Mnemonics

Mnemonics work well with spelling problems, but not necessarily for other events in life.

Your memory can be improved by associating new or unfamiliar issues with others that you have already learned. For some people (those who are visually oriented) it may help to picture the issue. Let's see how this works.

An egg timer is associated with a series of steps that must be taken to assure that a particular task will be handled correctly. You may have been distracted from the actual job, but the timer will bring you back to the job at hand.

If you try to teach a little boy Hebrew, you may find that he confuses the vav with a dot on the top and one with a dot in the center. After all, it is easy to overlook a little speck on the page. However, if you visually associate it with something in the boy's sphere of reference, then he will understand it and it may be more memorable.

For example, you might make believe that you are getting punched in the stomach. Release an audible OO sound. Now, give yourself an imaginary punch on the top of your head, followed by an audibly surprised "Oh" sound. Explain that you are a Vav. When you are hit in the stomach, you say OO. When you are hit on top of the head, you say Oh. That's the way Vavs sound.

Try some of the methods described here to see which works best for you. Ignore annoying people who analyze your right brain and left brain thinking. It doesn't really matter why one method works better than another.

Pegs

Pegs work because you link together each imaginary peg in a sequence.

For example, you may need to remember the Yiddish term Zetz Avek (sit down). You may think about somebody who got a potch for not sitting down. He got a Zetz (that's another word for a potch) every week (a poor but working corruption of A Voch to sound like A Vek). Put them together and you may remember the Yiddish expression. You've pegged together a sequential chain of issues with events that "speak" to you.

You can do the same thing by pegging a sequence of hard-to-remember words to a visual list. Instead of remembering Ein Tzvei Drei Feer Finf, try to visualize an eye (Ayin in Hebrew), which is looking at a deer (Tzvi in Hebrew), which is standing in the sun in order to dry (Drei) itself off from the rain, even though a hunter is standing nearby (Fear) and is about to finish (Finf) it off.

Locus

Roman orators had to memorize long speeches, so they associated issues in their speech with positions in the forum building. You can use the same method. Our previous numbers could be related to the peephole in the door (Ayin, for Ein), followed by visitors who "swayed" as they come in (tzvei), then they would Drei off from the rain, then you may think of your own "Feer" of giving the speech, and look forward to the minute when you are Finfed (finished). Some of these associations may seem a bit stretched, but that is precisely what makes them memorable.

Mnemonics are the most common system of all. It's too bad nobody ever came up for a mnemonic for the word itself. It's also too bad that logic doesn't work when spelling the word itself. You can't associate "mnemonics" with "autumn." In the first one, the m is silent. In the second one the n is silent.

The mythological goddess of memory was called Mnemosyne, and she must have developed a good method for remembering the names of her nine daughters - Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, and Urania.

We use mnemonics all the time. Many of the Jewish prayers are arranged as acrostics - either in the order of the Hebrew alphabet, or in order to spell out an important, key phrase, or even to spell out the author's name.

You do know the colors of the rainbow, of course. You just remember the name Roy G. Biv, which stands for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. You may never have known that indigo is a color, but that is a side benefit of the mnemonic.

These memory aids, or aides memoire, may or may not help. If they don't, then just make up your own.