63 Tips for More Effective Memory and Recall of Quotations, Texts and Speeches

As a tutor I am often asked to help students who are having trouble with their recall of texts and quotations.

But before I outline my 63 memory-recall tips, it is worth observing that many public speakers avoid trying to memorize speeches with word-perfect duplication of the original.

Spontaneity and improvisation in speech making is far more natural and attractive than stressing-out over perfect recall.

Momentary silences focus attention and create a sense of and sincerity, which may draw more applause than a speech that sounds arrogant and excessively confident. We want pathos not parrots.

In fact, some audiences will be turned off by an artificially memorised speech that sounds like a robot in replay mode.

LEARNING CLASSIC SPEECHES for RECITATION or PERFORMANCE

But if you are learning a classic text, such as a speech from Shakespeare, you will need to aim for highly accurate recall, as the audience will spot errors, and mistakes may also upset the delightful rhythm of the poetry.

Effective memory and recall involves far more that repeated re-readings of the words on the page:

Rote learning is dull; creative memory is fun.

Effective Memory Skills depend on factors such as the use of structure, selection, visualisation, comprehension, cue association, emotional impact, repetition, speaking and listening, sequence, context, and unstressed learning and recall.

Here are my Top Tips for Success ...

POSITIVE ACTION MODE

1. Start by rewiring your brain to this script “I AM ENJOYING MYSELF”,

“THIS IS FUN”

and “I WILL DO THIS CHALLENGE BRILLIANTLY”.

UNSTRESSED

2. Everyone finds memory work difficult. It is a complex process and it requires patience.

3. Gaps between learning episodes are gradually increased as the memorized items shift from being short term to finding an anchor in the long term memory (LTM)

4. Success needs to be paced in small steps, not giant leaps.

5. You will need to take short rests in-between your 20 minute learning sessions.

6. Also ensure that you take longer breaks after 2 hours of work.

7. Avoid distractions that would affect your concentration

8. Actively remove any temptations away from your work

HEALTH

9. Generally, 6-8 hours of work over a 16 hour period is more than enough. You need to be realistic about work input and recall outputs

10. Sleep is essential for memories to become rooted in the LTM.

11. If you are tired, learning will be very slow

12. If you are very hungry, or bloated with excess food, the effectiveness of your learning will be reduced.

13. Also avoid alcohol and excessive stimulants such as caffeine.

14. General physical and mental fitness also support learning.

REWARDS

15. Design a reward system as you complete different success stages in your memory-recall work. This builds motivation.

SKELETON STRUCTURE

16. Divide your speech into 3-7 short sections or paragraphs

17. Design a structured workplan for learning based on this document and tailored realistically to your needs and character.

18. At this stage some people like to use a flowchart or diagram for the speech as whole.

19. Choose an appropriate colour scheme for each section

20. Select a key word for each section, and memorize the main sequence.

21. Choose a memorable image that links with the key word. Ideally this will be quite vivid or even humorous in order to create a strong link.

PORTION SIZE SELECTION

22. Select a key word from each sentence.

23. Choose a memorable image that links with the key word

24. These are the foundation building blocks for memory

VISUAL PRESENTATION

25. Your speech text should be well-spaced with LARGE capitals for the most significant words.

26. Use colour highlights

27. Use single and double underlining if necessary.

28. But don’t make your system of visual cues too complicated

UNDERSTAND and FEEL

29. The words on the page must become a core part of your emotional and intellectual being.

30. This means that the words must make sense and feel right to you. Identification is essential. Become what you want to recall.

31. It’s very hard to remember what we don’t understand or relate to.

ASSOCIATION

32. Some memory techniques employ the notion that your key words should be linked, logically, absurdly, or by mnemonic devices.

33. Kinetic memory: this is rather like encountering Word Objects in the course of an imaginary journey/ walk.

SELECTION

34. Learn one section or sequence at a time. This approach avoids the sense of overload, panic and helplessness.

RECALL CONTEXTUALISATION

35. Some people try to learn each section in a different part of the house, garden, or in the car, or the garage.

36. Or try learning a section in an odd space, such as underneath a table, in the bath, or by candlelight, or looking into a cracked mirror!

37. Sometimes it helps to have a specific odour associated with each section. Try lavender or mint, or perfume, or aftershave.

38. These contextual clues support vivid encodement and quick recall. The sense of smell activates the oldest parts of the brain, and it’s a highly underestimated technique.

REPETITION

39. Gradually repeat your chosen sentence with longer gaps between reading/speaking and the act of attempted recall.

40. Initially try intervals such as 1 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, and 120 minutes, 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours.

41. Sleep also helps to fix memories in the brain. That’s why staying up all night before an exam is counter-productive.

COMPREHENSION

42. If you get stuck try to use your intellectual and emotional understanding of the words in order to finish the sentence.

43. Unless you are memorizing a classic text you do not need to be word perfect every time.

IMPROVISATION

44. If you get stuck during the performance, improvise. This is the mark of a great artist: spontaneous creativity!

BE THERE PHYSICALLY

45. Act out your speech as you learn it.

46. At first use melodrama and exaggerated gestures in order to make the experience more vivid

47. Method acting: think and feel your way into your character

ORAL / AURAL

48. Try associating music or other sound cues with your sections, sequences, sentences or words

49. Speaking the words is often far more effective than simply reading them silently.

50. Try recording and playback of your voice, or someone else’s

51. Experiment with serious or funny voices

52. Imagine your favourite actor reciting the speech

53. Experiment with very slow and fast pace in your recitation

54. Listen to the natural rhythm, rhyme, metre, and punctuation

55. Pay attention to assonance and alliteration as sound clues

COLLABORATION

56. Work with friends or family to support your learning

57. Establish a small study group

58. Quiz and test each other

UNSTRESSED

59. Stress is natural in some degree on the day of your performance.

60. But stress may block effective recall when it turns to anxiety and panic.

61. Practise breathing exercises and meditation in order to reduce anxiety.

62. On the day, again, rewire your brain POSITIVE ACTION MODE to

I AM ENJOYING MYSELF

and

I WILL DO THIS BRILLIANTLY

...

CREATIVE SUCCESS

63. Rote learning is dull; creative memory is fun.

Dr Ian McCormick is the author of The Art of Connection: the Social Life of Sentences
(Quibble Academic, 2013)

Further Reading

For and Against Memorizing Poetry  Here.

"Many people in Great Britain and the United States can recall elderly relatives who remembered long stretches of verse learned at school decades earlier, yet most of us were never required to recite in class. Heart Beats is the first book to examine how poetry recitation came to assume a central place in past curricular programs, and to investigate when and why the once-mandatory exercise declined. Telling the story of a lost pedagogical practice and its wide-ranging effects on two sides of the Atlantic, Catherine Robson explores how recitation altered the ordinary people who committed poems to heart, and changed the worlds in which they lived. Heart Beats begins by investigating recitation's progress within British and American public educational systems over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and weighs the factors that influenced which poems were most frequently assigned. Robson then scrutinizes the recitational fortunes of three short works that were once classroom classics: Felicia Hemans's "Casabianca," Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," and Charles Wolfe's "Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna." To conclude, the book considers W. E. Henley's "Invictus" and Rudyard Kipling's "If--," asking why the idea of the memorized poem arouses such different responses in the United States and Great Britain today. Focusing on vital connections between poems, individuals, and their communities, Heart Beats is an important study of the history and power of memorized poetry." See Heart Beats: Everyday Life and the Memorized Poem by Catherine Robson (Princeton University Press 2012)

"What has happened to the lost art of memorising poetry? Why do we no longer feel that it is necessary to know the most enduring, beautiful poems in the English language 'by heart'? In his introduction Ted Hughes explains how we can overcome the problem by using a memory system that becomes easier the more frequently it is practised. The collected 101 poems are both personal favourites and particularly well-suited to the method Hughes demonstrates. Spanning four centuries, ranging from Shakespeare and Keats through to Auden and Heaney, By Heart offers the reader a 'mental gymnasium' in which the memory can be exercised and trained in the most pleasurable way. Some poems will be more of a challenge than others, but all will be treasured once they have become part of the memory bank." By Heart, By Ted Hughes (Faber 2012)

"The ancient Greeks, to whom a trained memory was of vital importance - as it was to everyone before the invention of printing - created an elaborate memory system, based on a technique of impressing 'places' and 'images' on the mind. Inherited and recorded by the Romans, this art of memory passed into the European tradition, to be revived, in occult form, at the Renaissance, and particularly by the strange and remarkable genius, Giordano Bruno. Such is the main theme of Frances Yates's unique and brilliant book, in the course of which she sheds light on such diverse subjects as Dante's Divine Comedy, the form of the Shakespearian theatre and the history of ancient architecture. Aside from its intrinsic fascination, The Art of Memory is an invaluable contribution to aesthetics and psychology, and to the history of philosophy, of science and of literature." The Art Of Memory, by Frances A Yates (Pimlico, 1992)

"Mary Carruthers's classic study of the training and uses of memory for a variety of purposes in European cultures during the Middle Ages has fundamentally changed the way scholars understand medieval culture. This fully revised and updated second edition considers afresh all the material and conclusions of the first. While responding to new directions in research inspired by the original, this new edition devotes much more attention to the role of trained memory in composition, whether of literature, music, architecture, or manuscript books. The new edition will reignite the debate on memory in medieval studies and, like the first, will be essential reading for scholars of history, music, the arts and literature, as well as those interested in issues of orality and literacy (anthropology), in the working and design of memory (both neuropsychology and artificial memory), and in the disciplines of meditation (religion)."  The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature) by Mary Carruthers

Dr Ian McCormick is the author of The Art of Connection: the Social Life of Sentences
(Quibble Academic, 2013)