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As a perpetual student, I've benefitted dramatically from a few memory-boosting techniques I've learned over the years. Here are a few techniques I like to use in a guide that shouldn't take more than ten minutes or so to read. 

Using Imagery 

Memory storage is all about association. By associating the items we wish to remember with memories we already have, we can more easily recall these items. 

Sometimes we don't give these techniques a shot because they end up being silly. Yet the silliness is exactly the reason why they work so well. Let's say I asked you to memorize these five French words 

1. Le Gateau "luh gah-TOE" (Cake) 
2. La Tasse "lah tahss" (Cup) 
3. Le Couteau "luh coo-TOE" (Knife) 
4. La Ciel "lah see-EHL" (Sky) 
5. Le Porte "luh PORT" (Door) 

For the sake of brevity, let's say you've already memorized the gender of the words (le/la), how could you remember "gateau" means "cake," "tasse" means "cup" and so on? 

A French student can imagine familiar English words mimicked in these terms. Think of a cake that has "got" a "toe" in it. Sure, this is ridiculous, but once you imagine this visual, there's a very good chance you won't forget it. For "La Tasse," you can imagine someone "tossing" the cup. I remembered "Le Couteau" by thinking of someone cutting ("coot") his toe (teau). I can remember "porte" to mean door by thinking of a door on the port side of a ship. 

I've also assumed for the reader the pronunciation of these words is no problem, which can also be problematic for first-year french students. How do I remember that "ciel" means "sky" yet not pronounce "ciel" as "seal" instead of "see-EHL"? First, I recognize "ciel" is close to the English word "ceiling" which is "up" like the sky (be careful of the ie/ei difference, however.) Next, I can remember the pronunciation by imagining "CL" being written on that ceiling. 

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Compacting 

The aforementioned technique is useful when remembering "this" means "that," but what if we are asked to remember a list of words?For a history class, we may be asked to remember all the U.S. presidents. Our algebra teacher may ask us to remember each part of the quadratic formula. How can we commmit many items into memory? 

Instead of arduously remembering each individual item, we can compact all these items into one single image to memory. 

How can we memorize this list of ten items? 

1. Apple 
2. Train 
3. Alligator
4. Phone 
5. Frisbee 
6. Fork 
7. Wheel 
8. Light bulb 
9. Cloud 
10. Shoe

Most students would simply go over the list several times repeating each item, covering them up and attempting to recall again. This strategy would work (eventually,) but imagery provides us with an alternate method which is a little more fun and may even allow us to remember the items more long-term. 

Imagine this picture instead. There is an alligator at the wheel of a train (no emails about trains not having steering wheels please.) He is distracted because he's eating an apple and talking on his cellphone. Mean while, there is a frisbee balanced on a fork blocking the way. As soon as the lightbulb on the front of the train brings this into sight, the alligator slams on the brakes with his shoe emitting a cloud of smoke from the force of the brakes. 

Of course, this is a long sentence, but it's not the sentence we need to remember, only this one silly story. Since each item is in some way acting in the story, it's easy to remember how each item is associated with one another. 

As soon as we remember there are ten items to remember, the task becomes one of simply finding all ten of those items in the story. 

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Numbers 

Memorizing numbers represented an entirely different challenge for me because they lack character, it can be hard to put numbers into a story as we did before. If we are asked to memorize a set of numbers, we can assign each number to a phoneme or phoneme clusters as such: 

one: "w" 
two: "t" 
three: "th" 
four: "f" 
five: "v" 
six: "s" 
seven: "ev" 
eight: "e" 
nine: "n" 
zero: "r" 

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