Did you know that training your memory improves your learning-skills up to 98%? Is learning really just memory? How much more creative and knowledgeable would you be if you 2x your memory? The international scientific journal Neuron published July 20, 2006, an intensive research report by Professor Brenda Kirchoff, of Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri on why some folks are better than others in learning new information. We suggest you give credibility to Professor Kirchoff because her team used fMRIs (functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery), to see and measure the brains-in-action and using different memory-strategies. This valuable research rejects using meaning alone - to encode and retrieve information. Scientists have advocated meaning as the secret of learning, and and long-term memory the system to file new information created exclusively through meaning. Teachers still program the minds of students to think deeply about new material until they unravel its meaning. It is hard, and takes too much time. There is a better way. If you remember nothing else spotlight the fact that word-games and mental-imagery are the two learning strategies that can turn your brain into a supercomputer not delving into the inner meaning of new text. Word Games Professor Jaap Murre, University of Amsterdam, department of psychology, uses this example. You are trying to remember the name of your new professor Prlwitzowski. It breaks your teeth to pronounce it, and your memory refuses to file it. He suggests a low-level processing process, focusing on the surface-form of the name and ignoring its meaning as a word. Our first reaction when we see new words even a name is to analyze it for meaning. There is no meaning to Prlwitzowski. How about asking your self what does this weird name sound-like, and remind you of? Turn it into a game relax and play with it. The sillier your result, and the funnier the outcome the faster your mind files it into long-term memory. How about Pearl-with-a-cow-skiing. Once you repeat that nonsense phrase three-times, you automatically create a mental-picture of a cow-wearing a pearl necklace skiing down a slope. Immediately thereafter, just the first made-up word from the name Pearl is enough to retrieve the whole-name Prlwitzowski. In less than one-minute of word-play you stop seeing the mental-picture on the movie-screen of your mind of the cow-skiing wearing the necklace. You associate the professor with your mental-image, and the letter P is enough to hear narrated in your mind Prlwitzowski. Review Break the tongue-twister new word it works in learning a foreign language into similar words it sounds like. Our example is Pearl-With-Cow-Ski, you may come up with something else. We must have a motivation to do or learn anything we call it WIIFM (what-is-in-it-for- me?). Your reason to learn your professors name may be to avoid embarrassment by mispronouncing it, or to butter-him-up because people love to hear their own name. Now, see it in your minds eye, and add color, action and largeness to your mental-imagery. Use a close-up of the cow wearing the pearls with skiing. Once you pronounce it, or hear others say the name professor Prlwitzoski, it has stickiness, and you own the name. The whole thing requires just one-minute. Try This What if you create a little rhyme to remind you or remember a jingle you learned at your mothers knee. Thirty-days-hath-September, April, June and November works. Does the new word or name remind you of a quote, title, line of a poem or a similar name you know. I was trying to remember the four bodily humors the ancient Greeks thought so highly of in analyzing our health and state-of-mind. Sanguine, melancholy, choleric and phlegmatic. Forget what they mean for now, how do you remember them? I took the two-letters from each of two words I substituted. The two words were Small-Cop. S and M from Small, and C and P from Cop. There does not have to be any rhyme or reason it just works. The S in Small, mentally retrieves Sanguine, and the M brings to mind Melancholy; the C is the first letter in Cop and reminds me of Choleric, and the last letter in the word Cop, recalls Phlegmatic. In less than one-minute I mentally picture the two-words Small-Cop and an appropriate ridiculous image of a one-foot-tall policeman. After that your brain goes on auto-pilot because the words Small-Cop are associated with the four humors. In the future I associate the four humors with the letters SMCP, and it is enough to mentally access Sanguine, Melancholy, Choleric and Phlegmatic. I tried remembering the four humors through the meanings of each and got no place at all. Endwords Avoid higher-level processing the use of meaning while learning new words because meaning is slow and boring. Convert the name or foreign words to similar-sounding words; it is a game and swift-as-an-eagle. Next, use the magical movie-screen of your mind, and create ridiculous pictures in your minds eye to remind you of the new word. The images can be humorous, a wild exaggeration, come from your senses (hearing, feeling, seeing, etc), a close-up focus, or sharp colors. Finally, make the words animated and lively. One last thing this system is absolute guaranteed to raise your test scores up to 47% - yes, really. Now decide if you are motivated to release the dormant genius within you. See ya, copyright 2006
H. Bernard Wechsler
www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org
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