One of the biggest fears every
student has as they enter the exam hall is that their mind will go blank
and they will suddenly forget every last thing they
One of the biggest fears every
student has as they enter the exam hall is that their mind will go blank
and they will suddenly forget every last thing they know.
It’s the stuff of nightmares, but fortunately, it’s highly unlikely
to happen. First of all, you’d be amazed what facts start to come
flooding back to you once you pick up a pen and start answering a
question. Second of all, there are lots of memory tricks you can use
that will help you recall information in a more formal and structured
way. In this article, we’re going to show you just how much you can do
to commit facts and figures to memory ready to recall them in exams, and
we hope that as well as boosting your confidence, this should also ward
off those nasty pre-exam nightmares!
1. Get organised
Tidying your desk should be top of your to-do list.
Before we even get started on memory tricks, there’s something
fundamental we need to begin with. If there’s one enemy of a good
memory, it’s disorganisation. A cluttered working space with unfiled notes
here, there and everywhere; a notepad filled with scrawl on numerous
different subjects with no particular order; a poor computer filing
system. All these spell disaster for your ability to recall facts in the
exam room. So, start by getting yourself organised. Tidy your room, or
whichever space you’re using for studying. Get your notes organised
neatly into different subjects. Physically decluttering and bringing
about order in your environment has the strange effect of doing the same
to the mind (perhaps there is something in feng shui), making you far better able to cope with memorising and recalling facts.
2. Mind palaces
If you’re a fan of Sherlock you’re probably already familiar
with the concept of a mind palace, but just in case you aren’t, let’s
go over it again. Officially known as the ‘method of loci’, the memory
palace can be used to memorise huge volumes of information, and best of
all, because it’s all down to your imagination, you can constantly
expand it. It works like this:
Mind palaces are used in the BBC series Sherlock. Still from Sherlock (BBC, 2010).
1. Visualise a building or road. Populate your mental image with
details, such as what you see in each room or what’s on either side of
the road.
2. Mentally connect an image of each of the features you see – such
as a chair in your imagined house, or a tree by the side of your
imagined road – with a manageable chunk of information (such as a
chemical formula). Think about the two together in depth and make sure
you’ve really learned the information and its associated image.
3. To recall the information in the exam, simply retrace your steps
through the building or down the road and pick out the objects you’ve
associated with the information.
4. When you want to add additional information to your memory bank,
you can simply add another room to your imaginary building or take a
turn off your imaginary road that will house this new information.
This must be a foolproof memory trick because it’s been in around
since Greek and Roman times. The Roman orator Cicero, who needed to be
able to recall large amounts of information from memory when giving
speeches, described them in his treatise on oratory, De Oratore. If it was good enough for him, it’s good enough for us!
3. Mnemonics
An alternative way of remembering the colours of the rainbow is ‘Richard of York gave battle in vain’.
You’ll be pleased to hear that the concept of a mnemonic
is a lot simpler than its confusing spelling. It involves translating
information into an alternative form that you’re more easily able to
remember. One way of doing this is by taking the first letters of a
string of information you want to remember and then using them to create
a more memorable phrase that you find easier to recall than the
original information. For example, some people remember the points of
the compass with the mnemonic ‘Never Eat Shredded Wheat’ (North East
South West). The first letters of the information can also make up a
word in their own right, as in the case of the colours of the rainbow,
the mnemonic of which is the name ‘Roy G. Biv’ (Red, Orange, Yellow,
Green, Blue,
Indigo, Violet).
4. Rhyming
Putting information into a rhyme is another way of making it easier
to remember. An example is the rhyme that helps people remember how many
days there are in each month:
30 days hath September, April, June, and November.
All the rest have 31
Except February my dear son.
It has 28 and that is fine
But in Leap Year it has 29.
This may prove a more effective way of memorising bigger chunks of
information than the mnemonic examples we gave above. Your rhyme could
be a little more modern-sounding to help you remember it, or you could
use some tried and tested rhyming schemes such as rhyming couplets to
help cement facts in your brain. Here’s a truly terrible example I just
made up to help you memorise the order of the planets:
Alternatively, ‘My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nachos’.
Close to the Sun, hottest and between us
Are the burning fireballs of Mercury and Venus.
Next come homely Earth then Mars, then gas giants Jupiter and Saturn –
Are you starting to see a planetary pattern?
Icy Uranus and Neptune follow, and, bringing up the rear,
Humble Pluto – no longer a planet – sheds a tear.
As you can see from my embarrassing attempt, you don’t have to be an accomplished poet to do it!
5. Making the most of a photographic memory
If you’re lucky enough to possess a photographic memory, you can make
the most of it by combining images with text to reinforce what you’ve
learned. This makes it easier to recall the information, because all you
have to do is bring to mind the image and you should be able to recall
the information. Even if you don’t have a photographic memory, you can
apply the same principle. Arrange your notes in a pictorial fashion,
such as in a spider diagram (where you have the concept in the middle
and arrows pointing out of it to different pieces of information). Then,
when you need to recall a particular piece of information, the idea is
that you remember whereabouts it was on the page and that jolts your
memory of what it was about.
6. Setting facts and figures to music
The
only problem with this strategy is that in several years’ time, the
song you used will come on the radio and you’ll be belting out French
verbs before you know it.
An extension of the rhyming idea is setting your notes to music. I
don’t know about you, but I find it much easier to remember the lyrics
to my favourite songs than I do to recall dry information such as the
names and dates of the English monarchs or Roman emperors. If you’re
struggling to commit a chain of information to memory, try putting a
tune to it. Even a rap will do! Then all you need to do is remember the
tune and the words should come flooding back. To make it easier to
recall, you could try using a tune you already know – perhaps even a
children’s nursery rhyme, if you can bear to associate a childhood
favourite with your present exams! As long as you’re guaranteed to
remember it, though, anything goes.
7. Experience things practically
‘Their name liveth for evermore’ the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
As these intolerably nameless names?’ – Siegfried Sassoon, ‘On Passing the New Menin Gate’
By ‘experience things practically’, we mean: don’t just learn from
books. It can be very difficult to remember things if your only
experience of them is reading them in a book. To take an extreme
example, you couldn’t learn to ride a bike simply by reading about it;
you need to learn by doing it. If what you’re learning about can be
experienced in person, try to do so, because this is a much better way
of learning and the information is far more likely to stick with you.
For example, if you’re learning about a scientific experiment, try to do
it in real life rather than simply reading about it in a textbook. That
way, when it comes to the exam, you’ll have practical experience to
draw on and you can recall what really happened when you undertook the
experiment. Similarly, if you’re studying a piece of music in A-level
music, try to play it on an instrument if you can – it will give you a
far deeper appreciation of it. This trick can even apply to English
literature; if you’re studying war poetry, for example, try visiting a
war museum – or even what’s left of the trenches in northern France
– and reciting the poem you’re studying in such an environment. It will
give it much greater meaning, help you understand and appreciate it in
the spirit and surroundings in which it was intended, and help you
emotionally engage with what you’re learning – thus making it easier for
you to recall information about it in the exam room.
8. Utilise your sense of smell
Your sense of smell can be a powerful memory aid, as you’ll know if
you’ve ever experienced that odd sensation of smelling something for the
first time in years and instantly being transported back to the moment
you last smelt it. You could try using this to your advantage by dabbing
your wrist with a particular perfume or aftershave each time you study
material for a particular exam. Then, when that exam comes round, you
put on the same perfume or aftershave and (theoretically) it should help
transport you back to the time you were learning the information in the
first place. You could try using different scents for different
subjects, wearing the corresponding scent for the relevant exam.
9. Make up a story
Simon was a chemist’s son,
Simon is no more,
For what he thought was H2O,
Was H2SO4.
To help your brain absorb bigger chunks of information, another trick
you could try is to break the information down and make up a story
linking together each piece of information. It’s a little like the
memory palace idea we discussed earlier in this article, but it plays
with the imagination to a greater extent because the story you make up
doesn’t have to be spatially limited in your mind. For example, if you
need to memorise a complicated chemical formula, you could name the
molecules with human names beginning with the same letter (Carol =
Chlorine, for example) and make up a little story in which the actions
of the characters mirror those of the molecules in the formula. This can
be a remarkably effective method of learning trickier, drier
information, as it helps to bring it to life a bit and gives it a more
human touch that makes it easier to relate to.
10. Get a good night’s sleep
Getting a good night’s sleep is vital for the consolidation of long-term knowledge in your brain.
It may not sound like it, but one of the best things you can do to
help you remember things is to get a good night’s sleep – not just the
night before the exam, but every night. We’re not just saying that
because getting the right amount of sleep will help you perform better,
retain mental agility and ward off stress and tiredness. We’re saying it
because it’s when you’re sleeping that your brain performs the vital
task of converting facts from short-term memory into long-term memory.
During the course of a good night’s sleep, your brain processes the
information you’ve learnt during the day and stores it, meaning that
you’re far more likely to be able to recall it than if you barely slept.
So, get the recommended eight hours’ sleep each and every night. Sleep
may feel like a luxury you can’t afford right now, but believe us, it’s
one of the most important things you can do for exam success!
So there we have it: ten simple tricks and tips that will greatly
help you to increase your capacity for learning all kinds of facts and
figures, no matter how much you’ve struggled with them up to now. Rest
assured that your brain is more than capable of housing the vast swathes
of information you need to learn in order to pass your exams: you just
have to make it easier for it to absorb more than usual during the busy
exam period!
