The Best Way to Memorize : Active Recall

The Best Way to Memorize

The most effective methods of memorizing is active recall. Active recall along with space repetition and mapping information correctly is a deadly combination that will guarantee results. Active recall necessitates retrieving information from memory continuously while studying. That is, after reading a certain piece of information, you make a conscious and repeated effort to remember what you have just read without looking at the subject matter. Active recall entails using your imagination to visualize the content you have just read so that you can access it better while trying to recall it. When we retrieve information from our brains, we develop our capability to store information. 

Doing practice questions is a form of active recall. Active recall involves simply recalling whatever information you’re learning. The most impactful method for active recall is practice questions. When you are solving questions, you are actively testing yourself on what you know and what you do not know. This is especially important for subjects like mathematics. One can also use flashcards to implement active recall. Using visualization while trying to do active recall is also a great idea. For example, you can try to remember things in geography my visualizing maps.

Furthermore, you must coordinate & store the things you are learning properly. Consider of memory like a room with a lot of boxes. Snippets of information are placed in these boxes. When one is asked to learn and remember a great deal of data at once, like in school, the brain has trouble putting the information quickly into the correct boxes. As a result the brain simply dumps them on the floor like you would do in a messy room. It would be a chaotic mess. However, if time is taken to arrange the information correctly, getting that data out of a box can be rapid and effortless. It's only through effective studying that one can put the items in the correct box. If you utilize active recall without matching things to your mind then the method won’t be that effective.

If you want a step by step process of implementing active recall, the following is a suggestion. Right off the bat, take a blank paper, and try to summarize the content that you read. But before you write on the paper, explain the concept to yourself out loud. Once it is abundantly clear to you, write down what you have explained to yourself. In that way you have written on paper what you need to learn. This way later, when you have to revise this content, you keep on explaining the concept to yourself in your own words.

Some students who use active recall have shared their stories where they pretended to be a teacher and taught concepts to an imaginary person or class. They would use analogies and examples. This is actually called the Feynman technique which is a form of active recall. One can truly understand the topic if he or she can try to teach it to others or by teaching it back to oneself. Other students have said they engaged in lengthy monologues to explain a concept to themselves. Few other students have mentioned that they try to explain the concept to themselves as if they were children.

Spaced repetition involves recalling the information over a period of time while placing a gap between each time you recall the subject matter. For example, you read the information in the morning and recall it at night. Then you recall it the next morning. After that, you recall it after a gap of 2-3 days. You keep increasing the gap each time. Ideally over a month, you would have stored the information to memory quite well. You can set your own pace and define your own gap. Spaced repetition pretty much does the heavy lifting in the process of committing data to long-term memory. Spaced repetition is very useful but it specifically needs to be spaced repetition of active recalling, not re-reading.

A tip to implement active recall with spaced repetition is to write down recollection prompts in your notes. As you read your notes, suddenly you will read a prompt that asks you to stop reading and summarize what you just read without looking. You can use reminders to let you know that it is time to recall the information. An additional tip is to focus on questions instead of answers. Here, you note down the questions related to the subject matter instead of taking mountains of notes. Then once you read through the content, you look at the question and try to recall the answer.

When you think about this carefully, active recall should be the method of choice while studying, because otherwise people seem to be just reading the material and assuming they will actually remember it all. But most people just cram and try to do short-term memorization It is also possible that people who just only read assume that since we all read novels and stories and are able to understand the flow of a story, and the same can be applied to textbooks. But it doesn’t always work that way. When it’s a process, boring concept or new information it is not as easily absorbed like a story.

The human brain works best with familiar things. So things like words, sentences, numbers, that have less visual and audio integrity tend to form weaker neural connections, thus harder to recall. Don't keep writing down stuff, believing that one day you'll be able to memorize them all - that's not how memorization is suppose to work. Another worst mistake a student could make is trying to study or recall when he is suffering from a lack of energy. You cannot do active recall properly if you lack energy. Proper sleep is crucial and must not be neglected. Active recall requires a lot of energy. But it does take energy to really store anything in your brain.

Also the active recall method is extremely rewarding. You will feel your mind instantly telling you what the correct answer is with proper reasoning. Active recall is the reasoning behind why language learners are asked to talk or listen to the language. Imagine seeing a question in an exam that you have visualized many times before. It would be an incredible feeling.