One of the most difficult and yet important aspect in your college learning is about changing and trying different strategy on your old studying habit. It's well known fact that strategy you have used in high school isn't as effective as it was in... well in high school. You need to find new and better strategy that's proven to work to succeed in college. This can be applied to reading, memorizing, and preparing for an exam. In this blog, I have adapted and applied some of the memorization strategy to my courses. I've used Link System strategy on NSD 225 class. This course is heavy on reading and memorizing information so it's perfect course to try out this new strategy on memorization.
Nutrition class is all about reading and memorizing different types of vitamins, nutritions, and health related side effects. These elements are often all linked together so you can't just memorize this one thing and move on to the other. You need to know which elements is in which vitamin to understand the other vitamin. Link System helps you to memorize terms and concepts with images that looks alike and sounds alike. Basically, to really utilize this strategy, you need to invest and really think about the related images and sounds similar to the terms you want to remember. It might be little more time consuming than just reading the terms over and over, but once you follow the strategy and really understand the concept of it, it will stick in your head much longer.
To use this strategy, you need to first figure out which terms or concepts you want to use this for. Then, create a image or words that can be easily related to the words you are trying to memorize. For example, to memorize calcium, I related it to the abstract image of milk and related milk to bones. Because milk promotes absorption of calcium and this leads to stronger bones density, I can memorize calcium much easier and retrieve it later without a problem. Another example would be trying to memorizing sodium and relate that to the salt. Salt would be related to table salt in Burger King. Visualizing abstract images and relating those elements with familiar places and objects, it helped me to memorize things better than just memorizing them with definition.
Link System Sample Application
After using this strategy, I felt really familiar with the whole strategy. Visualizing and using images and places to memorize things is popular and exercised by people in many different areas. But, by learning and seeing it in action, especially for my school courses, it looks different and worth the time to invest and really explore more to adapt into my current studying habit. Out of all other strategies on memorization, Link System works best for me and I plan on trying this strategy for my other courses as well. But for now, it works perfect with NSD 225 and I can't wait to test this strategy out on my Exam 3.
Maybe not but you get the idea.
I remember learning about this LINK strategy from last lecture. Since then, I've been trying to use it and I did find it a bit helpful than I actually thought. Your usage of LINK is perfect especially when you use it to memorize nutrition terms. I can definately remember the sodium as soon as I see the word salt. It definately is a great strategy!!
ReplyDeleteThis LINK Strategy seems to help in a lot of ways, because brain works in a way that it does not memorize things just by the way it is, at least for me. So if you link such vocabularies to something related to it, the brain seem to learn it better than its regular abilities to remember things. I like how you linked your words to simpler words and I like to link them with something interesting, so that it sticks to my brain more. Hope it works out for ya.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I do not like to use the LINK strategy. Though it might help you memorize terms easier by related to something similiar or sound similiar, I feel like I have to memorize the linked "definition" for the terms, which I really do not feel like doing. However, there are difference in preference in studying something with different strategies; so, if the LINK strategy works for you, I guess that is the right strategy for you. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Andrew about the link strategy. Apparently, I am a scientific guy and no part of my brain contains artsy part. Therefore, I really have a hard time coming up and finding words that sound similar to the original definition. However, since link strategy worked for you, I am really gld. I hope you keep using this strategy for your college courses and keep up the good work Chan
ReplyDeleteChan, I also used this link strategy which Dr. Blumin demonstrated in the class. I am sort of neutral on both the pros and cons of this strategy. It does take a LOT of time to come of with the sound-a-like and look-a-like and it can be a hassle for someone who has an upcoming test, but I think this strategy is really good when it comes to long-term memorization. I think this strategy should be used for your major classes like NSD. Good job
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