how long to memorise essay

How to memorise essays and long responses

Lauren Condon

Marketing Specialist at Atomi

When it comes to memorising essays or long responses for your exams, there are three big things to consider.

• Should you even try to memorise an essay?
• Do you know how to adapt your memorised response to the exam question?
• How on earth are you meant to memorise a 1,200 word essay??

It’s a lot to weigh up but we can help you out here. If you want an answer to the first question, here’s one we prepared earlier. But wait, there’s more! If you’re super keen to read more about question #2, then go ahead and click here .

And for that third point on how to actually memorise a long essay? Well, all you have to do is keep reading...

1. Break it down

Your essay/long response/creative writing piece could be anywhere between 800 and 1,200 words long. Yeah… that’s a lot. So when it comes to memorising the whole thing, it’s a lot easier to break the answer down into logical chunks and work on memorising it bit by bit.

So if you want to memorise your Discovery Essay, you might have something like this:

• Introduction
• Theme 1 with the assigned text
• Theme 1 with the related text
• Theme 2 with the assigned text
• Theme 2 with the related text

You’re going to want to memorise the paragraphs and pay attention to the structure then you can piece it all together in the exam. Having a killer structure makes it a lot easier to remember the overall bones of this situation and if you’re finding this effective, you can even break those body paragraphs down further like topic sentence > example > explanation > connection to thesis.

2. Use memory tricks

Now, there are lots of different strategies and approaches when it comes to memorising a long piece of writing. Moving in sections, you can try reading it out loud over again (slowly looking at the paper less and less) or the classic look-cover-write-check approach. If you’re really struggling, make some of your own flashcards that have the first sentence on one side and the next sentence on the back so you can test your progress.

You could also enlist the help of some creative mnemonics (memory tricks) to remind you which sentence or section needs to come next. Pick one keyword from each sentence in the paragraph and turn them into a silly sentence to help you remember the structure of the paragraph and to make sure you don’t forget one of your awesome points.

3. Play to your strengths

Not all of us are super geniuses that can just read an essay and then memorise the entire thing but we’re all going to have our own strengths. There’s going to be something whether it’s art, music, writing, performance or sport that just ‘clicks’ in your brain and this is what you want to capitalise on. So for me, I was really into debating and public speaking (hold back the jokes please) and was used to giving speeches and remembering them. So whenever I wanted to memorise a long response, I would write out the essay onto palm cards and then practice it out loud like a speech. Did it annoy my family? Yes. Was I too embarrassed to tell people my strategy? Yes. Did it work? Absolutely. 💯

Whatever your strengths are, find a way to connect them to your essay and come up with a creative way of learning your long response that will be much easier and more effective for you!

4. Start early

So you know how there’s that whole long-term/short-term memory divide? Yeah well that’s going to be pretty relevant when it comes to memorising. You’re going to have a much better chance of remembering your long response if you start early and practice it often, instead of trying to cram it in the night before… sorry.

The good news is, you still have a couple of months before the HSC so try to get your prepared response written, get good feedback from your teachers and then make it perfect so it’s ready to go for the HSC. Then, the next step is to start memorising the essay now and test yourself on it fairly regularly all the way up to your exams. This way, you have plenty of time to really lock it deep into your memory.

5. Test yourself

The final and maybe even most important step is to test yourself. And not with flashcards or the look-cover-check-repeat anymore. Once you’ve got the essay memorised pretty well, you want to spend the weeks coming up to HSC doing past questions so you can practice

• Having the essay memorised
• Being able to recall it under pressure
• Adapting it to any question so that all your hard work will actually pay off

For this to work, you really need to commit 100% to exam conditions (no cheating!) and it’s definitely worth sending those responses to your teacher to get them marked. That way, you will actually know if you’re doing a good job of remembering the core of your argument but also tailoring it perfectly to the question.

Any subject with essays or long responses can be super daunting so if you want to have a pre-written, adaptable response ready to go then it’s worth making sure you can actually memorise it for your exam. Remember to break down the essay into sections, play to your memory strengths and make sure you consistently test yourself all the way up to HSC. That should do the trick. 👌

Published on

July 28, 2017

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Re-reading is inefficient. Here are 8 tips for studying smarter.

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The way most students study makes no sense.

That's the conclusion of Washington University in St. Louis psychologists Henry Roediger and  Mark McDaniel — who've spent a combined 80 years studying learning and memory, and recently distilled their findings with novelist Peter Brown in the book  Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning .

using active learning strategies is most effective

The majority of students study by re-reading notes and textbooks — but the psychologists' research, both in lab experiments and of actual students in classes, shows this is a terrible way to learn material. Using active learning strategies — like flashcards, diagramming, and quizzing yourself — is much more effective, as is spacing out studying over time and mixing different topics together.

McDaniel spoke with me about the eight key tips he'd share with students and teachers from his body of research.

1) Don't just re-read your notes and readings

Photofusion/UIG via Getty Images

"We know from surveys that a majority of students, when they study, they typically re-read assignments and notes. Most students say this is their number one go-to strategy.

when students re-read a textbook chapter, they show no improvement in learning

"We know, however, from a lot of research, that this kind of repetitive recycling of information is not an especially good way to learn or create more permanent memories.  Our studies of Washington University students, for instance, show that when they re-read a textbook chapter, they have absolutely no improvement in learning over those who just read it once.

"On your first reading of something, you extract a lot of understanding. But when you do the second reading, you read with a sense of 'I know this, I know this.' So basically, you're not processing it deeply, or picking more out of it. Often, the re-reading is cursory — and it's insidious, because this gives you the illusion that you know the material very well, when in fact there are gaps."

2) Ask yourself lots of questions

Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe via Getty Images

"One good technique to use instead is to read once, then quiz yourself, either using questions at the back of a textbook chapter, or making up your own questions. Retrieving that information is what actually produces more robust learning and memory.

retrieving information is what produces more robust learning and memory

"And even when you can't retrieve it — when you get the questions wrong — it gives you an accurate diagnostic on what you don't know, and this tells you what you should go back and study. This helps guide your studying more effectively.

"Asking questions also helps you understand more deeply.  Say you're learning about world history, and how ancient Rome and Greece were trading partners. Stop and ask yourself why they became trading partners. Why did they become shipbuilders, and learn to navigate the seas? It doesn't always have to be why — you can ask how, or what.

"In asking these questions, you're trying to explain, and in doing this, you create a better understanding, which leads to better memory and learning. So instead of just reading and skimming, stop and ask yourself things to make yourself understand the material."

3) Connect new information to something you already know

"Another strategy is, during a second reading,  to try relating the principles in the text to something you already know about. Relate new information to prior information for better learning.

"One example is if you were learning about how the  neuron transmits electricity. One of the things we know if that if you have a fatty sheath surround the neuron, called a  myelin sheath , it helps the neuron transmit electricity more quickly.

"So you could liken this, say, to water running through a hose. The water runs quickly through it, but if you puncture the hose, it's going to leak, and you won't get the same flow. And that's essentially what happens when we age — the myelin sheaths break down, and transmissions become slower."

( Quasar/Wikimedia Commons )

4) Draw out the information in a visual form

"A great strategy is making diagrams, or visual models, or flowcharts. In a beginning psychology course, you could diagram the  flow of classical conditioning . Sure, you can read about classical conditioning, but to truly understand it and be able to write down and describe the different aspects of it on a test later on — condition, stimulus, and so on — it's a good idea to see if you can put it in a flowchart.

"Anything that creates active learning — generating understanding on your own — is very effective in retention. It basically means the learner needs to become more involved and more engaged, and less passive."

5) Use flashcards

"Flashcards are another good way of doing this. And one key to using them is actually re-testing yourself on the ones you got right.

keeping a correct card in the deck and encountering it again is more useful

"A lot of students will answer the question on a flashcard, and take it out of the deck if they get it right. But it turns out this isn't a good idea — repeating the act of memory retrieval is important. Studies show that keeping the correct item in the deck and encountering it again is useful. You might want to practice the incorrect items a little more, but repeated exposure to the ones you get right is important too.

"It's not that repetition as a whole is bad. It's that mindless repetition is bad."

6) Don't cram — space out your studying

Johannes Simon/Getty Images

"A lot of students cram — they wait until the last minute, then in one evening, they repeat the information again and again. But research shows this isn't good for long term memory. It may allow you to do okay on that test the next day, but then on the final, you won't retain as much information, and then the next year, when you need the information for the next level course, it won't be there.

practice a little bit one day, then two days later

"This often happens in statistics. Students come back for the next year, and it seems like they've forgotten everything, because they crammed for their tests.

"The better idea is to space repetition. Practice a little bit one day, then put your flashcards away, then take them out the next day, then two days later. Study after study shows that spacing is really important."

7) Teachers should space out and mix up their lessons too

Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images

"Our book also has information for teachers. And o ur educational system tends to promote massed presentation of information as well.

"In a typical college course, you cover one topic one day, then on the second day, another topic, then on the third day, another topic. This is massed presentation. You never go back and recycle or reconsider the material.

"But the key, for teachers, is to put the material back in front of a student days or weeks later. There are several ways they can do this. Here at Washington University, there are some instructors who give weekly quizzes, and used to just put material from that week's classes on the quiz. Now, they're bringing back more material from two to three weeks ago. One psychology lecturer explicitly takes time, during each lecture, to bring back material from days or weeks beforehand.

the key, for teachers, is to put the material back in front of a student days or weeks later

"This can be done in homework too. It's typical, in statistics courses, to give homework in which all of the problems are all in the same category. After correlations are taught, a  student's homework, say, is problem after problem on correlation. Then the next week, T tests are taught, and all the problems are on T tests. But we've found that sprinkling in questions on stuff that was covered two or three weeks ago is really good for retention.

"And this can be built into the content of lessons themselves. Let's say you're taking an art history class. When I took it, I learned about Gauguin, then I saw lots of his paintings, then I moved on to Matisse, and saw lots of paintings by him. Students and instructors both think that this is a good way of learning the painting styles of these different artists.

"But experimental studies show that's not the case at all. It's better to give students an example of one artist, then move to another, then another, then recycle back around. That interspersing, or mixing, produces much better learning that can be transferred to paintings you haven't seen — letting students accurately identify the creators of paintings, say, on a test.

"And this works for all sorts of problems. Let's go back to statistics. In upper level classes, and the real world, you're not going to be told what sort of statistical problem you're encountering — you're going to have to figure out the method you need to use. And you can't learn how to do that unless you have experience dealing with a mix of different types of problems, and diagnosing which requires which type of approach."

8) There's no such thing as a "math person"

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

"There's some really  interesting work by Carol Dweck , at Stanford. She's shown that students tend to have one of two mindsets about learning.

it turns out that mindsets predict how well students end up doing

"One is a fixed learning model. It says, 'I have a certain amount of talent for this topic — say, chemistry or physics — and I'll do well until I hit that limit. Past that, it's too hard for me, and I'm not going to do well.'  The other mindset is a growth mindset. It says that learning involves using effective strategies, putting aside time to do the work, and engaging in the process, all of which help you gradually increase your capacity for a topic.

"It turns out that the mindsets predict how well students end up doing. Students with growth mindsets tend to stick with it, tend to persevere in the face of difficulty, and tend to be successful in challenging classes. Students with the fixed mindset tend not to.

"So for teachers, the lesson is that if you can talk to students and suggest that a growth mindset really is the more accurate model — and it is — then students tend to be more open to trying new strategies, and sticking with the course, and working in ways that are going to promote learning. Ability, intelligence, and learning have to do with how you approach it — working smarter, we like to say."

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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How to Memorise an Entire Essay or Speech

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How to memorise a complete essay or speech

Christmas and New year is over and for some there looms the prospect of mid  term exams. A lot of these exams will be closed book exams. A closed  book exam tests your knowledge and memory of a subject. One of the ways  in which some students prepare is to actively learn the subject areas and also  look at past questions and anticipate a question which might come up. At  the moment my wife is studying for exams in which she is actively learning  her subjects and also she has written 3 x 500 word essays on the three areas  of study.

Together we have come up with a system which means that she can memorise a  500 word essay in 1 day and 3 x 500 word essays in 3 days. Together with  actively learning the subject she is confident that she has prepared well.

In this article I will show you the system we came up with to memorise 1500 words verbatim. Sound hard? It is actually quite easy and is a system I used when at university studying for my psychology degree for 2 x 1000 word essays.

This method can also be used for memorising any kind of written work or speech.

Before you begin

Before you begin this it is important to actually believe that you can memorise  a complete essay or speech whether it be 500 words or 2000 words. When  I first suggested using this method to my wife she said that she would never  be able to memorise an essay word for word.

Once she got over this and started telling herself that she could do it we started.

Active learning

First off, this method of memorising an essay should not be substituted for  actively learning a subject. Active learning is when you read, not skim,  the subject area and take note of the key points. Cross reading is also  very good for active learning. This is when you read books on the subjects  by different authors. Some authors are not good at getting information across  so cross reading is an excellent way learning.

The method for memorising an essay or speech.

You will need to write out the essay or speech first. Treat this part  of the process as if you were writing an essay to hand in for marking by your  lecturer. In other words make sure it is worthy of memorising.

When you have written the essay make sure it is grammatically correct as you will be memorising every comma and full stop.

When you are sure you have a good essay or speech print it off and mark down  the left margin the number of paragraphs e.g. if you have 6 paragraphs write  at the side of each paragraph the numbers 1 "“ 6. In the right hand  margin write the number of sentences in each paragraph. This is the first  part of the memorisation process.

A quiet place to study

Now, make sure you have quiet space to be able to read, walk and vocalise  your essay. When you are sure you will not be interrupted you can start.

With your printed essay start walking and reading out loud the essay or speech. When  you have read it out loud a few times go back to the first sentence and read  it out loud. Then read it again and again until you have memorised it. When  you are confident you have memorised it word for word go on to the next sentence. When  you have memorised the second sentence, whilst walking vocalise the first two  sentences without looking at your printed essay. If you are okay  with this go on to do the same with your 3rd sentence and so on until you have  memorised your first full paragraph. This can take anywhere between 15 "“ 45  depending on motivation, alertness, quietness etc.

The reason I ask you to walk is to keep your blood flowing whilst memorising. If  you are sitting down you might nod off, by walking it will prevent you from  nodding off. I find walking up and down an excellent way to concentrate  on reading.

Keep reading, and vocalising your essay or speech until you have memorised  it completely. When you are confident of having memorised it. Vocalise  it without looking at your printed sheet. If you get it right, do it  again, and if you get it right a second time reward yourself with a cup of  tea or coffee or whatever is your want and leave it for a few hours.

When a few hours have passed go back to the essay, read it out loud whilst  walking and looking at the printed sheet and then try to memorise it again.

Once you are confident that you have memorised it completely, at the bottom  of the page write down the first few words of each sentence of your essay,  separated by a comma, and number each line for each paragraph. When you  have done that put in the number of sentences at the end of the list and bracket  it.

For example if I was writing out the first few words of this article for the  first 3 paragraphs it would look like this;

• Christmas and New year, A lot of, A closed book, One of the, At the moment (5)
• Together we have, Together with actively (2)
• In this article, sound hard? (2)

Now what you should do is only look at the list at the bottom of the paper  and read out from that whilst walking. This way you are only looking  at the first few words and finishing the sentence without looking at it. If  you get stuck just go back to the main essay and look at it, until you have  got it completely.

Now memorise the bottom of the sheet of paper with the first few words of  the essay and how many sentences are in each paragraph. This should only  take 10-15 minutes at the most.

This sounds a very convoluted way of memorising an essay but it is a lot easier  than it reads here.

Time taken to memorise

You should be able to memorise a full 500 word essay in about  3 hours, for your first time, using the above method. When you are practiced  you should be able to memorise a 500 word essay in about 60 "“ 90 minutes.

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Steven Aitchison is the author of The Belief Principle and an online trainer teaching personal development and online business.  He is also the creator of this blog which has been running since August 2006.

How To Study: The Essay Memorisation Framework

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As a medical student, I did have to undertake some exams that required writing essays. One of the questions I often get asked is how you can apply techniques such as active recall and spaced repetition – that I frequently discuss as being ‘the best’ revision techniques – to essay-based subjects. During my third year at university, I adopted the following approach to preparing for my own essay-based psychology exams – it proved highly effective in my own exams and I hope that you can make effective use of it too.

The system can be broadly broken down into two stages:

• The Creation Stage
• Objective to create first class essay plans for every conceivable essay title that they throw at us in the exam.

2.  The Memorisation Stage

• Objective of committing all of these essay plans to memory by systematically using active recall, spaced repetition, spider diagrams and flashcards.

The idea is that, by using these two stages, by the time the exams arrive you’ll have memorised so many essay plans that they will either come up in the exam or the essays will be similar enough that you will have the knowledge to draw up and form coherent and well-structured essay that answer the question effectively.

Creation Stage

There are three main questions in the creation stage:

How to decide what essay titles to pick/prepare

The objective here is to ‘scope the subject’ and find essay titles that cover the entire breadth of the syllabus. The easiest way to do this is to both look through the past papers and start by planning the essays that have come up in the past and then examine the syllabus and identify areas that lend themselves to essays. Once you’ve planned out those essays, you’ll have a better idea as to what style of questions are asked and what material is often covered. This should give you a breadth of essays titles that span the course – if you find that there is still an area of the syllabus that hasn’t been address, try to come up a suitable question and add it to your essay plans to compile.

How you plan the essay

Personally, I would give myself one day per essay plan. Although it’s best to try to have this process ongoing throughout the year, I did the bulk of my essay plan preparation in the Easter holidays (perhaps not ideal!).

My process involved starting off with a question then use Google to get as much information as possible about that particular topic. I would start off with Google because it can give you a good broad overview as well as useful links to review papers that would often provide key details or interesting examples.

Once I had created my essay plan I would then look at the lecture notes and the recommended reading. This meant that a lot of my material was more original than everyone else’s because most other people would’ve built their essays based around the lecture notes, whereas I was building my essays from a Google search supplemented by lecture notes.

Once I had got my research document, I would spend a few hours writing out the essay – consolidating all the information into this one essay that I am ultimately going to learn.

How you make sure your essay plan is really good.

But how do we make an essay plan good? There are 3 key ingredients in my opinions:

• Answering the question
• Adding a bit of spice.

The introduction is the most important part of the essay because you can address all three of these key ingredients and signal to the examiner how you are going to go about compiling the essay and answer the question.

Here is an example of one of the introductions from an essay that I prepared on whether judgement and decision making is cognitive (logical) or affective (emotional).

The historical view in the social sciences has always been that judgements are based solely on content information, with individuals being assumed to form judgements by systematically evaluating all available content information in an unbiased manner. However, over the past three decades a considerable amount of research has challenged this assumption by showing that judgments may be formed not only on the basis of content information (cognitive judgements) but also on the basis of feelings (affective judgement). It is now well accepted that judgement can be both affective and cognitive. Whether it is one or the other depends on a multitude of factors: (1) the salience of the affective feelings, (2) the representativeness of the affective feelings for the target, (3) the relevance of the feelings for the judgement, (4) the evaluative malleability of the judgement and (5) the level of processing intensity. I will discuss these in turn and ultimately argue that generally speaking in day-to-day life, the circumstances are generally those that result in affective rather than cognitive judgements and decision making.

As you can see, I signpost the essay explicitly using numbered points as well as answering the question and outlining to the examiner the direction that my argument is going to go.

The Memorisation Stage

By this point, you should have a good number of essay plans that you’ve created in documents – now the aim is to ‘upload’ those essay plans to our brain. I approached doing this using three main techniques:

Anki Flashcards

With my essays, I used Anki flashcards to memorise paragraphs and main points whether from an essay or key points from a particularly relevant research paper. The aim was to create blocks of content with every Anki flashcard being its’ own ‘block’ which I could then draw upon either for the essays that I had planned or for unfamiliar essays but ones which I could answer using the material from the flashcards.

However, specific paragraphs or points from research papers aren’t helpful unless you can associate them with particular essays – that’s where spider diagrams come into the equation…

Spider Diagrams

Having memorised content blocks from my essays using Anki flashcards, I made one page diagrams of every single essay. The idea being that you would be able to discern the structure of the essay through the spider diagram as well as notice key words that are relevant for that topic and/or that you find particularly helpful in triggering your memory about the key points that you need to raise in answering that question.

Every day I would draw out various spider diagrams from memory and if there were any books that I didn’t know, I would look them up in the master research document or in Anki and actively work on learning those parts.

Over time, this became a highly effective way to systematically use active recall to ensure that I knew absolutely everything.

Retrospective Revision Timetable

The final part of the system involved systematic spaced repetition. If you’ve seen any of my other content, I am a big proponent of retrospective revision timetables. This approach counters the conventional idea of planning a prospective revision timetable which has a number of issues – namely trying to predict the future and inflexibility, amongst others – and instead involves creating a spreadsheet that starts with a list of subjects, topics or essays that we have compiled through scoping our subject and then inputting the dates on which we study those areas as well as colour code the system to provide a visual representation as to which areas we might need to cover again. You can read more about these sorts of timetables  here , where I explain them in more depth.

This structure which combines active recall, spaced repetition, flashcards and spider diagrams was probably the most effective system that I used whilst at university. In the exam, about two thirds of the essays that we had to write, I had already planned. Although the other four essays that I had to write were ‘new’, I had built up such a systematic and in-depth knowledge of the subject that I could more easily draw upon ‘blocks’ of content from my Anki decks which I could then ‘drop’ into these essays to answer them effectively.

I hope this has provided you with a more logical structure with which to utilise active recall, spaced repetition, spider diagrams and flashcards to ensure that you can approach your essay-based exams with more confidence.

Please see the other blog posts in this ‘How To Study’ series for more hints, tips and guidance on studying and revising.

About The Author

I'm an ex-doctor turned YouTuber, Podcaster, entrepreneur and author. I've been creating YouTube videos for over 7 years and have a following of over 4 million over on my main channel.

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5 Tips For Memorising Your Essay Before Exams

Your final exams are looming and along with it comes a million study tasks you really don’t want to face. Practice papers, drafts and essay scaffolds, most of which are mildly bearable at best. But how do you make it through the one soul wrenching, mind numbing task no one likes? I’m talking about memorising essays; a seemingly impossible feat that only a few students will master.

It’s true, memorising hundreds sometimes thousands of words is not easy. But it really doesn’t have to be as tough as you think! There’s a bunch of different methods out there, some work and some don’t. So check out these five tried and tested methods to find which ones work for you

1. Try something different

When you’re knee deep in study and feel like you’re just not making progress, try taking a break and come back with a different approach. Remember that sometimes the weirder ideas work best. Try recording your essay and playing it back to yourself. This is a pretty easy one that doesn’t take all your effort and you can listen to your essay on the bus, while running and when going to sleep. Sure, you might cringe at the sound of your own voice but once you get over the initial disgust it’s not all that bad and it’ll make the words stick in your mind.

2. Read before you sleep

This one is super useful when you’ve left the essay until the night before. Avoid wasting time on memorising it word for word. Instead, read over it a few times and pick up on the key ideas of each paragraph then hit the hay. Studies have shown that when we sleep for as little as 15 minutes after studying, our brains review and relearn the information while sleeping.

Additionally, our neural connections of the topic solidify 50% quicker than without sleeping. The catch is that the work you do before sleeping has to be legit, you have to be focused and alert, not falling asleep. When you wake up you’ll remember these key ideas and ready to pick up the rest a whole lot easier.

3. Read, cover, write, check

Again, this is more of a last minute tactic and rote learning like this doesn’t really work in the long run. If you want to be able remember your essay in three months time then jump down to no. 5.

But the read, cover, write, check method is pretty self explanatory and one you probably used in primary school. Read one sentence, cover it, write it or say it aloud and then check if you were right. Repeat for the following sentences until you’re able to regurgitate your entire essay in order.

4. Use key words

This one is good for cramming a lot of work into a little amount of time. Start by numbering each paragraph, then count how many sentences each paragraph contains. After that, take a look at each sentence and pull out a few trigger words eg. ‘Shakespeare displays this idea by overturning Othello’s loyalty.’ Pull out ‘displays overturning loyalty’. Then work on memorising just these trigger words, that way you can memorise 20 words per paragraph rather than 200.

5. Start early-ish

I know, I know, starting early is super unrealistic and you’ll probably only kick into gear with less than a week till the exam. Just keep in mind that effectively memorising actually takes a fair while. By giving the essay time to stew in your mind, you’ll later be able to recall it without spending hours at a time tediously forcing yourself to pick it up. Try to pump out that essay a few weeks prior to the exam date and give yourself as much time as possible to keep going over it.

by Matilda Reid

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How to Memorize Fast (and Why Most Memorization Tips Suck)

It's not too difficult to learn how to memorize fast and easily – if you use the right strategies, that is.

But most people don't use the right strategies. 

In fact, most people don't use any strategy – they use a few tactics that don't work very well. So, let me be straight with you: If you've been using flashcards or repetition to try to drill things into your brain, you're making things difficult for yourself.

It's time to work smarter, not harder .

Here's the thing: Your mind is a supercar that you haven't figured out how to drive yet. With practice, you can learn how to memorize anything – whether it's a new language, speech, or answers to an upcoming exam.

Oh, and learning how to memorize fast doesn't have to suck, either – it can even be fun. For real. This guide will show you how to memorize fast and easily – the smart way.

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6 Tips on How to Memorize Fast and Easily

If you want to learn how to memorize things fast and easily, you need to be strategic. Here are six tips on how to memorize fast that you'll learn about in this article:

• Understand your learning style
• Learn the 3 'R's of memorization
• Practice the substitution method
• Learn the story and link method
• Use the memory palace method
• Apply spaced repetition strategically

Step 1. Understand Your Learning Style

Before you try to learn how to memorize fast, it can help to have a basic understanding of how you best interpret and absorb new knowledge.

Now, there are four main learning styles usually referred to by the acronym "VARK":

• Reading/writing
• Kinesthetic

Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

Visual learners learn best through sight. They like information to be presented visually and tend to prefer seeing and observing things, such as diagrams, pictures, and demonstrations. Many visual learners also like to sketch, draw, and write lists.

2. Auditory 

Auditory learners learn best by listening and when the subject matter is communicated through sound.

They'd rather listen to podcasts , lectures, and audiobooks than read books and notes. If they have to read a book, they're likely to absorb more information if they read it aloud to themselves. Many auditory learners also like to engage in discussions.

3. Reading/Writing

Reading/writing learners prefer to learn through the written word.

They learn best when reading books and articles . They also learn well when taking and reviewing notes. This learning style overlaps with visual learning, however, these learners tend to prefer to express themselves through writing.

Traditional western education systems cater to reading/writing learners by focusing on reading books and writing essays.

4. Kinesthetic

Kinesthetic learners learn best by experiencing or doing things. They're sometimes referred to as "tactile learners." 

This type of learner likes to get moving and use their hands. They excel when they can interpret the subject matter through their physical senses. They prefer hands-on exercises over book-learning every day of the week.

Which Style of Learning Do You Prefer?

It may be pretty obvious which learning style you prefer. For example, it's clear to me that I'm a visual and reading/writing learner – after all, I'm a writer.

However, if you're unsure which style – or styles – of learning you prefer, check out this VARK questionnaire to find out.

It’s also worth noting that most people have a natural preference for more than one style. Oh, and in case you were wondering, no particular learning style is better than the others. They're just different!

Step 2. Learn the 3 'R's of Memorization

It's time to understand the foundations of how to memorize fast and easily: The three 'R's of memorization. 

These three steps are the strategy you need to learn how to memorize fast. Here's how they work:

• Registration: The first step is to record a new memory in your mind with the intention of storing it in your long-term memory. To learn how to memorize quickly, it helps to practice effective registration techniques.
• Retention: In this stage, you work to retain the information in your brain and move it from your short-term memory into your long-term memory so that you can recall it later.
• Recall: In the final stage of memorization, you can use techniques to retrieve the information stored in your mind.

People refer to these steps in different ways – for example, some people call them "encode, store, and retrieve" – but the basic principles are the same.

Most memorization tips miss one or more of these steps. 

For example, repetition can help with retention. However, reading something over and over does nothing to encode the information into your mind intentionally. Plus, it provides no mechanism that you can use to recall the information.

In short, to learn how to memorize faster, you need to use all three 'R's.

Step 3. Learn How to Memorize Fast and Easily

Now that you have the basics under your belt, it's time to learn how to memorize something quickly. So, what is the easiest way to remember something?

The best way to memorize things is to use a mnemonic device – which is just a fancy way of saying a memory device.

What is a mnemonic device?

Simply put, a mnemonic device is anything that helps you to remember something. For example, the phrase "'I' before 'E,' except after 'C'" is a mnemonic device. 

Here's an example of a visual mnemonic device to help remember the numbers of days in the months, with each knuckle representing a 31-day month:

Whenever you hear about 'memory athletes' that can recall the order of six decks of playing cards, they're using mnemonic devices.

It's not magic. It's just practice, and you can do it too.

There are countless mnemonic devices out there. However, we're going to focus on three of the most popular and effective techniques that you can use to learn how to memorize something faster.

Unlike repetition and flashcards, each of these mnemonic devices uses the three 'R's of memorization – registration, retention, and recall.

1. The Substitution Method

This first memory method is super simple. All you need to do is take what you want to remember and substitute it for something more memorable.

For example, say that you're trying to memorize the periodic table of elements. When trying to remember the first element, "hydrogen," you could link it to the word "hydrant" because they sound similar.

For the second element, helium, you could imagine a balloon filled with helium, and so on.

Then, consider which learning style you lean toward and use that information to help you forge a lasting connection. For example:

• If you're a visual learner, you could visualize a bright red fire hydrant on the sidewalk. 
• Auditory learners could practice saying the words "hydrogen, hydrant" out loud to emphasize how they sound similar.
• Reading/writing learners could write the words down, emphasizing how their spellings are similar, with both words beginning with "h, y, d, r."
• Every time they walk past a hydrant, kinesthetic learners could touch the hydrant with their hand and practice saying the word "hydrogen" out loud.

When you need to recall the first element of the periodic table, it'll be a lot easier to remember the red fire hydrant first, which will trigger the memory of "hydrogen."

Substitution is an effective way to register new information in your brain and have a way to recall it easily later.

Plus, this technique doesn't just work with words – you can also use it to remember ideas, concepts, names, dates, or even the key talking points in a speech.

Okay, but how do you remember lots of things?

2. The Link and Story Method

Here's where things get interesting: After you've created some substitutions to memorable words and objects, you can link them together with a story.

Here's an example of how you could link "fire hydrant" (hydrogen) with "balloon" (helium): 

Imagine a bright red hydrant (hydrogen) on a sunny sidewalk at a park entrance. Stood next to the hydrant at the park entrance is a vendor selling balloons (helium) to children entering the park.

Here's the trick: Exaggerate the story so it sticks in your mind more – this will help with retention and recall.

For instance, perhaps the hydrant is broken and is spraying water everywhere. Or maybe the balloon vendor is dressed as a clown. Use whatever works best for you!

Once you create effective associations and link them together with a compelling story , it becomes very easy to remember things.

This method is a great way to register large amounts of information in your mind while also providing a mechanism to recall it.

3. The Memory Palace Method

If you want to know how to memorize a lot of information, try the memory palace method. 

This method has stood the test of time – it was first presented in a book called the "Rhetorica ad Herennium," written in 80 B.C. by an unknown author.

Here’s how to use it:

• Think of a place or a journey you know well, such as your home or a daily commute.
• Identify some significant points in your home or on your commute .
• Link what you want to remember to each one of those points.

For example, say that you need to remember a speech. 

You could break your speech up into points, such as your introduction, three main talking points, your summary, and final thoughts. You can then link each of these points to something in your memory palace.

Your home's front door could represent your speech's introduction. Then, your three main talking points could be the living room, kitchen, and bathroom. The summary may be the hallway leading out of the house, and your final thoughts could be the front yard.

Then, whenever you practice your speech, you can imagine walking around your house for each point.

If you have a long speech – or a large amount of information to remember – you can break the information down into smaller chunks and link them to things in each room. 

For example, say you have three aspects in your first talking point (the living room). You could link each one to a piece of furniture, such as the sofa, coffee table, and standing lamp. 

If you practice the memory palace method, you should be able to walk around your house – or run through your commute – in your mind and recall all of the information.

Again, this method hits all three 'R's by providing a way to encode, retain, and recall information.

Step 4. Apply Spaced Repetition

Once you've registered new information in your mind, how can you stop yourself from forgetting it? Apply spaced repetition.

Way back in 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus created the 'Forgetting Curve.' This concept demonstrates how we forget things. Simply put, as soon as we learn something, it starts to fade from our memory.

However, we can prevent this decline by reviewing the information periodically. When we do this, we can increase the strength of the memory.

If you're a visual learner, here's what it looks like:

So, when should you review the subject matter?

At first, it helps to review things often – for example, you may want to review something daily at first, then bi-weekly, and then weekly until you're confident you won't forget it.

Again, look to your preferred learning style to help you. For example:

• Visual learners could draw a storyboard or sketch their memory palace.
• Auditory learners could tell their story aloud or describe walking through their memory palace.
• Reading/writing learners could write their story down and review it regularly.
• Kinesthetic learners could act out the story or walk through their memory palace in real life.

You may also want to review material late in the evening before bed.

Why? Studies show that people who study before bedtime can often remember more of what they learn a day later. Plus, they also felt more confident about their answers.

Summary: How to Memorize Quickly 

If you want to learn how to memorize fast, repetition alone won't cut it – you have to be strategic.

Start by identifying how you learn best. Are you a visual, auditory, reading/writing, or kinesthetic learner?

Then, understand the three 'R's of memorization (registration, retention, and recall) and put them to work:

• First, encode the information in your mind using a mnemonic device, such as the substitution method. 
• Link this information to a story or memory palace to ensure you can easily recall it later.
• Practice spaced repetition to combat the forgetting curve and retain the information.

What are you trying to learn? What is the best way to memorize something for you? Let us know in the comments below!

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How Long Does It Take to Write a 1000 Word Essay?

How long does it take to research an essay?

If you’re writing an opinion piece on something you already have some knowledge about, you may not have to do any research at all. It may just be a matter of organizing your existing thoughts into a coherent essay. If you need to find out about a topic before you begin to write, you can easily get information on certain topics, whilst others will be more obscure and therefore more difficult to research. Clearly, the easier it is to find information, the faster you can write.

How good are your reading comprehension skills?

Some of us can just skim a piece and pick up all the salient points. Others will have to read with more attention, and even re-read a piece several times to extract the information we need. Having good reading and comprehension skills makes writing much faster since you’re able to “get” the facts faster and organize them better. Now you know why you had to do so many reading comprehension tests at school.

How well did you plan?

Throwing yourself headlong at a 1,000-word essay and writing till you reach the word count may seem like the easy option, but it isn’t. Planning your essay so that it begins with an introduction, highlights the most important points you want to make and then wraps everything up into a conclusion actually saves you time. Sometimes, essay instructions will tell you how to structure the piece, so read them carefully and extract any information you can use to guide your essay’s structure.

How fast do you type?

Have you ever gotten lost halfway through a sentence? You know what you wanted to say, but halfway through, the thought slips away from you. The faster you can type , the more easily you can capture thoughts before your mind moves onto the next thing and you forget what you were trying to say. Typing skills are essential in the modern world. Consider using typing games to improve your speed.

How long does it take me to write a 1,000-word essay?

Faster isn’t always better. The more in-depth your report is meant to be, the longer you should spend on it. I can usually research and write a fairly technical magazine article of 1,000 words in three hours, but do remember that I’m a professional writer. I’m fast because I write all day, every day.

The longest I’ve ever spent on a 1,000-word article was 12 hours. It was absolutely brutal! The information I needed to gather was very technical, hard to find, and even more difficult to understand, and you can’t write something until you really understand the subject matter. I also had to contact experts for their opinions, but I couldn’t even ask about their opinions until I could target them with the right questions. As a result, I actually had to write most of the article before slotting in the expert comment.

The quickest I’ve ever written a 1,000-word article is one hour. In this case, I already knew the subject matter well and didn’t have to back up every fact in the essay with references.

Reviewing your work also matters

If you’re writing for grades and want a good one, you need a really good essay. Don’t start writing it the day before you have to hand it in. Try and get your first draft down at least a day or two before you have to submit your work. Then return to it and do your editing. Read your essay aloud to yourself, since this will help you pick up any careless errors you wouldn’t otherwise spot. Check to see if your information flows logically from one point to the next and make sure that you’ve presented your information clearly.

Remember, teachers get tired. They have to read the same kind of essay over and over again when they grade. If they struggle to understand what you’re saying, you might not get as good a grade as you would if you stuck to using short sentences and relatively simple language.

Your reviewing process shouldn’t take all that long. If you don’t have to make a lot of changes, you should be able to do your final edit in under half an hour.

Take your time. Whatever you do, don’t rush. You might want your essay to be written quickly, but if it’s an important essay, taking your time will give you a better finished product. Budget your time conservatively. It’s better to find that you’ve still got time left over than to run out of time and end up dashing things off with a looming deadline.

Below are some basic guidelines if you need a rough estimate on how long it will take to write an essay. It’s important to remember that there are a plethora of mitigating factors that can increase or decrease the time it takes to write. The below numbers are using an estimate that it takes about 3 hours 20 minutes to write a 1000 word essay:

How long does it take to write a 100 word essay? It takes about 20 minutes to write a 100 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 200 word essay? It takes about 40 minutes to write a 200 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 250 word essay? It takes about 50 minutes to write a 250 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 300 word essay? It takes about 1 hour to write a 300 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 400 word essay? It takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes to write a 400 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 500 word essay? It takes about 1 hour and 40 minutes to write a 500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 600 word essay? It takes about 2 hours to write a 600 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 700 word essay? It takes about 2 hours and 20 minutes to write a 700 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 800 word essay? It takes about 2 hours and 40 minutes to write a 800 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 900 word essay? It takes about 3 hours to write a 900 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,000 word essay? It takes about 3 hours and 20 minutes to write a 1,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,250 word essay? It takes about 4 hours and 10 minutes to write a 1,250 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,500 word essay? It takes about 5 hours to write a 1,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,750 word essay? It takes about 5 hours and 50 minutes to write a 1,750 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 2,000 word essay? It takes about 6 hours and 40 minutes to write a 2,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 2,500 word essay? It takes about 8 hours and 20 minutes to write a 2,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 3,000 word essay? It takes about 10 hours to write a 3,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 3,500 word essay? It takes about 11 hours and 40 minutes to write a 3,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 4,000 word essay? It takes about 13 hours and 20 minutes to write a 4,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 4,500 word essay? It takes about 15 hours to write a 4,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 5,000 word essay? It takes about 16 hours and 40 minutes to write a 5,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 6,000 word essay? It takes about 20 hours to write a 6,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 7,000 word essay? It takes about 23 hours and 20 minutes to write a 7,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 7,500 word essay? It takes about 25 hours to write a 7,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write an 8,000 word essay? It takes about 26 hours and 40 minutes to write an 8,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 9,000 word essay? It takes about 30 hours to write a 9,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 10,000 word essay? It takes about 33 hours and 20 minutes to write a 10,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 12,500 word essay? It takes about 41 hours and 40 minutes to write a 12,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 15,000 word essay? It takes about 50 hours to write a 15,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 20,000 word essay? It takes about 66 hours and 40 minutes to write a 20,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 25,000 word essay? It takes about 83 hours and 20 minutes to write a 25,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 50,000 word essay? It takes about 166 hours and 40 minutes to write a 50,000 word essay.

(Image courtesy of Miguel )

This isn’t accurate. I wrote my 1000 word essay in an hour, not three hours. You should change the times you have listed to reflect how long it actually takes to write. Obviously you don’t know since the mes you listed are not the same as what I can do!

Did you even read the article? The writer says that it’s based on what she writes and is just a general approximation. How long it takes you or anybody else to write an essay will obviously be different because you’re not the same as everybody else. Nobody writes at the same speed so how long it takes you to write an essay will be different for every person.

Someone doesn’t understand the meaning of “rough estimate”

Well then you must be superhuman or some shit I don’t care, I came here for a question not your butthurt comments. Also, if your so good at writing I wouldn’t have found 2 typos in 2 sentences 🙂

*you’re

If you already have all the research done and know what you want to say, then a 1000 word essay shouldn’t take more than an hour to write. In fact, it probably can be done in 30 minutes or less. The time-consuming part of an essay is the research and how long that takes depends on how much you have to do. But the actual writing of the essay shouldn’t take too long at all.

But research is part of the writing process. If a person writes a book, they don’t only count the time it took them at the typewriter writing. They count all the time it took to research the book as well. Trying to separate the two doesn’t make sense.

I think an important thing to point out here is that there’s a huge difference between writing a 1000 word essay and writing a good 1000 word essay. You can write an essay in hardly any time at all if you don’t do the proper research and don’t spend time editing what you wrote. If you’re going to write a good essay, it’s going to take more time. You should always give yourself more time than you think you’re going to need to get it done.

This applies to all writing. Writing and writing something something well will have a huge time discrepancy even if both writings are the same length. Just because you are able to finish something quickly doesn’t mean that’s the best way to do it.

Exactly! Actually, it can take hours or days to come up with the right line – or it can come in seconds. There’s no real counting in terms of the creative process.

Days to come up with the right line? 😀

It does. Sometimes, no matter how hard you look at something, you won’t be satisfied with it. It may take you days to figure it out. And then, one fine day, you suddenly stand up right in the middle of breakfast and then run upstairs and then type out the right line. Source: personal experience

I just spent 8 hours on a 500-word monologue… This comment made me feel better.

Wow, your advice is excellent it motivated me to do a lot better in my essay.

In my opinion, hours that are presented here a partially true. It may take about an hor to write 300 word essay but editing also takes some time. So on averege, I count the time to write the piece itself + time edit everything.

Research, first draft writing, editing, and rewriting are all part of the writing process. I think the time it takes to do all of them should be counted in the time it takes.

It takes way too long! Teachers should not be allowed to assign essays more than 250 words. They always complain they don’t have enough time and work too hard. It’s only because they make their students do too much work!!

This comment just makes you look lazy. 250 words is nothing. Any topic that needs to be explored will take many more words than this. If you don’t want to write, just admit it and don’t try to project that on others.

If you do your research, use annotations for resources and understand to whom and what you have to transfer than the fewer words the better. Remember that you are demonstrating deep knowledge of the topic by making it accessible to the audience without them doing the research. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Contrary to what academia self-righteously preach, its imperative for any writing and explanation of thought to be simplified. If you cant explain it in short time/short essay you don’t understand it enough.

I disagree, I feel 250 words is way too less to explain any topic. In my opinion, the maximum word count for an essay should be 1500.

It should take long enough that you get all the points you want across in the writing, but not too long as to bore the reader. Writing should be engaging, not boring.

Nice philosophy, but completely unhelpful if you have a paper due tomorrow and limited amount of time to write. The real world doesn’t work that way.

If someone has an essay due tomorrow and they waste time reading this, then they are a bit of an idiot for giving themselves even less time to work with. If they’re leaving work to the last minute like that, then the only thing they should be doing is jumping right in and writing (or planning the essay, but that should be done much sooner).

This is so arbitrary and will depend on the individual. It’s like asking the question, “how long does it take to write a book?” For some, it will only take a couple of months while for others it will take a lifetime. it also depends on the type of writing you’re doing. Some writing is easy and quick and other writing is difficult and requires huge amounts of research.

The uphill task of writing an essay is doing thorough research. Once you have completed the research, you can deliver a 1000 word paper per hour

I completely agree with you on that one. I recently worked on a 4000 word essay, and while the research did take me three hours to conduct, I completed the essay itself in a bit less than four hours and scored a total of 32/34 points.

So happy to read that! That’s because I just realised, that that is what I needed to read. I’ve got two months to write six 2500 word essays. I’ve been procrastinating because I’m simply in fear of doing a bad job. I’ve done lots of research; made lots of notes; collected citations and written nothing. It’s time. I can do this!

I’m writing a 1600 word essay right now as I type this lol

Then show me after you have finished.

Im writing a 2500 word essay, almost done, I can’t even imagine writing a 10000 word essay in university, that sounds EXTREMELY painful 🙁

I found these estimations quite accurate, thank you.

I’m writing a narrative for my English class right this moment and the word requirements are 800-1000. I’ve only been working for two hours and I’m at 1,157. I’m nowhere near done…

your word requirements are 800-1000 and u have 1157? You’ve been done for a while I would say

Wow i have to write a 1 500 word essay in 4 days and I have about 1050 words left Dono how long thats gonna take me 😂😭😭😭

I am writing a dissertation and those estimations made me positive because just 41 hour to write 12,000 essay seems nothing. But at the moment I just finished literature review(though the hardest part yet) without editing I am already at over 35 hours of work. And that’s not even a half! But I am aiming for a good grade though…

I’ve found these estimates incredibly accurate in my years in college. I’m about to graduate next week and have one more 3500 word paper to write. We’ll see if the estimates hold true. However, the estimates (for me at least) don’t include the time it takes to edit so I usually add a little time depending on how long the essay/paper has to be.

Wow, these tips are helpful, Thank You to the creator of this website. These tips helped me a lot in my essay for school.

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Memorization Tips

You learn best by hearing , seeing , or doing , so find out what type of learner you are and have matching memorization techniques.

In addition, ask people who know you well and/or are familiar with memorizing (teachers, actors, etc.) to help you out.

Make sure to experiment - the only way to find out how you memorize best is by trying to memorize in different ways.

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How to Memorize Quickly

Last Updated: May 7, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Alexander Ruiz, M.Ed. . Alexander Ruiz is an Educational Consultant and the Educational Director of Link Educational Institute, a tutoring business based in Claremont, California that provides customizable educational plans, subject and test prep tutoring, and college application consulting. With over a decade and a half of experience in the education industry, Alexander coaches students to increase their self-awareness and emotional intelligence while achieving skills and the goal of achieving skills and higher education. He holds a BA in Psychology from Florida International University and an MA in Education from Georgia Southern University. There are 10 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 1,029,545 times.

Memorizing quickly is an important talent to have. Whether for school, work or simply to improve yourself, exercising your memory adds to your capabilities as a person and helps to keep your brain healthy. The art of memorization is ancient and history is filled with clever ways of committing things to memory. By applying modern psychology, these approaches to memorization can be divided into five core methods.

Things You Should Know

• Try rote memorization; make a list of everything you need to know and repeat them until they’re committed to memory.
• Follow the chunking method, which involves organizing information into groups or categories and memorizing piece by piece. [1] X Research source
• Chain items into a single sentence made of everything you need to know or use mnemonics to create a key sentence representing what you have to memorize.
• Memorize through association by creating an imaginary journey or walk-through to associate with the facts you need to remember.

Memorizing through Association

• Memories that are easy to split up and spatially organize are best suited for the associative method - things like the stanzas of a poem, components of a machine or the procedure for cooking eggs.
• Memories that can't be divided up are less well-suited - like the basic idea of Abstract Expressionist painting, the history of the War of the Roses or remembering how to ask someone out.

• For this reason, if you have a list of discrete items that don't fit together in any way, it'll be harder to shape your second "key" memories. For our example, we'll simply imagine being a tiny little man walking around inside a 1911 slide.

• " First we'll encounter the barrel bushing, and inside it, I can see the barrel poking out. Behind the barrel and the breech face as we walk further back I'll see a tiny hole through which I can see the firing pin, and to its left will be the extractor against the side of the slide; when I make it to the very back, I'll reach the hammer stop. "

Rote Memorization

• Rote memorization is very good for manual tasks and short lists of items like a shopping list, starting a car, or ironing a shirt.
• Rote memorization is not very good for memorizing a large number of separate items or single complex ideas like the elements of the periodic table from left to right, the idea of dialectical materialism, or the components of a car engine. [5] X Research source

• At first you'll get a lot wrong - don't get frustrated! This is just your brain getting used to the work. Keep at it, and within a few minutes, you'll be able to remember everything you've memorized.

• If you've ever memorized a phone number, you might have noticed the way we write them - they're set up to be chunk-memorized. For instance, the White House phone number, (202) 456-1111 is easier to remember as three numbers - 202, 456 and 1111 - than it is to remember as a single complex number, 2,024,561,111.
• Chunking isn't a great strategy for big, complex things and concepts that don't break down into parts easily. For example, it's not easy to figure out what "memorizable" chunks would be for memorizing the concept of civil rights, the definition of nationhood or a list of similar phone numbers. [8] X Research source

Chaining Items into a Sentence or Concept

• Chaining is great for a limited number of items in an arbitrary list without any seeming relation to each other (for instance, the list tree, bird, keyboard, bottle ). It's hard to apply a strategy like chunking because there aren't any real categories to break stuff down.

• Peanut butter and espresso bean sandwich wrapped in ethernet cable with a screwdriver going through it.

• Peanut butter and espresso bean sandwich wrapped in ethernet cable with a screwdriver going through it = peanut butter, espresso beans, bread, ethernet cable, screwdriver bit

Using Mnemonics

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• ↑ https://psychcentral.com/lib/memory-and-mnemonic-devices
• ↑ Ted Coopersmith, MBA. Academic Tutor. Expert Interview. 10 July 2020.
• ↑ https://blog.penningtonpublishing.com/spelling_vocabulary/how-to-memorize-using-the-association-technique/
• ↑ https://resilienteducator.com/classroom-resources/what-is-rote-learning/
• ↑ https://www.brainscape.com/blog/2011/04/rote-memorization-important/
• ↑ Alexander Ruiz, M.Ed.. Educational Consultant. Expert Interview. 18 June 2020.
• ↑ http://thepeakperformancecenter.com/educational-learning/thinking/chunking/chunking-as-a-learning-strategy/
• ↑ https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/enhancing-your-memory/
• ↑ https://www.sciencebuddies.org/stem-activities/dont-forget-a-memorization-exploration
• ↑ https://psychcentral.com/lib/memory-and-mnemonic-devices/

About This Article

If you want to get better at memorizing information quickly, make a list of the things you need to memorize, then read that list several times. Try covering part or all of the list with a piece of paper until you can recite the whole thing without looking. If you have a lot of information, try breaking it up into smaller chunks, then memorizing each chunk one at a time. To learn how to create a sentence out of the items you’re memorizing, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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What makes a memory it may be related to how hard your brain had to work.

(© stock.adobe.com)

The human brain filters through a flood of experiences to create specific memories. Why do some of the experiences in this deluge of sensory information become “memorable,” while most are discarded by the brain?

A computational model and behavioral study developed by Yale scientists suggests a new clue to this age-old question, they report in the journal Nature Human Behavior .

“ The mind prioritizes remembering things that it is not able to explain very well,” said Ilker Yildirim, an assistant professor of psychology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and senior author of the paper. “If a scene is predictable, and not surprising, it might be ignored.”

For example, a person may be briefly confused by the presence of a fire hydrant in a remote natural environment, making the image difficult to interpret, and therefore more memorable. “Our study explored the question of which visual information is memorable by pairing a computational model of scene complexity with a behavioral study,” said Yildirim.

For the study, which was led by Yildirim and John Lafferty, the John C. Malone Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Yale, the researchers developed a computational model that addressed two steps in memory formation — the compression of visual signals and their reconstruction.

Based on this model, they designed a series of experiments in which people were asked if they remembered specific images from a sequence of natural images shown in rapid succession. The Yale team found that the harder it was for the computational model to reconstruct an image, the more likely the image would be remembered by the participants.

“ We used an AI model to try to shed light on perception of scenes by people — this understanding could help in the development of more efficient memory systems for AI in the future,” said Lafferty, who is also the director of the Center for Neurocomputation and Machine Intelligence at the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale. 

Former Yale graduate students Qi Lin (Psychology) and Zifan Lin (Statistics and Data Science) are co-first authors of the paper.

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