Our memory is much enhanced if we can find organization or create organization to what we have to remember.

Organization

Finding organization to what you need to memorize is often critical to understand the information. If you are able to group what you need to remember into categories, you process the information in more depth. You add meaning to what you are learning by making a judgment about the nature of the information. In some cases, you are incorporating the new knowledge with information you already know. This can be very helpful.

Subjective organization is categorizing seemingly unrelated items in a way that helps you recall the items later. (Benjamin, Hopkins, & Nation, 1994. p.266) This is useful because it breaks down the amount of information to learn. If you can divide a list of items into a fewer number of categories, then all you have to remember is the categories (fewer items), which will serve as memory cues so that you will also remember the items.

Reducing the amount of items to remember is valuable when trying to remember a lot of information. Once you have determined what information is necessary to memorize, you can reduce the number of items you must remember by grouping, or chunking, the information. The human memory span approximately seven. Several phone numbers use seven digits. However, what about area or country codes, where the person dialing must remember more than 7 digits? He or she can chunk the numbers together, thus reducing the number of items to be remembered, but not the amount of information!

Chunking

Look at the following chunks of letters:

T WAN BAC BSC PRC IA

At first glance, its seems like they would be difficult to memorize. However, with simple chunking, look at them now:

TWA NBA CBS CPR CIA

These common acronyms are already familiar to many people. For those who the letters are now in meaningful chunks , they are easier to remember.

S.F. was a college student who could remember 80 digits after practicing for 230 hours! How did he do it? This cross-country runner memorized the numbers was by grouping them into sets of 3-4 digits each. He memorized these values as running times for different track races, or as ages or significant dates. (Yount, p. 76)

Master chess players also use chunking as well. They will remember certain strategies for particular patterns on the board and fit them together with the other "chunks" on the board. This helps reduce their playing time greatly. (Ellis & Hunt, 1989)(Benjamin, Hopkins, & Nation, 1994. p.258)