10 Elaborative Rehearsal Examples

2. Chunking

Chunking, or grouping, is a way to memorize information when you have a long list to recall.

For example, if you’re going away on a trip and need to ensure you don’t forget to pack something, you can “chunk” your list by creating sub-categories.

It will be easier to remember your toiletries if you sub-categorize them as just that. Your toiletry list of soap, deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, and towel is then much easier to remember than including it together with your travel list of iPod, snacks, and magazines, and your documentation list of passport, flight ticket, and hotel details.

Chunking your long list into categories means your elaborative rehearsal technique allows for improved recall through long-term memory.

3. Rhyming

Organizing information through rhyme helps long-term recall and is a typical elaborative rehearsal technique.

For example, people’s names are often difficult to commit to memory by simply repeating the words using your working memory alone. You can improve memory retention by creating a rhyme using terms already in your more profound understanding.

• Amanda – She’s not a man, duh!
• Ash – Ash has a mus-tache!
• Dustin – Dustin threw trash in the dust bin.
• Harrold – Harrold Carolled at Christmas time.

If you connect a problematic word to an everyday experience in your own words, you’ll find it much easier to recall at a later stage.

4. Music

Changing the lyrics of a familiar song to suit what you need to remember is one of the elaborative memory techniques that involves thinking but can undoubtedly improve memory recall.

The technique consists of repeating information and assigning it to your long-term memory palace because it includes existing context and meaning.

So if you need to remember a shopping list, for example, the tune should be one you know well, even if it is an earworm like “I’m Too Sexy.”

• “I’m too sexy for yogurt, too sexy for the bread, too sexy for the ham… I’m too sexy for the milk, too sexy for the cheese, too sexy for peach jam…”

5. Creating a sentence

Assigning a familiar word to each letter of the word you need to remember utilizes the elaborative technique of rehearsal.

To remember the word “chromatic,” for example, you could add simple words together to form a sentence that assists recall of the word and its spelling.

• c – calling
• h – his
• r – roommate
• o – over
• m – microphone
• a – added
• t – the
• i – instant
• c- connection

Like most other examples mentioned, this is an example of mnemonic devices at work.

A related way to use this strategy is to remember the order of the plants through the sentence: “my very earnest mother just sat up near pluto”

6. Peg method

The peg method is one of the mnemonic memory aids that link words with numbers to assist with recall. It involves connecting a standard set of words to rhyme with numbers and creating scenarios around those words to remember other items.

For example, your standard words to rhyme with the numbers one to three could be:-

• 1 = gum, 2 = shoe, and 3 = tree.

If the three words you wanted to remember in order were brave, clown and apple, you could create storylines to connect them to your standard rhyming words.

• 1 – You picture a brave man spitting some gum over a cliff.
  2 – You envision a brightly-dressed clown wearing long clown shoes.
  3 – You imagine a bright red apple hanging from a tree.

7. Bad puns

Bad puns can be used to help commit information to memory. The pun becomes a retrieval device that allows the memory to be more effectively carried longer-term.

For example, if you want to remember the order of the months, you can use this terrible pun:

• Can February March? No, but April May.

Or, if you want to remember that sodium’s symbol on the periodic table (Na), you could use this pun:

• I was looking for sodium on the periodic table, but then it told me it was not available! (Na)

When recalling the information, you can now recall the bad pun – which is easier to remember than a decontextualized fact because it is humorous and in the context of a story.

8. Creating analogies

Analogies help to contextualize information because you can draw connections between the new information and prior knowledge you have.

I often do this at the beginning of a teaching semester. I will try to remember a student’s name by comparing that student to a previous student I’ve had with a similar name.

For example, if I have a new student named Jackson, I’ll compare him to a previous Jackson I’ve taught. It could be a similarity or a difference that makes them memorably linked:

• Wow, this Jackson is quite short, and Jackson last year was really tall!
• Jackson seems pretty smart – I wonder if he’ll be as good as last year’s Jackson in his midterm exam.
• Last year’s Jackson had blonde hair and this year’s one does, too.

These simple analogies are usually enough to help retain the name and recall it, with a little help of my internal monologue.

9. Method of loci

The method of loci involves imagining a three-dimensional space and placing objects you want to remember within that space.

For example, you can think of your childhood home as your space to store your memories. When you have an important memory to maintain, imagine yourself walking in your kitchen and literally placing it on the floor in the middle of the room.

When you need to recall that memory, recall where you placed it!

You can also do a sequence here – for example, if you need to recall a sequence of things, imagine yourself placing each thing in a room from one end of the house. Then, when you need to recall each thing one by one, imagine yourself walking through the house picking up each object room by room.

10. Remembering relationships between numbers

This last one is simply a strategy I have used my whole life, and it’s worked quite well.

To remember a phone number (or any number, for that matter), I’ll try to remember how each number interacts with the previous one.

For example, if you want to remember the number 142745, you would struggle.

But you could try to remember it by saying:

• The first two numbers are 1 and 4 – which adds up to 5.
• The next two numbers are 2 and 7 – which adds up to 9.
• The last two numbers are 4 and 5 – which also adds up to 9.

So, now instead of just trying to remember each number without context, I can remind myself that there are three sets of numbers that make 5-9-9. This is usually enough to prompt me to remember that it was 1 and 4, then 2 and 7, then 4 and 5.

This strategy may or may not work for you, but it’s managed to help me keep figures in my memory for quite some time in the past!