How to mem­o­rize words by think­ing about the word?

Monday, October 5th, 2009 one Commented
Under: How to, Study Stuff (Thur), good

Intro

Mem­o­riza­tion, in some way, is very very very easy. Think about it. Did we have to sit in the library to mem­o­rize and to under­stand how and when to say “good morn­ing?” I know, it’s a silly ques­tion to ask. How­ever, because some­how we under­stood what “good morn­ing” meant and some­how knew when to use it, we sim­ply use them with­out hav­ing a hard time. Same con­cept with the ‘harder’ words. If we use them over and over, see them watch them con­tin­u­ously, they will be rec­og­nized eas­ily. And espe­cially in the tests, recognizing those hard ter­mi­nolo­gies will be a piece of cake.

 

 

 Table of Contents

 

 

Imag­ing

I think imag­ing is one of the most valu­able tech­niques that a human being can have. We imag­ine things, con­cepts, and even other things that’re beyond our phys­i­cal reach. Therefore, use your own orga­nized and cal­cu­lated imag­ing tech­niques to mem­o­rize things. How­ever, if you want to get lit­tle help how to do this tech­nique, or just to get what this guy is talk­ing about, fol­low my sug­ges­tion (I mean a suggestion);

1. Imag­ine an event that relates to the subject

If there are hun­dreds of words to mem­o­rize, flash­card is what I rec­om­mend. (How to mem­o­rize vocab­u­lar­ies using flash cards?) However, things like sci­en­tific words from biol­ogy text­book chap­ter 4 (don’t know what’s in there),  try to draw the pic­ture of each vocab­u­lar­ies. Since most text­books con­tain pic­tures and illus­tra­tions, it helps to draw a pic­ture in mind. But, do not just draw a sim­ple pic­ture in your mind; instead, imag­ine that those things are in an event. For example,

- sub­jects like photosynthesis, I would start from the basic struc­tures such as mem­brane sys­tem or chloro­phyll. Thus, I would imag­ine as spe­cific as pos­si­ble about any kind of event such as on a rainy day, the leaves are shak­ing and wav­ing rapidly, and the hydrophylic heads of the mem­brane dances because they are happy to feel the water. Here, I tried to describe what I thought with the polar head in a mem­brane sys­tem. (I know I can’t describe in words, but I can imag­ine much bet­ter… lol)

**This tech­nique is not try­ing to describe the ran­dom event into words, but to imag­ine as rec­og­niz­able as pos­si­ble in order to be remem­bered. There­fore, the more shock­ing event that you can think of, the more recog­niseable at any time.

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2. Add things to your experience

What was your hap­pi­est moment that you can think of? Or what are your favorite moments? Such events are eas­ily rec­og­niz­able, and some are even per­ma­nent. There­fore, those events are good to use as a resource. For exam­ple, I know it’s absolutely ran­dom :P , but try to add a cel­lu­lar res­pi­ra­tion process (glycolysis+Citric cycle+etc.) into the mem­o­ries of roller coaster riding. How? 

- Let’s say that the roller coaster has a scary theme which the ride goes into a cave. Now, think that the out­side of the cave as gly­col­y­sis occur­ring in cyto­plasm, and inside of the cave as the mito­chon­drion where oxy­gen is required and all the Cit­ric cycle and elec­tron trans­port chain action occurs. 

Fur­ther­more, if the mem­o­riza­tion requires details, add things to the same event. For example,

- imag­ine a glu­cose mol­e­cule is one sec­tion of the roller coaster; there will be 2 peo­ple seat­ing inside which can be rep­re­sented as 2 pyru­vates com­ing out from one glu­cose. Because two peo­ple would be scream­ing, think that each per­son would pro­duce a loud noise which can be rep­re­sented as of two ATP’s being produced. 

**Don’t for­get that this exam­ple takes out­side the cave, or out­side the Mito­chon­drion. :P  

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3. Relate con­so­nants with objects

I didn’t know how to word the title, so some peo­ple might say, ‘what is this guy talk­ing about?’ Now, here’s the expla­na­tion, and I hope you under­stand this. lol; When you think about an event to relate the sub­jects that you are try­ing to mem­o­rize, include some sound­ing affects. For example,

- I want to mem­o­rize the word hyper­tonic, and hypo­tonic, I would first think about some­thing that closely matches to each words’ con­so­nant sound. Thus, I would think such as hip­popota­mus for hypo­tonic, and since hippo drinks lots of water, I would rec­og­nize that water enters hypo­tonic solution. 

For the other word, I don’t have to think about the hyper­tonic because it is the oppo­site of hypotonic. But if it was a dif­fer­ent mean­ing, then I would mem­o­rize the same way as I did with the word hypo­tonic. Yet, this tech­nique is bet­ter to be used rarely because it’s usu­ally good only right before the test.

**How­ever, use what­ever fits you lol;;

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Con­clu­sion

Mem­o­riza­tion by imag­ing about words is actu­ally what most peo­ple use when they are try­ing to mem­o­rize mas­sive vocab­u­lar­ies. How­ever, such tech­nique requires con­tin­u­ous rep­e­ti­tion because images fade away as the time goes. Gen­er­ally, peo­ple for­get most things after the test because they stop mem­o­riz­ing them. There­fore, it is impor­tant to know what tech­nique is the best fro you, but it is more impor­tant to use it con­tin­u­ously. Study hard everyone!!!!!!!

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