A memory classic tailored for struggling students
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To any student, struggling academically or not, this is the definitive guide to immediately applicable, practical mnemonics for virtually every subject you'll study in school.
Lorayne begins the book like he does any of his others. He introduces the reader to the Link system of memory for memorizing lists of words, then the Peg system for memorizing numbers. He discusses the basic building blocks of his system, such as the substitution, exaggeration, and irrationality methods. After testing the reader with the new systems a bit, and rightly predicting that they will be amazed with the systems, Lorayne shows how to implement the two systems so one can memorize pretty much anything one needs to know. He explains in detail how to efficiently memorize both native and foreign vocabulary, dates in history, even math and chemisty formulas. His examples are so detailed, by the time you finish the book you'll have memorized the whole periodic table and the amendments to the Constitution!
If you've already studied Lorayne's memory system from another one of his books, it's best to skip this one; there's basically nothing new, and it's mostly geared towards students: it doesn't even have some of the systems of his other books, such as memorizing faces and names when meeting new people. The writing is very informal and speech-like, making students feel (as did I) comfortable with it all the way through. If, however, you've never studied mnemonics and are looking for a well-rounded system that you can apply to anything and everything you want to learn, this may be the only book you'll need.
Wonderful!
Customer Rating: Harry Lorayne is always a name to be trusted in the area of memory improvement. I have his PAGE A MINUTE book and THE MEMORY BOOK, co-authored with Jerry Lucas and highly recommend them both.
And I highly recommend this one, too. A lot of what Lorayne writes in this book can be found in THE MEMORY BOOK, but he zeroes in on the needs of students. He emphasizes here, as he does in his other books:
1. The Link -- visually linking information together using mental pictures.
2. Substitute words -- such as "Connect a cut" for Connecticut, etc.
3. The mneomic device of substituting consonant sounds for numbers (a great deal like the Major System) whereby people can learn long numbers by converting them either to a single word or a group of words.
4. "Peg" words, in which the same word will always stand for the same number. It's a flexible system that can be applied to a lot of different academic situations.
He uses a lot of different techniques, but these are the main ones, and they help a LOT.
Understand that you'll still have to work hard and study. You'll still have to review, and the mental associations take time. But they make the process easier, whatever the course is that you're studying, and I'll make a guess that you'll learn more in less time. It worked for me.
Lorayne has claimed to have an "average" IQ, but when a man can memorize a deck of cards in order, I listen when he talks!
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