Important for Students
Memory Techniques for Students and job aspirants
Memory is the ability to store, retain, and recall information. We known that those who are blessed with good memory usually score well in examinations. This is because any learning process or examination involves the application of memory of memory, though the extent may depend on the type of examination. If your memory is fine, you would easily recall the information you had once mastered. Some feel that relying on memory is not a healthy way of learning. However, effective learning for examination does require memorisation. Imagine that you are writing an examination in physics. If you try to derive from fundamentals the various formulae required, you may not be able to complete all your answers for want of time. Memory Power may be classified as short-term and long-term. Suppose someone tells you a 7-digit telephone number. You may carefully listen and write it out in your phone book. But after a few minutes you may not be able to recall the number. Perhaps that is the reason why you need a phone book. The number remained in your memory only for a short while. Long-term memory power involves information you retain for long durations, either consciously or unconsciously. The sequence of a serious accident in which you were involved will be etched in your memory for long without any conscious effort. On the other hand, you would have put conscious effort to commit the multiplication table to your long-term memory. Many instances of learning may be considered as the conversion of short-term memory into long-term. We easily remember matter that has some meaning. You may not find it easy to remember a set of 25 letters in a given sequence. But you have no difficulty to remember the meaningful sentence ‘If there is a will, there is a way’. The key factor is that the sentence has meaning. You would have had the experience of certain lessons being difficult to remember, since you do not get their meaning. If the words carry some sense we learn the idea easily. If we make an effort to translate the tough matter we wish to remember into something that can be taken in with ease and delight, we make both learning and memorization more effective. Learning by rote without grasping the meaning is no learning at all. It is often said that you forget certain things because you have to remember more important things. Trying to recall an idea frequently will make it firm in your memory. Suppose you are trying to learn by heart a poem. You may apply the technique of over learning. You recite it a few more times after you have learnt it. This would ‘ engrave the mental trace deeper and deeper, thus establishing a base for long-retention’. Best way to face examination
Facing Examinations Most of us fear examinations as life and death struggles. Deep anxieties or fears may make us nervous reduce our ability for logical thinking .We may lose our confidence. Consequently our efficiency may come down sharply, rendering our performance poor. well, we would fail to do so when our mind loses its balance. If we want to perform well in any test, we should maintain our confidence at its peak. We should not panic. We should take the test in a relaxed way. We should enjoy examinations, which are an integral part of any institutionalized educational process. We should tune our mind-set to view examinations as an essential mechanism that helps us in ensuring efficient learning and in acquiring educational qualifications. After all, even those who secure the highest ranks in examinations are people like us. Napoleon said, “Victory is will.” Let us now focus on strategies to enhance the effectiveness of performance in school/college examinations. Just before the Examination • Confirm date, time, and venue of the examination. • Limit your studies within the syllabus. • Revise the lessons using summaries, points, and mnemonics you have made. • If you do not have sufficient time to study the entire syllabus area choose specific parts that are favorites of the question setters and study them thoroughly. • Arrange a watch , pens pencil eraser, instruments, calculator, all documents such as hall tickets, etc. on the previous day. • Avoid quarrels, fights, and arguments that may create stress. • Do not sacrifice your sleep. • If you are in the habit of studying in the early morning, keep an alarm clock to wake you up. • Reach the examination centre at least half an hour before the scheduled time of commencement. • Avoid too much of discussions with fellow candidates. • Before entering the examination hall you may. Visit the toilet /washroom. • Enter the examination hall with confidence. Think about what you know, and not about what you do not know. In the examination hall Keep yourself calm. Follow all the instructions of the invigilator / supervisor. • Confirm that you get the right question paper. Read the instructions in the question paper carefully. • Do not daydream in the examination hall. • Decide the questions to be answered and their sequence to be followed. • Think before you ink. • Mark the question numbers correctly. • Use reasonably large size of letters while writing. Draw sketches of reasonable size. • In essay type answers note all the relevant points before writing the essay. • Use simple language and short sentences. • In subjects such as science or engineering , draw sketches wherever possible. • While solving numerical problems write out the relevant steps to show that you know the mathematical logic involved. if you get stuck with a problem , do not waste too much of time struggling to solve it straightaway, Go to other questions, and come back later to answer the unfinished problem . • Frequently check and confirm that you are following the time schedule. • Do not write instructions to the examiner. • If you do not have sufficient knowledge to complete your quota of questions do not brood over it. • If you could finish all the answers before time, do not leave the hall. Instead read your answers, correct errors if any. |
Methods to Remember lessons
1.Full Concentration Concentrate on the lesson content while learning. Do not allow your mind to wander. Focus on names and numbers. Try deliberately to remember. Your approach should not be casual. Review soon after you learn, lest memory should fade away. 2.logical Organisation Matter that is logically organized is retained better than disjointed floating bits of information. Infuse meaning into whatever you learn. No ‘ nonsense syllables’. 3.The Funnel Method Go from the woods to the trees. First try to get an overall idea of the lesson , and then go to specific details. 4. Associating With Known Facts With each additional bit of knowledge to our memory, the brain goes to a new configuration; this is a continuous process. It is wise to take new bits as additions to existing knowledge. 5. Mock Teaching If you find a particular portion of a lesson difficult to digest, imagine that you are teaching it to a student sitting before you. Explain the content of the lesson. The idea will get hammered into your mind. 6. Visual Encoding Translate information into visual formats like pictures, charts diagrams, tables, and graph. 7. Use Of Mnemonics There is no human in using memory crutches like mnemonics, after grasping the spirit of the lesson. We are familiar with the mnemonic VIBGYOR that helps us to list the seven rainbow colours in the right sequence. LASER is a popular acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. There are acrostics which make use of the first letters of the words in a sentence instead of an artificial word. For example, the acrostic “My very enlightened mother just served us noodles” tells us the names of the eight planets in the order of their distances from the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. 8.Rhyming We remember verse better than prose. We recollect some of the poems we learnt in the elementary school, since they had rhyming; they could be sung as songs. Nursery teachers teach tiny tots the sequence of the alphabet by making the 26 letters rhyme with “twinkle twinkle little star”. For memorizing a difficult list you may draft quickly a couple of rhyming lines. Remember, we discuss just verses, and not poetry. 9. Loci Method You associate items in a list with particular locations, like the different rooms in your house. The rooms are your signposts for reference. You may initially memorise a few signposts and then associate the items you want to remember with the signposts. This method can help you to remember a number of items in a specific order. 10. Chunking You divide the item to be remembered into a number of bits or chunks. For example, if you want to remember a telephone number with 13 digits, you may split it to three chunks of five, five, and three digits. It is easy to remember the bits. 11.Pegging The involves the principle of association. First make a list of ten or twenty convenient pegs or key words that you can easily recall in the right sequence. For example, ant, butterfly ,cat , dog, elephant, fox, giraffe, hyena and so on. Living beings are listed alphabetically. If you want to remember nine things in a particular order imagine funny pictures of each one of them with the first nine pegs you have fixed in your minds. 12.Simple Repetition Very popular as in committing perms to memory by reading them over and over. Preparing a Good curriculum vitae - CV
How to Prepare a Good CV ? The c.v. (curriculum vitae) has become an essential tool for job search. It is a short but well-written description of your personal data covering your educational background, academic qualifications, prior experience, previous employment, and often your special skills personal interests, and hobbies. Sometimes it is called ‘resume’. The term ‘bio-data’ is not popular in several countries. Preparation of the CV should not be casual. Your CV should not be casual. Your CV should generate results. Indeed it is a form of marketing communication. With some extra effort, the CV will make you look like a superior candidate. This is your first exposure to your prospective employer. If you make a poor first impression, there is nothing like a second chance for a fresh first impression. Your CV need not be ornamental. But it has to be elegant and impressive. Brief yet informative. If it has to fulfill all these attributes, even the smartest candidate will necessarily have to apply his mind well and spend a good lot of time for its preparation. As in writing a letter, you should keep in mind the reader. In this case the reader is probably a very busy person who may be skimming through hundreds of CV documents, with a view to identifying the most suitable candidates. Necessarily your document should stand out not only in the quality of the content, but in appearance as well. It should be so pleasing to the eye that the employer is enticed to pick up and read it. It should stir his interest. |