Looking through web pages and books for the methods of accelerated learning I have here the basic and common methods that are used. Some seem to be inter-related but essentially I do not think any system can be effective without paying attention and dealing with the essence of these methods here.
Practice, Practice … Oh and more Practice
The most tenacious but methodical means of increasing memory of them all, you basically keep learning the material over a period of time and not all at once. Supposing that the memories get more established over time then the little and often approach wins over the last minute over material just before an examination.
Practically Errorless Learning
The amount of information retained over time exponentially falls away, for example you will forget more in the first minute than the next and so on over an indefinite period of time. So this method concentrates on testing immediately, then test a little later, then a longer time later and so on. The great thing is that this method is practically errorless, because the learner will always remember most of the material at any one time.
What’s your Motivation?
If you really want to learn something then you will, if you have the motivation. This is the powerful force within us all that drives us to achieve what we want. A highly motivated person will learn better that a bored person. Which brings us to a related but subtly different point…?
Pay Attention!
This is when you are actually paying attention to the information you are learning and works especially if you find the subject interesting. In fact if you are not paying any attention to it at all it has very little chance of being remembered later at all. It was the Victorians who really put a lot of effort into repeating the information and learning by rote and this system was of no use if no attention was made to it.
Total Recall
This is like post-attention, putting the effort in after the first time something is learned; an effort is made to recall the same information. When this is done it strengthens the memory that was recalled over a longer period of time. So you are in effect paying attention to these memories later.
You got to relate!
If you personalise the information that is coming in and make it relate to you as quickly as possible it helps retain it in memory easier and more effectively. If the information has no meaning to you then often we try to give it some of our own meaning but this is nowhere near as efficient as understanding what it is that you are trying to remember. This increases as you become more knowledgeable specifically in an area or generally, the information become easier to relate to what you have already learned because more associations are available.
Encoding Techniques, Gimmicks and Tricks
These methods take advantage of the amount of information that is stored in one go and any connections between them. Learning a set of images takes the same, probably less, effort than to learn a set of simple letters or numbers. By encoding many of these, simpler bits of information into pictures then the memory can store more. Another range of these tricks is centred on using loci or hooks, by making connections with already learned material.
A system for accelerated learning then must have all of these usual methods for increasing the amount of information that you are likely to take in.