1st March 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
For the majority of us, at some point in our education we have been forced to learn boring and, what can seem, mundane and useless facts in order to pass our exams. Particularly when studying for my GCSEs, I found it difficult to force myself to commit to memory reams of ghastly chemical equations and historical dates.
However, those subjects that I enjoyed and excelled in were always much less difficult to learn and revise for. This is because we remember what we find interesting, what appears unique or amusing to us. Everyone remembers Henry VIII with his six wives, obesity and break away from the Catholic Church. Henry VII on the other hand, with his one wife and long and relatively uneventful twenty-four-year reign.
According to research, one effective way to make the boring need-to-know facts more interesting is through the use of mnemonics. These are patterns of letters, ideas or associations that assist us in remembering something by creating a visual memory aid. They help us to forge vivid connections within our minds between concepts which we may otherwise see as meaningless.
One user of the online learning website Memrise, has come up with a suggestion for learning how Riyadh is the capital of Saudi Arabia. These seem unmemorable and unlinkable in my mind. However, this uses suggests we imagine Amy Winehouse singing ‘They tried to make me go to Riyadh, and I Saudi no, no, no’. This is my mind is hilarious – witty and amusing which seems to me the key to revision success. Next time you want to try and remember a boring fact, think about this and see if you can come up with your own word associations or clever images to help you.