How To-70: "How to Memorise Long Text in the Shortest Amount of Time Possible"

How to Memorise Long Text in the Shortest Amount of Time Possible

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

It’s hard trying to learn words for a play or whatever it may be, isn’t it? Well, read the following, it may help!

Steps

1. Write whatever you want to learn on a piece of paper if it isn’t all ready.
2. Split it up into sections of 1-2 sentences. It depends how long they are; if it is very long, make that sentence one section, if it’s quite short bring the next sentence in as well. If the sentence that comes after the short one is long, then try and remember the short one on its own and use the long one as explained above.
3. Learn the text.
4. Put your paper down so that you can see it clearly by standing above it.
5. Start with your first section by reading it aloud to yourself, over and over, until you can do it without looking at the paper.
6. Do the same with the next section.
7. Say your first section out loud if you don’t feel too weird (it will stick better if you say it out loud) or just say it in your mind. Next say your second section, then third and so on. If you don’t get stuck on anything and you feel that you can remember them correctly without looking at your paper again, then do so. If you get stuck and you can’t remember the text, go ahead and look at the paper.
8. Memorize the next section by reading it over, like with the other sections, until you can do it with out looking at the paper. Then read all three sections together.
9. Repeat this process until you have memorized the whole text.

Tips

• You can read it off of a computer, if that’s where the text originally is.
• Saying it out loud, especially if you must say it on a stage or during a performance, will help the words roll out of your mouth naturally. The more times you say it, the easier it will be to remember and say next time. (You hear it at the same time as you say it, and you reinforce your learning two ways each time you do it right).
• Try only memorizing a sentence or section to where you are not very confident with it, but think you could recite the basic idea. Read the next section or sentence to take your mind off of it briefly, and then come back to it and recite as much as you can. You will probably make at least several mistakes if not many more. Do this as many times as you need until you memorize the section. You will find that each time you come back to it, you remember the mistakes you made last time and recite it a little better. Learning by making and correcting mistakes can be very effective.

Things You’ll Need

• A quiet space.
• Paper to write your text down on if it isn’t already written/noted down.
• A pencil or pen to do the above.

Related wikiHows

• How to Memorize a List in Order
• How to Memorize Lists Using the Pure Link System

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Memorise Long Text in the Shortest Amount of Time Possible. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.