A2 Reading _Innova_25_2.2

How do you remember things for a test?

We asked three students if they have special ways of remembering.

	Grace I love music – playing it and listening to it. One day during a test, I realized that I remembered something because I remembered the music which was playing when I was studying that point. So now, when I’m studying for a test, I choose a different song for each important point. I play the song again and again while I’m reading. I don’t write anything down. During the test, I think of a song and remember the facts.
	Daisy I found my way of remembering by accident! I was trying to make a list of things to remember and I started writing each area on a different piece of paper. Then I put the most important things about that area underneath. Then I thought: ‘I’ll put the pieces of paper up on the wall of my bedroom and on the door and on my clothes cupboard.’  So every time I look at a piece of paper, I see the area, like Henry VIII or The Oceans, and I see the important points. Then, during the test, I think about my bedroom, but sometimes I can only remember the headings, not the important information.
	Jane I read about using mind maps in the school magazine. The article said that mind maps work the same way as the human brain works. I don’t know if that is true. I take everything off my bedroom desk and join several pieces of paper together to make a really big piece. I write the most important word or phrase, like Oxygen, in the middle, and I draw a bubble around it. Then I write headings around it like Discovery in red and Number in green and Uses in blue. And then I write the important facts for each thing under the heading in the same colour as the heading. When I’m doing the test, I get pictures in my head of all the main words in bubbles, and that helps me to remember the important facts. It really works!