How to memorize a book (part 1 - every word or certain passages)
September 7, 2007 — ewonkIf you want to memorize verbatim text –and I don’t know why you would want to do that, but what do I know- you can picture an exaggerated story in your head that reminds you of the text. With practice, you could do this instantaneously as you read. But for beginners, just keep practicing and you’ll get better and better with each attempt. Of course, let’s say you have an assignment or a desire to memorize one certain passage word-for-word; in that case, you can easily sit yourself down with the text and make up some ridiculous image story help you memorize the whole thing really easily and effortlessly.
Sound good? Let me show you how to start memorizing the Gettysburg address as an example. Here’s the first part of the Gettysburg address:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
- Four score - picture a scoreboard on a baseball field called “continent field” (you’ll see why in a minute) set to four
- and seven years ago - you purchased the scoreboard 7 years ago
- our fathers - picture your father on the field
- brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, - picture your father carrying a baby new nation the shape of the US that was just born from the statue of liberty (picture the statue giving birth to the US shaped “new nation”) to the middle of the field
- and dedicated to the proposition - picture the baby new nation with legs clinging to a proposition (picture a sheet of paper)
- that all men are created equal. - picture a bunch of man cloans all over the paper proposition
You can do the same thing for the rest of the Gettysburg Address if you wanted to. Go ahead and try it out for yourself! Practice makes perfect, so try this with a bunch of different stuff. It’s fun, easy, and pretty cool if you ask me.
There are other methods that help you memorize text word-for-word, but I think this one is the easiest and most fun. Also, it’s pretty hard to forget the text when you have that hilarious picture story in your head.
PS: Did someone say something about a photographic memory?
June 5, 2008 at 5:02 am
[...] How to memorize a book - ewonk Most of us are good at remembering stories that we hear or read. The concept behind this is the ability of our brain to remember things when we visualize. The article gives some techniques to make this fun and easy. Not only can you use this method to memorize words but also other basics like addresses. [...]