How to Memorise Faster: Proven Techniques for Exam Students

Everyone has met the student who reads a page once and seems to recall it forever. Most of us are not like that. The good news is that memory responds to technique. You can learn to memorise faster, and, more importantly, to remember for longer, by working with the way the brain stores information instead of against it.

First, a warning about "memorising everything"

Some content should be understood, not memorised: how a lever works, why the Industrial Revolution changed cities, how to solve a simultaneous equation. If you only memorise those, you will be stuck when the question is phrased differently. Use the techniques below for what must be recalled exactly: definitions, formulas, sequences, dates, names, symbols and lists. For the rest, see how to study effectively.

Technique 1: Chunking

The brain handles small groups better than long strings. Break material into chunks of three to five items, and learn one chunk at a time.

Example, Biology: The seven characteristics of living things can be learnt as the first four (movement, respiration, sensitivity, growth) and then the last three (reproduction, excretion, nutrition). Different teachers use different acronyms such as MRS GREN; you can use one of those or your own.

A phone number is memorised the same way: 0803 xxx xxxx. Treat a long list as a set of small phone numbers.

Technique 2: Mnemonics

A mnemonic is a memory trick that turns something dry into something you can picture or say. There are three common forms.

Make your own whenever possible. A mnemonic you invent, even a rude or funny one, sticks better than one copied from a friend. For the reactivity series in Chemistry, a sentence of your own using the first letters of the metals works well. Check the actual order from your textbook or syllabus; do not trust a half-remembered chart.

Technique 3: Make it visual

Pictures stick. Convert text into a diagram.

• A flow chart for the stages of the water cycle
• A timeline for events in Nigerian history or Government
• A table comparing mitosis and meiosis
• A simple sketch of the heart with arrows marking blood flow

Draw it by hand, then try drawing it again without looking. The mistakes you make on the second attempt tell you what to review.

Technique 4: The memory palace (method of loci)

This ancient technique ties items to places you know well. Pick a route, such as your home: the gate, the front door, the sitting room, the kitchen, your bedroom. To memorise a list of ten items, place each one in a location, imagining it in a vivid and odd way. Then walk through the house in your mind and "see" each item.

Example: To remember the main functions of government (legislative, executive, judicial), you might imagine a noisy debate at your gate (legislators arguing), a man in uniform giving orders at your front door (executive), and a judge with a wig sitting on your sofa (judiciary).

It sounds childish, but it works because places and images are easier to hold than abstract words. Use it for lists in Government, Biology classifications or literature characters.

Technique 5: Say it, write it, test it

Memory improves when you use more than one channel.

1. Read the fact once, carefully.
2. Say it aloud in your own words.
3. Write it from memory on a blank page.
4. Check against the book and correct.

This beats reading five times. The act of recalling (step 3) does most of the work. Researchers sometimes call this the testing effect; in a well-known 2006 study, Roediger and Karpicke found that practising recall helped students remember a passage better a week later than simply re-reading it.

Technique 6: Spaced recall

You forget quickly after learning, then more slowly. To keep something, revisit it just as it begins to fade. A simple plan:

Use small flash cards: question on one side, answer on the other. Keep cards you get right in a "later" pile and those you get wrong in a "tomorrow" pile. A free phone app can do the same thing, but paper cards cost nothing and work during power cuts.

Technique 7: Link new facts to what you know

Meaning is the glue of memory. When learning that sodium reacts vigorously with water, link it to the reactivity series, to what you saw in the laboratory or in a video, and to the position of sodium in the group. The more connections a fact has, the easier it is to find.

For formulas, ask "where does it come from?" If you know that speed = distance ÷ time, then you can rearrange it rather than memorise three versions.

What to memorise and how

Habits that make memory work better

• Sleep. Memories are consolidated during sleep, so late-night cramming costs you.
• Focus. Study without social media open.
• Short sessions. Forty minutes of full attention beats three tired hours.
• Teach someone. Explain it to a sibling or friend.
• Eat and drink water. A hungry brain is a slow brain.

Choose your timing with best time to read, and use the last 30 days plan to keep recall going until the exam.

Mistakes to avoid

1. Memorising answers to past questions without understanding the topic. Questions change shape; the idea behind them stays.
2. Passive reading with a highlighter.
3. Learning too much at once. Five solid facts beat twenty shaky ones.
4. Skipping review. Without it, most of what you learn will fade.

A 15-minute daily routine

1. Minutes 1 to 5: Recall yesterday's cards from memory.
2. Minutes 6 to 12: Learn one new chunk with a mnemonic, picture or place.
3. Minutes 13 to 15: Write the new chunk from memory and correct it.

Do this daily for each subject area, and in a month you will have a sturdy store of facts. Then check what you really remember by answering questions: try a short ExamPadi set and see which facts held. There are 46,182 questions across JAMB, WAEC, NECO and NABTEB, free to start, so you can find your weak spots and go back to your cards.