How to Boost your Memory

Read the following article and choose a heading from the list below for each paragraph. The first one has been done for you. There is one extra heading which you do not need to use.

Dr. Gita Patel, a memory expert, answers your questions.

Report your ideas back to the group.

6) Read the text and find out if your guesses were right:

I Want to Know about… MEMORY

Q: I met a guy at a party. We met again a few days later and I couldn’t remember his name! I felt bad. What’s wrong with my memory?

A: We all forget things. We throw away information that we don’t need any more. You put the man’s name in your short-term memory. That’s the bit of your brain that keeps things you don’t need to remember for very long – like a telephone number you only use once. You forgot the man’s name because it wasn’t very important to you.

Q: What is long-term memory?

A: Long-term memory is where we keep information we need to remember for a long time. It is like a filing cabinet with different drawers. One drawer contains memories of things that happened to you a long time ago, like your first day at school or a summer holiday. This is your episodic memory. It stores the episodes that make up your life. You don’t think about these things all the time. But then something, like a smell or a song brings that memory back and suddenly you remember everything about it. Another drawer is your semantic memory. In this drawer the brain keeps information like important historical dates and facts about your country. Your brain only opens this drawer when you need to use the information, for example in a test.

Q: People say you never forget how to do things like riding a bicycle. Is this true?

A: Yes. This is called procedural memory because it stores procedures, or a way to do things. It helps you to remember skills you learned in your life, things like how to ride a bike or how to use a mobile phone. These memories stay in the brain all your life.

7)Match the following with the underlined parts of the text:

1. Things that happened a long time ago.

2. Information that needs to be stored for a long time.

3. Information about how to do things.

4. Information that is no longer necessary to keep.

5. Important facts or dates.

8) Agree or disagree with the following:

1. Everybody forgets things.

2. We forget information that we don’t need any more.

3. Dates are stored in the same place as events in your life.

4. Semantic memory can be useful in exams.

5. A smell can bring back memories.

6. Procedural memory allows you to remember telephone numbers.

A. A very powerful mechanism.

В. Two ways of remembering.

С. Why we forget our earliest memories.

D. Short term and long term memory.

E. Healthy body; healthy mind.

F. An old approach but a good one.

G. Are you forgetful?

(1 G)

Perhaps you do badly in exams because you can't recall facts and figures or words and structures in a foreign language. Are you always losing things or forgetting the books you need for school that day? Or do you forget what Mum wanted you to get at the corner shop? Relax! Help is close at hand. There's a tremendous range of methods to boost your memory.

(2)

Your memory is like a brilliant, but unreliable computer storing a vast amount of information. In fact the memory's capacity is theoretically unlimited. The brain can record more than 86 billion bits of information every day and our memories can probably hold 100 trillion bits in a lifetime.

(3)

Nevertheless only about 20 per cent of our daily experience is registered, and of that only a tiny proportion is loaded into long term memory. Most of the images and ideas that pass through our minds during a day are held for only 25 to 30 seconds. This is just long enough for us to be able to keep the words of a sentence in our head as we read it so we understand its meaning.

(4)

We also remember different things in two different ways: declarative and non-declarative. Declarative memory deals with concrete things, specific events and facts such as what we have been doing and our recall of things that have happened. Non-declarative memory includes knowledge of general things, how to ride a bicycle, how to behave and so on. Someone with amnesia will almost always remember how to ride a bike, but may well forget her own name. One sad victim of this type of amnesia announces every ten minutes that he has 'just woken up'. Every time his wife walks into the room he throws his arms around her as if he has not seen her for years, even though she has only been gone for a few minutes. Yet this man, formerly a highly-talented musician, is still able to play the piano and conduct a choir through a long and complicated concert piece.

(5)

Normal, healthy people can improve their memories very easily. First of all learn to relax if you're trying to memorise something. You may miss important items if your mind is on something else or if you weren't paying attention because of anxiety – you retain information best when you are alert and concentrating. If you're having trouble concentrating, increase the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain. Despite its small size the brain uses 20 per cent of the body's oxygen requirement. So try to combine study with exercise, particularly the kind of exercise that gets you breathing faster. Keep your mind fit as well as your body by doing mental workouts. Crosswords, Scrabble and quizzes all help to keep the mind in shape.

(6)

You can also train your memory in certain ways. The ancient Greeks invented memory systems called mnemonics, and they still work today. Most systems involve associating the things you want to remember with something you already have safely stored in your head, and the most effective systems make use of visual imagery, smell, touch and sound. If you want to remember someone's name, try to find something distinctive about their hair, nose or eyes to associate with the name, e.g. Jane's wearing jewellery, Tim's tall or Bill's got a beard. If you want to remember numbers try to make associations between numbers in sequence – think of people's ages, special dates, whether they're odd or even.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29