I was talking with a friend I have had way since high school, and we were reminiscing about how we were taught certain things for certain classes. We both had one particular teacher for world history who basically told us what was in the book, and we were expected to remember it. It was kinda agreed that we got a very raw learning experience since no one really teaches you how exactly to learn and memorize. Usually, I suppose you are supposed to find your own way and come to a conclusion that could have been conveyed to you easily in our formative learning years. But anyway, we got on the topic of what we do now to memorize something important. Funny enough, for a long time, both of us did the same thing, which was word association. So take for example the Italian word for elevator, which is acensore. I would associate it with "ascend," which is to go up.

So that got me thinking, what's the way in which you memorize? In order to memorize something, you have to do a whole host of things in order to really retain it, like understanding it, associating it, utilizing it, etc. Everybody has their own different way of going about the same thing. So what is your way? Also, how do any of you memorize things like paintings or images with no words to associate with it?

There are a few ways I can think of. For the examples, I use the five elements of a contract, namely the offer, acceptance, capacity, consideration, and legality. The memorization of the terms are important, but the order are also vitally important.

Acronyms---------------------------------------------------------

Some people like to use acronyms to memorize something important. To utilize an acronym, what you want to do is use the first letter in each of the words that you have to memorize and form a novel word. This novel word is then stuck in your memory, which I honestly find to be one of the most effective ways to remember something, So in the case of the example, you could memorize is like this;



That whole slew of words comes out to OACCL. I then cross memorize that jumble of letters with a word that is very prevalent in my mind and sounds similar to the blunt pronunciation. The reason is because when I do associate it with a word I use often or related to a subject I know very well and go through very often, I ingrain it into my memory. I think of "oracle" as in the oracle of Delphi. I memorized that for a test 3 years ago and I have still not forgotten it.

Acrostic memorization------------------------------------------------

I think almost everybody has used this at one point or another in their life. Remember Please excuse my dear aunt sally? Acrostic memorization is when you create new words based off of the first letter in each sentence. So in the case of the example, I would say;



Honestly, this is not the best mixture here, but you get the idea. I associate what I have to learn with notions I associate in predicate logic. So I memorize it both as a sentence and as a predicate formula (well.. loosely at any rate).

Songs--------------------------------------------------------------

I find that I am using this more lately, especially in terms of learning a new language. You are basically putting the information you have to learn into a song that will hopefully be retained into your memory. I don't really know how to convey this, so think about the generic example of Christopher Columbus, "In 1492, Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue." I would think this would work well with a simple name and date association or term and definition thing. So for "offer," I could say "If someone offers, it could fill my coffers." LOL! Seriously, I defy you to conjure a better song. LOL!

Seriously though, I can't think of any more off hand and I'm sure there are more. How do you memorize? What do you do for visual retention? What else am I missing?