Mnemonic Devices that can help a college students life !

Stressful College Student

Living the life of a college student can be really stressful because you have so many responsibilities to take care of such as homework, extracurricular activities, laundry and let’s not forget cleaning up your room! Other than that, having so much on your mind can make you forget about your important courses such as the daily lessons to remember. The day before the exam, you are just stuck wondering “what’s that word again?” or “I forgot that important word so now what?”. Using Mnemonic devices can be so helpful because you make connections from the words to help you remember the information. By using this strategy, it will help you improve your comprehension with the word you have difficulty to remember and relate it with something you already know. If you make the connections to ordinary or non-creative then the information will not come to you. But if you make the connections in a exaggerated, unusual way than the information will be much easier to retrieve and recall! I used two strategies in my Spanish 201 class called Acronyms and the Link system; perhaps you will use it in your other courses as well.

Acronyms

Acronyms are words that you will use the first letter of each and create a new word that will visually help you see what each one means. So you will jot down the information that you learned and then form an acronym for each term by chunking it down. Take each letter from each word and arrange it a word that creates a word.

Using Acronyms in SPA 201

I used this strategy in my Spanish class because this course consists of remembering a different language so that means I have to remember the grammar, the words and certain rules in Spanish. I didn’t have a problem with remembering words because I grew up in a household with Spanish speaking people. But what I have a difficult time is remembering the rules on how to use a certain Spanish word in a sentence. I ask my teacher why is it like that ? and she just responds “it’s just something that you have to memorize, a rule that I can’t really explain it to you on why we have to use it.” Honestly, I’m not good with remembering things but using this strategy, it really did. For example, I had difficulty understanding on when I have to use imperfect tense. So I put down the information and wrote an Acronym called BATH. This helped me distinguish when I can use it as opposed to present tense which I already know how to use. I created it like this:

B (background)
A (age)
T (time)
H (habitual or repeated events)

So now I can understand when to use it in a simple form by remember this term BATH.

My Dislikes

My dislikes is just one like what if I can’t create a new word, then what do I do? What if the first word of each term that I have to learn are the same, then what ?!

Link System

The Link System is a strategy that helps you connect the term you have to remember with something that it looks like or sounds alike. It’s a simple strategy to use! You just pick a term that you are having trouble with and then you create a image or word that can be visualized or sounds similar to the word. * If you exaggerate the connection then you will recall it faster and easier by making a little picture to connect to it.

Using for SPA 201

One example I have used is learning the vocabulary words for Spanish. For example: Criar – which means “to raise”. I made the connection with TREE and the AR to BAR. I pictured that there was a bar in the tree that and to since you have will have to be raised you want to get in to a bar when your old enough. It will help me connect it with CRIAR. I know it sounds silly but it is supposed to help me recall the information.

Dislikes:

It’s hard for me to create a word that I’m supposed to exaggerate because I’m not really creative. It takes up my time for simple words so I would recommend this strategy for someone who has difficulty with a really difficult word to remember.