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Have
you ever watched a show where one of these Memory Magicians
takes several packs of playing cards, gives them to members
of the audience to shuffle, then after looking at each card
briefly one at a time proceeds to read back the exact order
the cards are in in each pack from memory - quite a feat!
What these guys are demonstrating is not so much magic, as
simply the practised and refined methodology of quite ordinary
everyday memorizing. It may surprise you that we all have
the ability to do this - but few of us learn consciously to
utilize it.
In order for any piece of information to 'stick' in our memory
we have to make a point of mentally processing the information.
It doesn't much matter how we do this - it can be complete
nonsense. It just matters that we take the information and
do something with it mentally.
In the case of the Memory Trick this is usually done by some
sort of graphical association of ideas. To illustrate this
lets say that I want to memorize a particular phone number:
196609
I start by spotting an instant and lasting association which
most Englishmen will identify with I'm sure - the date 1966
was when England Won the World Cup (Soccer World Cup). That
takes care of the first four digits. I'm left with 09. Well
Bobby Charlton was my hero in that match and he wore a number
9 shirt. Also, even at that age he was quite bald - so the
0 reminds me of the shape of his head!
So I then put all these elements together in a strong graphical
image. It's actually best if the image is a bit wacky. So
I have Bobby Charlton sitting inside a Giant replica of the
World Cup trophy having a bath and in my mind's eye he's washing
his head and making it all shiny!
Finally it would be necessary to link the image to the person
whose phone number it is. Lucky if their name's Bobby or if
they happen to be a football fanatic, but failing that I would
have this person running round the stadium on a lap of honour
carrying aloft the trophy complete with its bathing occupant.
Again - the ridiculousness of the image only serves to help
stick it in mind.
So how does all this relate to the Theory of Learning? Well
the first stage of learning something is often to memorize
it. It should be stressed that this is often a transient stage,
because if you end up using the information often enough,
you will simply know it. You will no longer be required to
dig it out of memory.
Try teaching someone the names of the notes on the open strings
of the guitar for example. Supposing you just told them :
"Bottom string's E, Fifth string's A, Fourth string
D ..." ..etc
Chances are they won't remember more than the first couple
- if that. What if you write them out? They'll say "Thank you
very much" and file away the diagram to look at every point in future time when they need to know the note names. Writing
things down actually makes it LESS LIKELY people will learn
things!
You have to get them to PROCESS the INFORMATION: Tell them:
"Elephants And Donkeys Grow
Big Ears"
Get them to repeat that back to you. Then immediately get
them to put it to use:
"Okay" you say "Play the 'G' string, good, now the
'A' string, okay, the 'B' string...." and so on.
Do this until they give you the right response each time
without hesitation. That's a fine example of using 'Mental
Processing', and there are several other such examples using
Mnemonics. A skillful tutor will use a similar methodology
for each point they teach. They will learn to make up mental
processing methods as they go along.
The trick is to always try to lead the student to discover
things rather than simply telling or explaining them. So I
want to get my student to appreciate that the chord change
C - F has the same relationship in the key of C as A - D has
in the key of A. I get them to play C - F and hum or sing
a tune that fits the change. Then I tell them to play A and
try out other chords to fit with A that would fit the same
tune in the new key. If they fail to stumble on the answer
by this method I switch to using a theoretical approach. I
ask:
"How many letter names from C - F?"
"C, D, E, F - 4" they reply
"Okay, so if A is 1, which letter would be 4?"
"A, B, C, D -- it's D!"
"Okay - lets put that to the test and play it"
This takes a lot more time than just explaining or telling
your student stuff. But the time is well-invested because
if you adhere to this approach you will only have to teach
each point once!
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How
learning got a bad name for itself
