Page 220 - Keys To Community College Success

You can use all kinds of locations with the method of loci. Try locating informa-
tion at buildings in a city you know well, places in your bedroom, or locations on a
familiar game board.

Acronyms
Another helpful association method involves acronyms. In history class, you can
ACRONYM
remember the Allies during World War II—Britain, America, and Russia—with the
A word formed from the
first letters of a series of acronym BAR. This is an example of a word acronym, because the first letters of the
words created to help you
items you want to remember spell a word. The word (or words) spelled don’t necessar-
ily have to be real words. See Key 7.10 for an acronym—the name Roy G. Biv—that
7 remember the series. will help you remember the colors of the spectrum.
Other acronyms take the form of an entire sentence, in which the first letter of each
CHAPTER word in each sentence stands for the first letter of the memorized term. This is called a
list order acronym. When astronomy students want to remember the list of planets in
order of their distance from the sun (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus, and Neptune), they might learn this sentence: My very elegant mother just
served us nectarines.
Suppose you want to remember the names of the first six U.S. presidents. You notice
that the first letters of their last names—Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison,
Monroe, and Adams—together read W A J M M A. To remember them, first you might
insert an e after the J and create a short nonsense word: wajemma. Then, to make sure
you don’t forget the nonsense word, visualize the six presidents sitting in a row and
wearing pajamas.

Songs and Rhymes

Some of the classic mnemonic devices are rhyming poems that stick in your mind. One
you may have heard is the rule about the order of “i” and “e” in spelling:
I before E, except after C, or when sounded like “A” as in “neighbor” and
“weigh.” Four exceptions if you please: either, neither, seizure, seize.

KEY 7.10 Use this acronym to remember the colors
of the spectrum.

red
orange
yellow
green
blue
indigo
violet

R O Y G B I V

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