Mnemonic

A mnemonic, or mnemonic device, is a memory tool that helps people recall information. Mnemonics take many forms, such as names, words, phrases, sentences, songs, poems, and images. They have been used since ancient times and remain popular in classrooms today. An advantage of mnemonics is that they help people associate simple phrases or images with more complex ideas, thereby allowing them to remember facts and details quickly and accurately.

Brief History

The word mnemonic comes from the Greek word mnēmonikos, which means "mindful." Ancient Greeks and Romans actually invented some early mnemonic devices. For example, Roman orators used a mnemonic called the method of loci, or the memory palace technique, to help them memorize speeches. The method of loci involves relating certain talking points to specific buildings along a particular route or to particular rooms within one's home. As Roman orators delivered their speeches, they mentally walked the route they mapped, stopping at each building or in each room and recalling the talking point associated with it. Many people continue to use the method of loci today—for example, to recall talking points in a sales pitch or even to remember a simple to-do list. The use of mnemonics continued into the Middle Ages. During that period, illiteracy was prevalent, so people used images to convey and remember ideas or messages—for example, using a picture of a lion to represent pride. Like the method of loci, image mnemonics remain a popular memory aid today.

Modern research on the effect of mnemonics has suggested that students benefit from their use in the classroom. In 1967, a study conducted by Gerald R. Miller revealed that students who used mnemonic devices often increased their test scores, some by more than 75 percent. Similarly, an experiment conducted by S. J. Maghy in 2015 showed that students in a mathematics class who used mnemonics performed better on an exam than students taught via the lecture method. For these reasons, many teachers continue to rely on mnemonics to help their students learn.

Overview

The purpose of mnemonics is to connect new ideas to prior knowledge, which helps people retain and recall information. Among the most common types of mnemonics are acronyms, poems and rhymes, acrostic sentences, and wordplay. An acronym is a group of letters derived from the first letter of each word in a phrase. For example, NASA is an acronym for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In this case, the acronym serves to shorten a lengthy name. However, a mnemonic acronym can help people remember a list of information. For example, many use the acronym ROY G BIV to recall the colors in the visible spectrum of light: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. Others use the acronym HOMES to remember the names of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.

Poems and rhymes may also be used as memory aids. These rhythmic rhyming verses can help people recall important dates, spelling rules, and other information. For example, the rhyme "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" helps people remember when explorer Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas. The following poem is a mnemonic that helps people remember how to spell certain words in the English language: "I before E / Except after C / Unless pronounced A / As in neighbor or weigh." To remember which of the twelve months have thirty days, many rely on this old rhyme: "Thirty days hath September, / April, June, and November." Some have taken poem and rhyme mnemonics even further, crafting entire songs to help people remember information. For example, the tune "Fifty Nifty United States" has been used for decades to help children remember the names of the fifty states. Even the melody that preschoolers and kindergartners use to learn their ABCs is a mnemonic device.

Acrostics, or acrostic sentences, are another popular mnemonic. An acrostic is a silly sentence in which the first letter of each word relates to the first letter of a word in a more complex process or list. Perhaps one of the most well-known acrostics is "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally," which helps students remember the order of operations when solving an algebraic equation: Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction. Students of biology may use the acrostic "King Philip Came Over For Ginger Snaps" to remember the taxonomic classification of organisms: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. Young astronomers may recall the order of the planets based on their distance from the Sun using this acrostic: "Mary Visits Every Monday, Just Stays Until Noon" (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune).

Some people rely on wordplay to remember information. For example, to remember the correct spellings of dessert and desert, one might recall that a dessert is made of "sweet stuff" (two Ss) while a desert is filled with sand (one S). Chemistry students might remember the difference between cyanate and the fatal cyanide using the following wordplay: "Cyanate, I ate; cyanide, I died." Wordplay can be a helpful mnemonic for remembering people's names, too. For example, one might remember a tall man named Paul with the mnemonic "tall Paul" or a woman named Bella from the southern United States with the phrase "southern Bella."

Many mnemonics are based on words, phrases, and sentences, but for visual learners, image mnemonics may be more helpful. Keywords are well-known words that sound like new or unfamiliar words and may be associated with an image. For example, beetles belong to the taxonomic order Coleoptera, which sounds somewhat like Cleopatra. Cleopatra was a queen in ancient Egypt, where the god Khepri was often depicted as a beetle. This association between words and images can help people remember that beetles belong to the order Coleoptera. Similarly, frogs belong to the family Ranidae, which sounds a bit like "rainy day." Picturing frogs hopping around in a rain shower can help students recall this information. Students who are beginning to learn how to write numbers may find it helpful to picture each number as an image. For example, the number 4 resembles a boat's sail while the number 5 looks like a hook. Using these image mnemonics can help students recall how to write their numbers.

Bibliography

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