Neocortex system: It deals with thinking.
  • Limbic system: It deals with feeling. It is the system where our mind meets our body, our thought meets our emotion, and our endocrine glandular system interfaces with our brain.

The limbic system is again divided into five parts. They are:

  • Hippocampus: It stores short-term memories that are dry and unemotional.
  • Amygdala: It stores long-term emotional memories. Any experience involved with strong emotions is stored in it for a life time.
  • Hypothalamus: Closely connected to amygdala, it deals with the ways and means with which our body responds to various stimuli. It sends message to pituitary gland which relays it to the rest of our body. It also controls body temperature and hunger. In case of extreme situations, it sends message for more adrenaline.
  • Thalamus: It serves as a relay center. It picks up all the sensory messages except smell. It relays all the messages to the concerned processing centers in the brain.
  • Pituitary: It is called the third eye and is involved in intuition. It is also called the master endocrine gland. It gives orders to other glands about what to do. It receives messages from hypothalamus and helps our body produce hormones in order to face the situations.

Neurons and synapses

A normal human brain has approximately 100 billion neurons. Each neuron can make 100,000 possible connections with its axons and dendrites. This shows that our brain can make 100 trillion possible connections for our thinking, various perceptions, feelings, actions, etc. Each connection is called a synapse. And synapses record the data of life’s events.

Left and right hemispheres

The whole brain is divided into left hemisphere and right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is connected with the right side of our body through a nerve. So it deals with whatever we do with our right side. Likewise, the right hemisphere is connected through another nerve with the left side of our body. It deals therefore with whatever we do with our left side. For our convenience, we will call the left hemisphere left brain and the right hemisphere the right brain. For improving memory, we have to use the left brain as well as right brain.

Left brain has a thinking pattern that is mostly logical, linear, orderly, rational, sequential, organized, systematic, reality based, dealing with abstract ideas, verbal expression, reading, writing, auditory association, identifying facts and figures, phonetics and symbolism, and micro approach.

Right brain’s thinking pattern is mostly creative, imaginative, random, intuitive, non-verbal ways of knowing, unorganized, spatial awareness, shape and pattern recognition, art, music, color sensitivity, feeling the presence of objects and people, visualization, and macro approach.

Why should we have a good memory?

Knowledge is power. If we have knowledge, we have power. We acquire knowledge through learning and experiencing. We go on learning and experiencing every day of our life. But if we don’t remember whatever we have learned, our learning is useless. We must be able to remember what we have learned. We must be able to recall it whenever and wherever we want it.

Whether we are students, teachers, parents, engineers, doctors, administrators, lawyers, businesspersons, sports persons, politicians, or religious leaders, we all need a good memory. You can do better in your profession provided you utilize your memory in better ways.

Types of memory

For the sake of knowledge, let me tell you that there are three important types of memory. They are visual memory, auditory memory and kinesthetic memory. In general, our memories are 65% visual, 20% auditory and 15% kinesthetic. Visual memory is related to seeing, and auditory to hearing. Kinesthetic relates to the muscle memory.

You might have heard about so many other types of memory. But for us, we require only two types of memory. One is untrained memory and another is trained memory. And remember, untrained memory can be trained.

Yours forever,
Rajendra Sagolsem