MNEMONIC FORMATION

Songs and jingles can be used as a mnemonic. A common example is how children remember the alphabet by singing the ABCs.

The first letter of each word is combined into a new word. For example: VIBGYOR (or ROY G BIV) for the colors of the rainbow or HOMES (Lake Huron, Lake Ontario, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, Lake Superior) the Great Lakes.

The first letter of each word is combined to form a phrase or sentence – e.g. Richard of York gave battle in vain for the colours of the rainbow.

A model is used to help recall information. Applications of this method involve the use of diagrams, cycles, graphs, and flowcharts to help understand or memorize an idea. e.g. Freytag's Pyramid to show the different parts of a five-act dramatic structure.

The information is placed into a poem or doggerel, – e.g. Note socer, gener, liberi, and Liber god of revelry, like puer these retain the 'e' (most Latin nouns of the second declension ending in -er drop the -e in all of the oblique cases except the vocative, these are the exceptions).

The method of note organization can be used as a memorization technique. Applications of this method involve the use of flash cards and lists. Flash cards are used by putting a question or word on one side of a paper and the answer or definition on the other side of the paper. Lists involve the organization of data from broad to detailed. e.g. Earth → Continent → Country.

The information is constructed into a picture – e.g. the German weak declension can be remembered as five '-e's', looking rather like the state of Oklahoma in America, in a sea of '-en's'.

New knowledge is connected to knowledge already known.

Techniques such as the method of loci allow the user to create unique associations in an imagined space.