A successful student uses effective strategies.
Mnemonics is one class of study strategy that is of proven effectiveness, but
is used far too little. Perhaps the main reason for this is that their effectiveness is not intuitively
obvious — truly, no one really believes that these 'tricks' can so remarkably
improve memory until they try them for themselves.
But while mnemonics do not help you understand your material, they do help you
remember those many details you need to achieve expertise in a topic — details
such as the names of things, technical words, lists of principles.
Moreover, mnemonics can help you remember tags or labels that allow you to
access clusters of meaningful information — for example, headings of a speech
or main points for exam essays. For both these reasons, mnemonics are a valuable
assistance to building up expertise in a subject, as well as in helping you
'cram' for an exam.
This concise book covers
- acronyms & acrostics
- rhythm & rhyme
- keyword strategies (including the face-name association method)
- the story method
- the loci or journey method
- the pegword method
- the link method
- coding mnemonics
While you can find basic information on these various mnemonic strategies in
many books and websites, Mnemonics for Study goes far beyond the same tired
descriptions, using the latest research to explain exactly how these strategies
work and are best used.
This 2nd edition includes multi-choice chapter reviews, extra images, and a
very detailed step-by-step case study showing how to use mnemonics to learn the
Geological Time Scale.