Visual and Graphic Techniques

Many people learn faster and more efficiently when they can physically see the information laid out in front of them. It could be in the form of pictures, graphs, videos, or charts. It can be easier to remember details of an image than the same information in written form.

By breaking everything down to a question-answer scenario, including with visual material, you will still reduce your time spent reading and learning the information. Areas where optical techniques are particularly useful to include medicine, chemistry, geometry, and geography, just to name a few. Any topic where there is a lot of scientific data.

Sets and Enumerations

Although putting information into sets is very useful for speed reading, it is not as helpful when it comes to faster learning. By using sets or groups of objects, you can end up retaining information that is only related to the set and not the individual information contained within the set.

If you need to use sets, it is better to change them to enumerations.

These are ordered lists, and the brain is forced to always list them in the same order, which can make it harder to remember and recall.

More information is contained within an ordered list as opposed to lists that are in random order.

To learn more efficiently, repetition learning can fail terribly with a list that has a different order. Sets that contain more than five items can be tough to memorize, so it is more effective if you use grouping, mnemonic techniques, and enumeration. Here is an excellent example of the question/answer method when using sets:

Bad Set:

Question: Which countries belong to the European Union in 2002?

Answer: Belgium, Austria, Finland, Denmark, Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Spain, Luxembourg, Portugal, England, and Sweden.

Enumerated Set:

Question: Aside from France, what countries joined the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952?

Answer: The Benelux, Italy, and Germany.

Question: The Benelux involves which countries?

Answer: the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

Question: Charles de Gaulle opposed whose membership in the 1960s?

Answer: the United Kingdom.

Question: The meeting to discuss the creation of a European Community of Defence was hosted by which country in 1951?

Answer: France.

Question: In 1973, who joined the EEC with the United Kingdom?

Answer: Denmark and Ireland.

Question: In 1981, who joined the EEC?

Answer: Greece.

Question: In 1986, who joined the EEC?

Answer: Portugal and Spain.

Question: In 1995, what countries joined the EU?

Answer: Finland, Sweden, and Austria.

Question: The expansion of the membership of the EU followed which historical course?

Answer: France and Germany, Benelux and Italy, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark, Greece, Portugal, Austria and Spain,

Finland, and Sweden.

Now, take a good look at the example above. You will notice that the set was originally a 15 member set, and we converted it to 9 items. One of the items is a six-member enumeration, and five contained 2-3

members. You will also notice that the information in the enumerations is more detailed than the original set. By simplifying the set, it was possible to add useful information.

You may be a bit confused right now, but once you try it out for yourself, you will see how easy the technique is. Next is an example of using cloze deletions:

Difficult to Learn

Question: What sequence are the letters of the alphabet?

Answer: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Cloze Deletions

Question: The alphabet begins with which three letters?

Answer: ABC

Question: Fill in the missing alphabet letters A… … … E

Answer: A B C D

Question: Fill in the absent alphabet letters B… … … F

Answer: C D E

Believe it or not, this method will make you learn much faster because

instead of recalling or reciting the whole sequence, you can focus specifically on a small part of the material. After you have done a repetition, it’s a good idea to recite the whole alphabet. The more you practice, the quicker and more comfortable it will get.

Another excellent example of how to learn enumerations is through learning poetry. You may find it easy to remember a poem if it is one with rhyming anyway, but if you are having difficulty memorizing a verse, break it down using cloze deletion, and this will make the job much more comfortable.

Interference Leads to Confusion

Often when we are learning about similar things, they can quickly get confused. When the knowledge of a particular thing makes it more difficult to remember another, it is called memory interference. This is common when learning and memorizing multiple numbers, such as medical or chemical dosages and compounds.