How to Memorize

There are people with photographic memories, who can be annoying to the rest of us who struggle to memorize lines from a play, poetry, written music, the times tables, and so forth. Memorizing is a lot of hard work because you have to take something from your short term memory and save it to your “hard disk”-your long term memory. To do that requires repetition.

But it’s not just repetition that does the job-if it were, some of us would not be wringing our hands every time we are asked to memorize something. I remember an assignment in graduate school, to memorize a poem and then to recite in front of everyone in the class and everyone’s significant others. If repetition would have helped me to memorize that poem, I would have had it nailed because I repeated it and repeated it and repeated it. And while I did say all the words, in order, in front of those people, it took a very long time for me to retrieve it in that situation.

So repetition can help, but it is not THE answer.

An Answer: Channels

One thing people do not take into account when they are memorizing is that your brain processes information from different “channels” differently. There is a part of your brain that processes language that you read visually. Another part takes care of language that you hear. And all this is different from the parts of your brain that control what you say and what you do. When you are asked to memorize math facts, music, or anything that is written down and then to perform them, you are actually switching channels, from the visual to the verbal in the case of math facts or poetry or from the visual to the performed, in the case of music.

I don’t know how it is for anyone else, but I do know that when information switches channels in my brain, it gets lost. While I can hear music, play it, and learn it quickly that way, I have a very hard time looking at written music and memorizing it, even if I play it over and over and over again. I’m a good music reader-I’m just not good at switching channels.

The same thing happens with written poetry. One time on a test in a poetry class, I had to memorize a poem, write it down, and analyze it as one of the essays. That wasn’t real hard at all. I could go from what I read visually to what I produced visually with my writing. But reading a poem and being able to speak it from memory are two very different things, in my head, and, I suspect, in the heads of other people.