The Most Powerful Method of Memorisation.

Rote memorisation is a concept you may not have heard of before. But it’s definitely something you’ve encountered during your studies. Google says it’s a memorisation technique based on repetition. But Google’s missing something.
I’d say it’s the most powerful tool at your disposal to grab A*s or 9s. And with a lot less effort than you might have thought.
Intrigued?
You should be. Here’s why.

An Example to Demystify the Process.

Remember first learning the alphabet of a new language?
You might do, you might not. But I’ll share my experience anyway.
I learnt the Arabic alphabet when I was six years old. Sitting in a dingy mosque, with stuffy air and the lingering smell of old carpet.
And a book in front of me. A book with squiggly letters that I could barely see in the dim light. And even if I could see those lines, I had no idea what they meant.
The teacher, sitting on his folded shins and rubbing his beard with a hand, pointed to the second letter. A line which looked like a curved smile, with a dot underneath.
“Baa, for ‘b’,” the teacher said.
I looked up, confused. But I repeated after him, again and again. And then did the same with the next letter. Until I reached the end of the alphabet.
I went home that day, reciting the letters in my head and on my tongue. Some of the sounds I’d never even heard before. But they were slowly moulding themselves into my voice, as my tongue grew accustomed to the strange sounds.
And, after a few weeks of merely repeating sounds, the Arabic alphabet was native to my tongue. As if I had learnt it years before.
Unbeknownst to me was that this very same method—although very differently set-up—would bag me a clean sweep of A*s during my A-Levels.
I do like to ramble a lot. But the point is that repetition to memorise what we need to know—the essence of this method—isn’t something foundational you need to learn from scratch.
You’ve been doing it your whole life. And you can tap into it again to get the highest grades possible.

But how does this apply to GCSE/A-Level?

The fundamental thing is to constantly repeat a question with its answer. The question being: what does this symbol stand for? And the answer is the sound I make with my voice.
And we do this as we grow up and develop our use of language. We attribute words to images, and then meanings, and use those to compose speech. The more we speak (recalling the words), the stronger our brain’s connection with that knowledge becomes.
Testing (with it formally being called actively recalling information) reinforces our knowledge. It transfers information from our short-term memory (which dissipates pretty fast) to long term memory.
Your short-term memory can store up to around seven things. Those then disappear from your mind after twenty to thirty seconds.
Ever wondered why you couldn’t remember a phone number the first-time round? It’s because the number of digits is typically more than the average short-term memory can handle.
Whilst there are techniques to increase your short-term memory’s capacity to above seven things (it’s still around seven chunks of information, just each chunk is larger), that won’t work in a test which covers three textbooks and thousands of pages of information.
I know cramming is popular among students, but no A* student has ever crammed the night before. And if they say they did, they’re lying (probably).
So, the primary goal of revising is to transfer the knowledge we’ve gained from short-term memory to long-term memory. And focussed repetition is the easiest method of doing so. And focussed repetition comes in the form of continual testing.
But here’s the issue with A-Level textbooks—they don’t structure the content in the form of questions. Rather it’s just blocks of heavy information with seemingly no end in sight.
And the periodic exams we do have in school don’t cover every facet of the textbook at all, instead only small sections of it.
So, what do we do?
With subjects like Maths, you can use online exam questions to test every single little thing in the textbook.
But in humanities subjects (I did English Literature and Economics), there just aren’t enough past paper questions to go around.
And the questions we do have are discursive and vast, employing knowledge from various different areas into one essay.
You can’t capture small details with questions that cast a wide net. It’s way too inefficient and time consuming. And a reason why I suspect a lot of those who revise for hours are left unhappy with their grades.
Therefore, you need to organise and/or make the questions yourself when it comes to these more content heavy, discursive subjects.
With Maths, Physics, and other subjects which require less memorisation, just download the PDFs of questions on every topic, organise them in folders, and work away as much as you can (‘madasmaths’ was a favourite website of mine at A-Level).
For other subjects, however, where the content to memorise is vast, and the despair is clinging to your every hope of good grades, this is what to do.

How to setup the active recall method.

We’ve established that the best method to memorise massive swathes of information is something we’ve been doing since childhood: repetitively recalling information to transfer it into our long-term memory.
But how do we do this with something like Economics, or English literature?
The first step is to audit every little topic within a subject. And I mean, every little thing.
Usually, this comes in the specification on the exam board’s website. Or you can just go through each topic in your textbook (I recommend this over the exam spec). Or your notes, if they’re extensive and exhaust the subject matter.
Even better is if your school has given you some guidance with regards to topic lists for exams. But not everyone has that helping hand like I did.
This method will work with or without your school’s help, though. So, not to worry.
You might want to list all the topics into a spreadsheet, like I’ve done here. It’s a good way to gauge how many topics you need to get through, and to plan accordingly.
​

After you’re done with listing the topic, it’s time to get to the heavy lifting. Go through each topic, whether using the spec, your own school notes, or a textbook.  Make a question for every little tidbit of info you might need for an exam—things like events and dates for History, pricing strategies for Economics, or quotes for English Lit. Don’t think that any question is too small or insignificant to write down. It’s definitely not, and you don’t want the regret of letting something slip past your mind during an exam. Write all these questions down in a google document, like I did here for my English Lit exam for Hamlet. See how the questions are specific, with easily traceable answers? That ensures I’m memorising the raw information I need, which helps when answering the larger essay questions. And also, I’m answering the questions in my head to save time, not writing the answers down. And then looking at the answer sheet I made, or the textbook, to see if it’s right. Don’t be alarmed if the number of questions goes into the hundreds, or even the thousands. Remember, these are very short questions over the ENTIRE subject, with to-the-point answers easily accessible through a textbook. And you’re answering them in your head. It may seem like a lot, but believe me you’ll fly through them faster than you would think. But there’s something else you surely noticed, right? The colour coding.

Customising the Active Recall Method

​The first mode of customisation is the answer sheet. Now, if you made the questions using your notes or a textbook, then the answer sheet is already provided. Just refer to the source where you made the questions from.
But, if it’s questions that your school gave you, or questions you made from a novel like in English literature, then you might need to make an answer sheet yourself.
Just go through each question and write the answer in another document. This makes it easier to check answers as there’s a created document at hand.
It beats having to fish through PowerPoints and notes, which can get tedious at times.
In either case, when you go to answer each question, you know exactly where to find the answer. Refreshing your memory in case you forget the answer, and making the method as efficient as possible.
“But what’s up with the colour coding?” I hear you ask.
Well, that’s my way of knowing how weak my memory is on a certain question.
If I’m able to strongly recall the answer, I’ll colour the question green. If it’s a little weaker, taking a few seconds for the answer to pop into my head, I’ll give it an amber.
But if I completely can’t recall the answer, or it’s eluding me to the point of frustration, I’ll colour the question red.
Then, I’ll go through the red and amber questions every day, and the green ones maybe once a week. Each time I feel like I can answer a question stronger, I’ll change it one colour ‘up’, to amber or green.
If there’s a green question I suddenly can’t do, I’ll change it down to red and work my way back up.
After a while (about two to four weeks) pretty much all the questions are a strong green, meaning I know all the content and I’m ready to hit it hard with the essay questions.
If a question is a foundational question (for example: what’s the economic problem?) then I might colour it turquoise, and skip it because it’s too easy and not worth mulling over.
Other ways of customising include changing the timeframe in which you answer the questions. You might go through them every week, or once a month. Or leave them till revision season starts (although I’m not a fan of the last one). 
You may decide on spreading out the questions (useful if the questions are in the thousands), and only going through a certain amount a day.
It’s all up to you.
And that’s the beauty of this method. It utilises key principles in memorisation techniques, all whilst giving you the freedom to organise it however you want.
So, have fun with it, and see how you can personalise the method to fit you.

Overall

There’s probably a million ways to customise this method. And a measly article isn’t enough to list them all.
But it’s safe to say this method of memorisation leaves no stone unturned. It ensures you know all the content required for an exam, and that your hours of hard work revising tirelessly aren’t wasted.
You’ll be revising in a systematic way. A measured way. A smart way.
Because, really, as long as you work hard AND smart, an A* is a mere step away.

For more information on this method, Ali Abdaal has a few videos on YouTube. He utilised this method for Cambridge Medical School, and his videos are the origin of where I came up with the version of the method in the article above. 

About the author

Sabir Miah is currently lazing about on a gap year, waiting to start a degree in Economics in September. Outside of staring at walls for hours, he sometimes likes to write, and share those thoughts with others just in case they think as crazily as he does.

---