Train your memory: how to quickly learn a poem

Read the poem out loud

With feeling, with sense, with arrangement. Better yet, do it in front of a mirror. Read slowly, loudly, expressively place semantic accents: lower your voice at calm moments, highlight emotional ones in intonation.

The rhyme itself helps with memorization, but reading aloud helps to catch the rhythm. Especially this method helps audiences - those who better perceive and memorize information by ear.

How to quickly learn a verse: read aloud

Write on paper

Read the poem several times and try to write down what you remember. So you will immediately understand in what places you have difficulties and what you need to re-read again. In addition, hand work connects motor memory.

If at this time you speak the text out loud, then three types of memory will work at the same time: visual, motor and auditory, which means that it will be much easier to memorize.

Hum

Singing helps you memorize great poems. Try to put the poem on a melody that you like. Or check if someone has already done this before you. Probably, you can easily reproduce Marina Tsvetaeva's poem "I like that you are not sick with me …", remembering the song from the film "Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!".

Deal with incomprehensible moments

It is very difficult for us to remember what we do not understand. And poetic language, as a rule, is very different from colloquial speech: you will probably come across unfamiliar or outdated words, unusual grammatical turns and constructions, unknown names and titles.

Deal with all incomprehensible words. Look up their meanings in the dictionary.

For example, let's take Pushkin's poem "I erected a monument to myself not made by hands …" and write out all the words with which difficulties may arise: the Alexandrian pillar, piit, tungus. We learn that the Pillar of Alexandria is a monument to Alexander I in St. Petersburg on Palace Square, piit is an outdated designation for the poet, and Tungus is the name of the Evenks. Now you can imagine what this is about.

But keep in mind that in some cases it is important to understand not just individual words, but the context: allusions, allegories. Therefore, it is useful to read the analysis of the poem or search for the history of creation.

Use associations

Jagged information quickly flies out of my head. The association method helps to consolidate it almost forever.

The essence of the method is that we need to create a combination of new information and what we are already familiar with. Our brain memorizes images better, what can be seen and touched, and then imagined. It is for this reason that we remember people's faces better than their names.

First, come up with vibrant visuals for each line. In this case, the association should be individual and arise in your head without effort.

For example, take an excerpt from a poem by Pasternak:

February. Get out ink and cry!

Write bitterly about February, While the rumbling slush

In the spring it burns black.

So, here are the associations for the first line: a man in a coat walks through dirty but deep snow.

How to quickly learn a verse: use associations

He has spilled ink in his pocket, which he scoops up and holds in his palm. Ink just poured into a pocket is a pretty catchy image. The brighter, more unusual, more interesting the association turns out, the better.

In the same way, come up with associations for all subsequent lines. Then memorize and repeat. Any technique will be completely useless if you don't make an effort to memorize.

Use the snowball method

If the associations don't work, try memorizing. To do this, read the first line and repeat it aloud several times. When you remember it well, move on to the second: read it several times and link it to the first. Repeat several times: first line, second. Then move on to the third. And so on until the end.

It takes a long time to memorize a poem, especially if you need to memorize a large amount of text. But before the performance, you will only need to read the first line: the rest will appear in memory by themselves.

Additional recommendations

To make memorization faster and easier, follow these tips.

Create a supportive environment. If you find it easier to focus in silence, teach when no one is home. If you are used to background noise, turn on low-volume music. Exercise where you feel comfortable and where nothing distracts you.
Ask another person for help. Read the learned poem to him. You can use the echo method: a person tells you a line, you repeat, and then you try to play the entire passage. Or he says the first line - you are the second, he is the third - you are the fourth. And then vice versa.
Make a cheat sheet. Write out key words from the poem that will help you quickly recall the content. If you teach by the method of associations, you can draw a schematic comic strip: associations in places that cannot always be reproduced correctly.
Take breaks and repeat the poem before bed. This will help you relax and sort out new information on the shelves.