How many colours are there in a rainbow? Most of us never struggle with this answer, because in school somebody told us one word: VIBGYOR. Violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red. One word holds seven colours, and we still have it years later.
That word is a mnemonic. The word is pronounced "nee-monics" and it means any device that helps you remember, such as a rhyme, a code word, or a sentence. The ancient Greeks used mnemonics a great deal, because they found that human memory works by linking things together. Think of a pineapple, and your mind instantly gives you its shape, colour, taste and smell. One thing pulls another along.
Two ways to make one
An acronym takes the first letter of each item and makes a new word. VIBGYOR is one. So is BODMAS for the order of operations in mathematics: brackets, of, division, multiplication, addition, subtraction. BHAJSAB is a good one for history students. It stands for the Mughal rulers in order: Babar, Humayun, Akbar, Jehangir, Shahjahan, Aurangzeb and Bahadur Shah Zafar.
An acrostic takes the first letters and makes a sentence. For the order of algebra, Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally stands for parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction. For biology students, Kids Prefer Cheese Over Fried Green Spinach gives you kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.
Acrostics are less limiting. When your words will not make a neat word, make a sentence instead. But the sentence is longer to learn.
The sillier, the better
The rule while making a mnemonic is to make it illogical and funny. The more absurd the association, the better the recall. A sensible sentence is forgotten. A ridiculous one stays.
My favourite examples are the small tricks. Do you know how to tell Indian and African elephants apart? Look at the ears. The word LITTLE has an I, so little ears means Indian. The word LARGE has an A, so large ears means African. Or think of stalagmites and stalactites in a cave. Stalagmite has a G and an M: it grows from the Ground, it starts as a Mound. Stalactite has a C and a T: it hangs from the Ceiling.
Students always get confused with desert and dessert. Dessert is sweet and everybody wants a second helping, so it has two S. A desert has less of everything, so it has one S. Once you picture the helping, you never forget.
Make it a habit
- Write down the key points of a chapter, or the items in a list.
- Take the first letter of each one.
- Try to make a word, or if that fails, a sentence, that you can say in one breath.
- Add a funny picture to it.
Take the toughest part of your syllabus first. Write the list of what you must remember, pick the hardest ones, and build a mnemonic for those. Make your own, because the one you make yourself is the one you remember best. Tell the sentence to a friend, and see if she laughs. If she laughs, you will remember it.
Know the limits
Mnemonics have one weakness, and I want to be honest about it. They help you memorise, but they do not help you understand. You may remember the sentence for the planets and still not know a single fact about Jupiter. Some people assume that if they can remember something, they must know it. That is not so. Use mnemonics for the order and the names, and use understanding for the meaning.
The other problem is that not every list can be turned into a word. And like everything else, a mnemonic can be forgotten if you do not use it.
Throw them away when they are done
Here is the best part. Students sometimes tell me, "Sir, soon we will need a code word to remember all our code words." That does not happen, because you will not need the mnemonics for long. Think of a bricklayer working at great speed, or a sprinter on the track. Their skills were practised slowly, bit by bit, until they became second nature. After a while, they do not think about the steps.
It is the same here. Use the mnemonic until you know the thing. After repeated use, the knowledge stays and the code word falls away. The driving instructors at the police training school in Hendon, London, teach a sentence to new drivers: Can My Safety Be Given Away. Course, mirror, speed, brakes, gear, acceleration. At slow speed, you recite it as you drive. At high speed, the words are dropped and your trained habits take over. The ladder has done its work.
This is one chapter from my book Train Your Brain.
