The Art of Mnemonic Devices in Studying

King Henry Died By Drinking Chocolate Milk is more than just a poorly capitalized statement about a monarch's milk induced demise. KHDBDCM doesn't seem to make much sense either, does it? What if I told you that the nonsense you are reading can be used as an important tool in test prep? The phrase above, that you may recognize from your elementary school days, is commonly used as a method of memorizing the process of converting values using the metric system.

K= Kilo

H=Hecto

D=Deco

B=Base

D=Deci

C=Centi

M=Milli

There are hundreds of mnemonic devices out there for a surplus of subjects. These are easy to find with a quick search of, "mnemonic devices for _______." Odds are you will find more than one device that will be helpful in your studying, but what do you do in the case that your search yields no results?

Mnemonic devices are not just a great tool for increasing comprehension of concepts, they can be very beneficial in boosting and encouraging creativity and problem solving. The next time you or your student come across a particularly difficult subject, try to condense the concepts into a few or so words. For example, the mnemonic device Roy G. Biv is commonly used as a way to remember the colors and their order in a rainbow.

R is for red, O for orange, Y for yellow, G for green, B for blue, I for indigo, and V for violet.

Creating your own mnemonic device can become easy with practice.

The first step in creating a mnemonic device is finding the important concepts in a subject. (for example, the steps in creating a mnemonic device.)

The second step is to dissect the information into letters.

The third step is to arrange the letters into order.

The fourth step is to create a rhyme or fun sentence.

The final step is to write down your mnemonic device.

For example:

If you wanted to remember the steps in creating your own mnemonic device you could use this one:

"Fred Doesn't Always Care for Walruses"

F is for Find

D is for Dissect

A is for Arrange

C is for Create

W is for Write

Notice how the "for" in the sentence doesn't have to be included, the important thing here is trying to remember the correlation between the capitalized words and the concepts.

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Let me know in the comments below what mnemonic devices you created using this method!

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