In my first post about memorization, which I wrote just after the death of Alex Trebek, I used the example of Jeopardy! to prove that there’s more to memorization than simply knowing the facts. I stressed that what makes Jeopardy! clues so varied, interesting, and memorable is that while some of them do only test your knowledge of a single fact, many more of them include two or more facts, along with something that connects them. Understanding that connection is just as important to asking the right question as knowing any of the individual facts is, and just as those connections can help you learn new information when you watch Jeopardy!, they can also help you learn new information when you study. Though memorization is not stressed in school these days as much as it once was, I believe it is still an important skill to have, because it expands your knowledge base and enhances your ability to use what you’ve learned, not just when you’re in school, but when you’re out in the world as well.
The main reason memorization has been deemphasized in recent years is because it was traditionally done by rote – students were given a list of facts to know, with no explanation or connection, and expected to recite them or write them as-is – and then, somehow, remember them over time, even as new lists of facts were added. While this was far from ideal, and clearly worked best for students like like me who have verbal-linguistic strengths and/or mathematical or analytical strengths, I maintain that taking memorization away completely is also far from ideal. Like it not, even if it is far from your strength, memorization still matters. The key to making it work for you lies in making connections to it. If you find yourself struggling to memorize anything, even with the help of connections and examples your teachers provide, you can make it work for you by making your own connections to it, and/or finding new and different examples to help you. The old way of memorizing facts may well deserve the bad rap it gets, but gaining a new appreciation for it by doing it your own way can make it well worth your while.
I have provided examples of things you might be expected to memorize, as well as things you might find you need to memorize, along with tips to make memorization more meaningful and successful, in many of the strategy posts I have put on my website, and will continue to do so as I keep building it. Many of these have involved or will involve making connections – recognizing patterns in math facts, using etymology to study vocabulary, using as well as creating memory tricks – but what they all have or will have in common is that they will make memorization into more than just a list of facts, which will in turn help you make what you memorize into something you will be able to remember over time.
The secret to Jeopardy’s long-running success is that it makes knowledge of facts and the ability to memorize fun by drawing on a wide range of topics and connecting bits of knowledge in many different ways. While some of your teachers may find ways to make memorizing fun, whether through Jeopardy! or other review games or by providing memory tricks and examples to aid your memory, they most likely won’t give you specific tricks for every fact that trips you up, because doing that for every one of their students would take valuable time away from other parts of the curriculum and keep you from learning how to put the facts you’ve learned to work, so you can continue to remember and use them well beyond the time of the test. This is where both your own creativity and interests and the importance of making connections come into play. If you put your mind to it, you can make a connection to just about any fact you need to know and make it your own, and because the connection is one you yourself made, you are much more likely to remember it. I once taught a fan of The Little Mermaid who decided to use King Triton to remember that the capital of New Jersey is Trenton, and another time, I taught a fan of the band Good Charlotte who decided to connect the name to the fact that guanine and cytosine form an amino acid pair. These are just two of the many examples I could give to show that when it comes to strengthening your ability to memorize facts, the sky really is the limit. Though I would only recommend using these very specific individualized tricks on facts you are stuck on when other methods have failed, so that coming up with these tricks doesn’t take too much time away from the other work you need to do, knowing you can turn to them when you do get stuck is a good way to keep from getting frustrated as you work to build and improve your ability to memorize a greater quantity of facts over time.
While memorizing by rote is deserving of the bad rap it receives, memorizing accompanied by explanation, context, strategies, and examples is an important part of building your knowledge base and being able use it over time. Making connections to what you are expected to memorize, making it fun through the use of review games like Jeopardy!, and coming up with creative tricks based on your own interests for the facts that would otherwise trip you up are all ways you can strengthen your ability to memorize facts and remember them over time, so instead of becoming frustrated by the need to memorize facts, you can make it work for you.