TECHNIQUES FOR LEARNERS TO REMEMBER LEARNED INFORMATION
Remembering and forgetting. What is it?
Why Do People Forget?
How to boost memory?
Remembering simply refers to the ability to recall, bring back into memory learned information when needed while forgetting simply means inability to recall learned information when required.
Why Do People Forget Information?
There are various reasons that makes people to forget learned information, they include:
Decay, refers to fading away information with time. The information disappears because there is no use of it.
Inadequate rehearsal, learned information is more likely to be forgotten if there is no enough repetition of it.
Failure to encode, when you receive information and you fail to organize it may lead to forgetting. This can be caused by failure to understand the material clearly.
Interference, is the disruption of ability to remember one piece of information by the presence of other information. It occurs into two ways:-
- Retroactive interference: Occurs when new memory impairs memory for something learned earlier. New learning makes forget the previous learning.
- Proactive interference: Occurs when the previous learning impairs the new learning. The previous experiences make it difficult to earn new materials.
Repression, this is the tendency where by real memories are push out because they are emotionally painful. Ignoring the information sometimes is called motivated forgetting.
Proved Techniques To Boost Memory
Attention, is the process of selecting what is important for further processing. It is vital to remembering because unless selective and proper attention is paid to the information to be learned, learning is unlikely to be effective.
Rehearsal, It involves repeating or reciting the skill or information as many as may be necessary to in long-term memory. The more the rehearsal the quicker the information will be recalled.
Organization, if the information to be learned is well organized, it can be remembered easily. One way of organizing the information is to break it into small unit (chunk) and to link these units to each other in the way they relate to each other so that remembering one unit will lead to remembering another related unit.
Distribution Practice, with relatively short study sessions followed by short rest period. This can prevent physical and emotional fatigue. Motivation is usually high when you work for short periods of time.
Recitation, after reading a paragraph in your text book, test yourself on what you have read by repeating the key ideas aloud. These ideas then have a chance to stay in your memory.
Activity, Students who spend some times discussing what they have learnt/studied, remember such information more easily than those who do not.
Mnemonics. Mnemonics are powerful tools for enhancing memory. Here a learner could use acronyms, for instance first letter of each of the points being mastered, or an arrangement that makes the points meaningful to pronounce.
Thus when a student wants to recall it will be very easy to retrieve it from memory.
A typical example is the arrangement of the characteristics of living things as MR NIGER i.e. M=Movement, R=Respiration, N=Nutrition, I=Irritability, G=Growth, E=Excretion, and R=Reproduction.
Other examples are, SMART= Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time bound.
ROYGBIV= Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. and others of the like.
Meaningfulness, if the information learned has inherent/latent meaning, it will be retained in long-term memory. Information meets the criteria for meaningfulness if the new information can be related in some way to what a student already known.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gordon, W.C. (1989). Learning and Memory. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Westen, D. (1999). Psychology: Mind, Brain and Culture. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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