Mastering the marterial 9 doc

124 10 SECRETS TO ACING ANY HIGH SCHOOL TEST

• In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

• Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November.

Are you familiar with Homer’s Odyssey? If so, you know that the epic

is very long. That is why it is so remarkable that the Odyssey, along

with many ancient stories, was related by storytellers who relied solely

on their memories. Even in modern Africa, family historians called

griots recite hundreds of years of ancestors’ names from memory! The

use of rhyme, rhythm, and repetition are essential to these ancient and

modern storytellers.

As a child, you probably learned your ABCs to the tune of “Twin￾kle, Twinkle, Little Star.” We have even heard of one algebra student

who demonstrated how she memorized the quadratic formula (noto￾rious for being long and difficult to remember) by singing it to a

familiar tune!

Using these techniques can be fun, particularly for people who like

to create. Rhymes and songs draw upon your auditory memory and

may be particularly useful for those who can learn tunes, songs, or

poems easily.

CHUNKING

Chunking is a technique used to group or “chunk” items—generally

numbers—together for better recall, although the process can be used

for recalling other things too. It is based on the concept, mentioned

earlier, that the average person can store about seven items (plus or

minus two) in his or her short-term memory. Have you noticed how

many digits local phone numbers have these days?

When you use chunking, you decrease the number of items you are

holding in your memory by increasing the size of each item. For

example, to recall the number string 10301988, you could try to

remember each number individually, or you could try thinking about

the string as 10 30 19 88 (four chunks of numbers). Instead of remem￾bering eight individual numbers, you are remembering four larger

numbers, right?

As with acronyms and acrostics, chunking is particularly meaning￾ful when chunking has a personal connection. In our number string,

Karl might make two chunks, 1030 and 1988, because he sees that the

first chunk is the last four digits of his zip code and the second is his

sister’s birth year.