Study Tip #6
MEMORY TRICKS CAN MAKE SCHOOLWORK EASIER:
SIMILARITIES, THE LINK, AND THE KEYWORD METHOD

Outline on Memory Tricks

1. Memory tricks make powerful artificial associations.
2. Use similarities to make associations.
3. The link method.
4. Guidelines to making associations.
5. A brief example of the keyword method.
6. The keyword method step by step.
7. An example of using the keyword method.
8. When to use the keyword method.
9. Why does the Keyword method make associations so easy to remember?

• "Mrs. Harris goes to Paris." The rhyme makes the words similar.
• "The capital city of the state of Maine is Augusta." Augusta resembles the month of August, a hot summer month. But that is opposite to cold wintry Maine. An easy association.
• You can spell the word "piece" by thinking "a piece of pie." Two similar spellings.

The Link Method

Students often need to learn lists of items. So use the Link method to make a way to recall a whole series of facts that you might forget if you studied them separately.

The Link method takes items and converts them into mental pictures and links the picture of each item into a common picture with another item. It often uses ridiculous pictures. So when you see a picture of the first item, it is automatically in the same picture as the next item; you recall both.

Here is an example of a list. It uses several study methods from another study tip. Suppose you want to recall (1) the spaced study method, (2) warming up your mind, (3) marking your book, and (4) self-testing.

First, spaced studying: Make a silly picture that reminds you of it. Can you see yourself throw books all around a room? That spaces them.
Second, warming up your mind: Make a picture that reminds you of it, too. How about seeing a match held under a picture of a brain?
Third, now link the spaced books and the warmed-up brain. For example, make your image of throwing books focus on throwing one book at the brain and the lighted match.
Fourth, marking your book: Make a picture of marking your book that's linked to the match and the warmed up brain. That's easy. Picture the warm brain sticking out a hand that holds a pencil and that marks one of the spaced books.
Fifth, self-tests: Link a picture representing a self-test to the marked book. I can make a short mental movie of me seeing a multiple-choice test question and then sneaking an illegal look at my marked book to find the answer. (The fact that cheating is illegal and dangerous makes you remember the image.)

Guidelines to making associations:

• Substitute one part of the first object for a part of the second object. To link fertilizer to petroleum, you could imagine a hand holding a gas can and pouring out fertilizer, not gas.
• Make things out of proportion. Make little things big, big things little. For example, you can remember that the link method causes memory by imagining a person with a gigantic brain that is wrapped around with chain links.
• Exaggerate the numbers involved or the sizes involved. For example, link lemons to vitamin C by imagining a lemon, cut open, with vast seas (C's) inside and letter C's swimming.
• Put action in your associations. You can remember that saltwater is a cure for heat exhaustion by picturing yourself pouring a waterfall of salt water over a prone person and seeing the person stand up healthy.
  (*Many of the ideas on links and associations come from The Memory Book, by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas. Paperback. Good.)

The Keyword Method

The keyword method is an excellent way to memorize a new word and its defi¬nition. You make a mental image of each one and then blending the two images into one picture. Here is a quick overview. For an example, suppose you use it to memorize the French word "le chien" which means a dog. First, you notice that the sound of "chien" is like a shin, the front and bottom part of our legs. Next, make a picture of your "shin" and put a dog biting your leg in the same picture. Presto! New word and definition are linked. Later if you want to recall either one, you think of your image and figure out what you want.

This is a very powerful technique. Researchers recommend it. Even people with bad memories can remember things with it.

I recommend that after you have figured out how to use the method you practice using it on 3 words and their definitions, words that you already know. If you do that, you will create a specific memory of how to do it and will be more likely to do it later.

The Keyword Method Step by Step

1. Understand what the new word means. Do it clearly and fully because it is important. Use good ways of understanding, such as making visual images of the meaning, talking to yourself about what it means, and thinking how it feels.
2. Take the new word and choose a keyword that rhymes with it. Choose one that you can think of naturally. It is often enough to have it rhyme only partly with the new word. For example, you might take "melancholy" (which means depressed) and use "melon" as a keyword. Always choose rhymes, bad puns, similar sounds.
3. Make a vivid mental image of the keyword. (Don't make a mental image of the original word.) Here's how to make the image vivid: Put in color, shape, one or two details, sounds, physical feelings, movement, or any combination of the above.
4. Now turn to the definition and also make a vivid mental image of it.
5. Now make an interactive image out of the two images. The purpose is to make such an integrated image that when you think of one image you see the other. Here's how to make an interactive image: Put the two images in the same unified picture. Make them relate to each other. For example, the things in one image could touch or hit the other. One image could be put inside the second, one on top of the other, or one a part of the other.
6. Now you test if your images will work. Start with the original word again. Practice thinking of the keyword next, then the keyword's image, then the interactive image, then picking out the image of the definition and translating the picture of the definition into the words of the definition. Continue until it's easy. At this stage you may notice problems. Improve your images if you need to.
7. Now make a backward test. Start with the definition. Practice thinking from the definition in words through the images back to the original word. Practice until it is easy.

An Example of Using the Keyword Method

Suppose you need to learn that "der Steg" (a German word) means a footpath.

1. Study both the German and English until you clearly understand the meaning of the words. Get the pronunciation correct. Don't skip this step.
2. Choose a keyword. For example, "steak" sounds close enough to "Steg".
3. Make a picture in your mind of some nice, red, raw, juicy, dinner steaks.
4. Make a picture of a footpath. You could think of one shaded by branches with two children walking along it.
5. Fuse the two images into one. For example, imagine that the children throw several steaks onto the dusty path.
6. Do forward practice. "Der Steg", the word "steak", picture of steak, picture of path, picture of children throwing steaks onto path.
7. Do backward practice. The word "footpath", picture of path, picture of children throwing steaks onto path, focus on steak, word "steak", word "Steg".

When to Use the Keyword Method
When you need to learn new vocabulary words that you would find hard to remember naturally, think of the keyword method. It is good for learning foreign vocabulary and for scientific and technical words. Reminder: Even new words learned by the keyword method will fade over time unless they are practiced.

Why does the Keyword method make associations so easy to remember?
If you have ever seen or read about a memory expert learning a large mass of new material quickly and accurately, you are aware of the power of mnemonic methods. They make an easy trail for the user’s mind to follow both when learning and later when recalling so that there are no random meaningless jumps to make. In contrast, ordinary learning often leaves a person puzzled later as to what things to think of in order to use an association that will retrieve a memory.

Notice that the keyword method’s first learning step involves taking the new word and finding a pun, a sound-alike word. You take the word and think of an association that the new word makes to you. That step also comes first in one’s later memory search. In the earlier example of shin-“le chien”, the word “le chien” reminded me personally of a shin and I chose it. So in retrieval I always know when I see “le chien” to check memory for a something easy and concrete—the sound-alike word. The association is not an arbitrary association between one meaningless word to a forgotten one, but between a word which is right there and a sound which is right there. All I have to recall is which possible sound I chose and to recall an image of the sound-alike word—my shin in this example.

The second learning step is to take the definition’s meaning and make its picture. That step always comes second, so my mind can create the image. Since “le chien” means a dog, I made a picture of a dog. Then I went to the third learning step to put the picture of the shin and the dog in the same image.

When I recall the word, I normally won’t recall the step of making the definition’s picture because as soon as I go to the image of my shin I will automatically see the other parts of the image integrating the dog and the shin by the dog biting my shin.

When we recall information using a mnemonic method, our minds follow a trail that we created earlier with natural associations until we come to an integrated image containing two or more parts that are tied, attached and bound together.

Note that the keyword method uses visual links, but you could use verbal or kinesthetic methods, too. A verbal integrated unit might be a sentence or a silly pair of names. A kinesthetic image might be a sense of touching something linked with a visual image of what touches it.

In summary, the keyword method works well because it takes words and odd facts that by themselves require brute force repetition to learn and finds a way to make a series of natural associations step-by-step to create an integrated visual image. Later when you recall the new word, you jump from the word to its definition to its image and to the integrated image. Notice that if you can study any other new material and also find natural step-by-step ways to lead to integrated images or sentences or other units you can also create quick learning of complex information or unusual words. Think about it!

(Dan Hodges. 7/07)

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