Personally, I have some difficulties in memorizing things. I frequently have trouble memorizing stuffs, and I also forget things easily. When I said I forget things easily, it does not mean that I easily lose my personal belongings or stuffs like that, such as key or cellphone; it means that I have trouble memorizing informations or vocabularies that I have learned during class. No matter how hard I try, I sometimes find it challenging to memorize things. And, the funny thing is, I forget the the informations that I memorized so hard so easily. Usually, I would forget everything that I have learned after a test or an exam is over. I knew that I have to do something in order to improve my memorization skill; that is why I have used several memory strategies. Out of all the memory strategies, I found that 'rehearse' is the best strategy for me, which is basically writing down the information over and over again by hand. Since I am taking a language course (Japanese 102), I think it will be a good idea to use the memory strategy to this class. Also, my Astronomy class is a class that requires lots of memorization along with understanding, so I applied the memory strategy to my Astronomy class.
In Japanese class, the main thing that we are learning about is family, and the vocabularies that we are learning are the family terms in Japanese. For this class, I rehearsed the information by making several family trees. I made several family trees over and over again. The picture in the left shows 2 family trees that I made in Japanese. The terms that I wrote were grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, dad, mom, older brother, older sister, younger brother, younger sister. By writing it down several times and looking at it visually, it was a lot easier to memorize the terms. As you can see in the picture, I have made the family trees different from each other. It was to prevent me from memorizing by only one way.
For my Astronomy class, we are learning about the afterlife of the stars. Like when humans die, stars leave their 'decoys' in space. The three 'decoys' are the white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. These are the main terms that we have know for this chapter, so I picked out these three terms, and rehearsed them. The method I did for this class is a bit different with Japanese's one. I rehearsed the terms by writing the terms and then write the definition of each terms. For example, I would write down 'white dwarf,' and will write the definition of the white dwarf next to it. For each term, I did it 5 times which was just right to memorize the term with the definition. Also, while I was writing the terms and the definitions down, I read it outloud. This way, I was able to insert the information to my head faster and easier.
Rehearse was the most suitable strategy for me to memorize the materials and information that I have learned during class. I keep on writing the vocabularies, terms, and the definitions down over and over. I was able to memorize them soon, and, the most good news is, I was able to remember them for a quite a long time. Comparing to the method I used before, rehearsing the materials really helped me a lot.
From this post I can see that you definately is a writing and kinesthetic learner, since you memorize the terms by writing them over and over again. I sometimes use the strategy of writing informations over and over again and they do help, only if the informations are short. If the definitions I need to know require a lot of words, I would rather memorize by looking at them instead of writing them down. Whatever the case, your strategy seems to work GREAT for you and I will continuously use it in the future. Great job!
ReplyDeleteI have never thought about using rehearse as one of my memorizing tactics.
ReplyDeleteFrom the way you have described how you have studied, it looks like you did a lot of job and it must have helped you since you have worked hard for it. Memorizing is not an easy task for me, and in order for me to memorize, I need to put all my conscious into it and concentrate every second and minute. Writing things out do not really help me in memorizing, because I think that visuals help me better in memorizing. But I am glad to know that the REHEARSE strategy worked out for you. I should try it out sometime too.
Yes Yong Rhee~ you have used the same method as me. I thoughtthat rehearsing strategy would only work for scince courses, but had no idea it would be very effective in language course as well. When I have tried this method, as I was re-writing the material down, i had a better understanding of each concept and able to memorize the materials. Keep up the good work RHEE~
ReplyDeleteAnother post about rehearsing. From this I can definitely believe that the best memorization strategy doesn't depend on how good the strategy is, but what kind of a person he or she is that uses the strategy. As Adrien have said, you are a kinesthetic learner and if you really are, then this rehearsing technic should be the best strategy for you. I am happy to hear that it worked greatly for you. GJ!
ReplyDeleteI also use this strategy sometimes but not much. This is good for courses that are heavy on information and require memorization. Since you have a course that works great with this strategy, you've used it well according to the strategy. I like how you adapted it the way you did and not just follow the basic guideline for the strategy. I do that too because once you really twist the strategy to fit you and your courses, it works so much better and easy to use.
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