How to remember the text? What is the best way to memorize large texts if you have a bad memory? Overview of methods and techniques of memorization

No mat­ter how much they talk about the era of mul­ti­me­dia, dig­i­tal­iza­tion, and so on, the abil­i­ties of human mem­o­ry are still rel­e­vant. And not only pro­fes­sion­al­ly, but also in gen­er­al cul­tur­al terms, and even in every­day life. It is use­ful for all peo­ple to know how to remem­ber the text ful­ly.

There are sev­er­al tech­niques that allow you to remem­ber text faster and bet­ter. It is worth study­ing them in more detail.

This tech­nique allows you to remem­ber the text even with poor mem­o­ry. It was called the OVOD (not in hon­or of the insect, of course, but by the short names of the main stages).

• About (main idea);
• B (read care­ful­ly);
• About (review);
• D (bring­ing to per­fec­tion).

At the first stage, read the text flu­ent­ly. You don’t need to delve into it — you just need to catch the main the­ses and how they are inter­con­nect­ed. You can write out or under­line these main ideas. But peep­ing into the text, answer­ing to our­selves what it is about, should not be. When this is achieved, you can move on to the next step.

Then the text is read again, but dili­gent­ly, con­cen­trat­ing on seem­ing­ly minor details. There is no need to hur­ry — it is nec­es­sary to attach the par­tic­u­lars and pre­vi­ous­ly learned main ideas as best as pos­si­ble. Rec­om­men­da­tion: it is at this moment that more spe­cif­ic tech­niques for assim­i­la­tion of infor­ma­tion can be applied. When the review time comes, the text is skimmed over with­out going into details, and they do it from the end.

You need to make sure that the con­nec­tions devel­oped between the main and sec­ondary the­ses are cor­rect. If nec­es­sary, they are cor­rect­ed. It is use­ful to com­pare the received infor­ma­tion with the infor­ma­tion already known. It is also a good idea to draw up a rough plan. For large mate­r­i­al, a mesh can be used.

Last step - fine-tun­ing - begins with rep­e­ti­tion of the text from mem­o­ry. It is advis­able to start with the most impor­tant and only then, for each item, remem­ber all the addi­tion­al details. Then re-read the text again, con­cen­trat­ing on what was missed. Impor­tant: it is worth not only fix­ing the mis­take, but also delv­ing into the rea­sons why it was made. It is also worth striv­ing to learn the mate­r­i­al in excess, and not just those points that are need­ed in the first place.

Some­times they use the FOCUS method, which is slight­ly dif­fer­ent from the OVOD method. The first stage is text ori­en­ta­tion, which allows you to high­light the main idea. At the sec­ond stage, the mate­r­i­al is read again (and as care­ful­ly as pos­si­ble). Then they make a review in order to deeply com­pre­hend the con­tent, deter­mine the main and not too impor­tant, men­tal­ly retell the text with the high­light­ing of the main idea.

This is also a very impor­tant help when mem­o­riz­ing texts. Ini­tial­ly, mind maps began to be used as an aid in var­i­ous train­ings. But they soon dis­cov­ered that their capa­bil­i­ties are notice­ably wider. This method of mem­o­riza­tion has oth­er names (for exam­ple, a men­tal map, a thought map, an asso­ci­a­tion map, a dia­gram of log­i­cal con­nec­tions). The essence of this does not change.

When draw­ing up a map indi­cate:

• cen­tral the­sis (or main theme, or pur­pose of the nar­ra­tive);
• key top­ics;
• struc­ture and head­ings (if any);
• detail­ing the main top­ics;
• key­words, sym­bols and pic­tures to visu­al­ize this infor­ma­tion.

At least the fact that they are used in a Finnish ele­men­tary school speaks about the mer­its of smart cards. It was irrefutably proven that this method is more effec­tive than clas­sic notes and mar­gin­al notes. Every­thing is done sim­ply and eas­i­ly: first list the key­words, and then arrange them in a log­i­cal order. Impor­tant: this often not only sim­pli­fies the assim­i­la­tion of infor­ma­tion, but also con­tributes to the devel­op­ment of inde­pen­dent ideas.. A sim­i­lar tech­nique is increas­ing­ly used in the process of busi­ness meet­ings in dif­fer­ent coun­tries.

Mind maps are also rec­om­mend­ed for:

• in solv­ing com­plex and ambigu­ous prob­lems;
• to awak­en cre­ative abil­i­ties;
• in the process of writ­ing books, arti­cles, scripts;
• when run­ning a blog or web­site.

This method should not be dis­count­ed either. But it should be sup­port­ive. For a while, writ­ing in a note­book or sticky notes with short key phras­es that catch your eye will help. How­ev­er, this is a kind of “crutch­es for mem­o­ry.” And, like real crutch­es, they must be grad­u­al­ly aban­doned as soon as there is clear progress, the same thing with the notes on the hand, on the nails, and so on.

It is dif­fi­cult to say whether it is real­ly eas­i­er to learn how to mem­o­rize long texts in your native lan­guage or not. This includes a lot of dif­fer­ent fac­tors, and each of them can both help and hin­der. But in one sense, famil­iar lan­guage is sim­pler: it allows you to use images of what you remem­ber, and not just repeat it. The most dif­fi­cult text is eas­i­er to remem­ber using approach­es such as:

• repeat­able record;
• divi­sion into blocks;
• graph­ic tech­nique;
• con­tin­u­ous mem­o­ry.

Record­ings are very help­ful when the nec­es­sary mate­r­i­al con­tains a lot of spe­cial terms, for­mu­las, tables, graphs. Already after the first read­ing, it is nec­es­sary to clear­ly under­stand the main the­ses and high­light the most impor­tant terms. Then they are sequen­tial­ly writ­ten down (you can even draw at the same time).

Cor­rect­ly digest­ing a large text with­out errors some­times helps use of pic­tograms. Hav­ing high­light­ed key words and main sen­tences, con­di­tion­al pic­tures are drawn for each impor­tant word (they should be sim­pler, clear­er and with­out inscrip­tions, even let­ters). Atten­tion: the fig­ures should be arranged in the same order as the blocks of the stud­ied infor­ma­tion. Some­times help­ful from a psy­cho­log­i­cal point of view divide the mate­r­i­al into parts (but not more than 7 blocks, each of which must be log­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed inside).

The main atten­tion is paid mid­dle of the text. At the begin­ning, with rare excep­tions, con­tains intro­duc­to­ry and not very impor­tant infor­ma­tion. The end can most often be recon­struct­ed pure­ly log­i­cal­ly, if the begin­ning and mid­dle are known. The per­ma­nent mem­o­ry method is slow­er, but slight­ly more reli­able.

The eas­i­est way to mem­o­rize text in a for­eign lan­guage is lis­ten­ing to records on the play­er or phone at the same time as nor­mal activ­i­ties. But lis­ten­ing should not be thought­less, you should delve into the con­tent and iden­ti­fy sig­nif­i­cant points. To speed up the process, it is advised to draw the same icons while lis­ten­ing and make brief notes. Impor­tant: the text in a for­eign lan­guage is bet­ter absorbed in the first 4 hours after wak­ing up and with­in 4 hours before going to bed. Also rec­om­mend:

• try to break for­eign mate­r­i­al into blocks;
• deter­mine the gen­er­al out­line of the con­tent and the thread of the sto­ry;
• use par­al­lels with your own life and per­son­al expe­ri­ence.

To learn the text when read­ing the first time, It is very impor­tant to cre­ate a pos­i­tive calm envi­ron­ment. It is bet­ter to stop lis­ten­ing to loud music for as long as you need to mem­o­rize infor­ma­tion. This rule must be observed not only before and dur­ing the study, but also after the same day. The few­er dis­trac­tions, the more effi­cient the work. And one more nuance: the morn­ing hours are bet­ter for get­ting to know new infor­ma­tion than the evening hours, after dark it is advis­able to repeat what you have already read before, but do not take on fresh infor­ma­tion, if pos­si­ble.

A com­mon mis­take many peo­ple make is try­ing to com­bine read­ing and eat­ing.. This is not only unhealthy, but also inef­fec­tive. A suit­able envi­ron­ment will allow you to cre­ate read­ing at the writ­ten, and not at the din­ner table, not in bed and not in the bath­room. It is use­ful to use speed read­ing meth­ods. Even if some­thing is not assim­i­lat­ed imme­di­ate­ly from one read­ing, it is impos­si­ble to return imme­di­ate­ly to what was missed.

While read­ing, you can only move for­ward. It is use­ful to come up with bright and expres­sive asso­ci­a­tions with any­thing. It is equal­ly impor­tant to share and dis­cuss what you read with oth­er peo­ple. This will also allow you to cope with the excite­ment of pub­lic speak­ing, by the way.

Many peo­ple are fas­ci­nat­ed by the way actors mem­o­rize long lines. But there is noth­ing super­nat­ur­al or bril­liant in this. They just know how to absorb a very large vol­ume in a short time. Most often they do this:

• read slow­ly, with intense atten­tion, prefer­ably aloud;
• try to catch the main motive and plot;
• divide a large record into blocks, each of them is taught sep­a­rate­ly;
• rewrite all text from scratch man­u­al­ly;
• retell it, start­ing from key­words and focus­ing on small details (peep only as a last resort);
• rewrite the text again with­out prompts;
• re-read the mate­r­i­al care­ful­ly and retell it.

There are oth­er, more spe­cif­ic tricks:

• high­light­ing text with a mark­er or dif­fer­ent col­ors in the most impor­tant or obvi­ous­ly prob­lem­at­ic places;
• chant­i­ng;
• read­ing until you ful­ly under­stand the mean­ing and emo­tions.

How­ev­er, for both chil­dren and adults, it is some­times impor­tant not only to learn some mate­r­i­al read once, but also to refer to it sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly. There­fore, it is very impor­tant to train long-term mem­o­ry as well. Those who know how to make an asso­cia­tive array will be able to sim­pli­fy their lives. Rules:

• asso­ci­a­tions should be as bright and unusu­al as pos­si­ble, more fun;
• if they are emphat­i­cal­ly unre­al­is­tic (“found plums in sneak­ers”), this is very good;
• it is desir­able to cre­ate at least 3–4 asso­ci­a­tions for greater reli­a­bil­i­ty;
• imag­ine an image before the eyes or as a sound;
• exag­ger­ate size, bright­ness, etc.;
• use move­ment.

More tips:

• poems for the devel­op­ment of mem­o­ry should be tak­en from unloved or pre­vi­ous­ly unknown poets;
• move from short texts to large ones;
• min­i­mize entries;
• do not for­get about breaks and phys­i­cal activ­i­ty;
• eat well;
• observe the dai­ly rou­tine;
• train all your life, at every oppor­tu­ni­ty.