Mnemonics: definition, methods, and examples

Mnemonics refers to a set of techniques that help improve memory through mental associations of ideas.

In today’s education system, full of content and constant testing, one of the key questions is how students can boost their memory.

More than just simple tricks for studying, mnemonic systems are powerful, time-tested methods to improve the storage and retrieval of information. They also help enhance skills like autonomous learning and creativity. 

What if one of the best responses to this overload was learning how to remember?

In this article, you will not only understand the meaning of mnemonics but also discover the most effective techniques and how you can apply them to enhance your students’ retention skills.

What are mnemonics? 

Mnemonics are a group of cognitive strategies that rely on tools such as mental associations, images, sounds, keywords, and repetition to help quickly and effectively remember information.

From this perspective, mnemonics fit into the concept of neuroeducation by contributing to learning and memory processes.

The term comes from the Greek word “mneme,” meaning memory. The word itself, however, first appeared in the 19th century. Before that, these memory strategies were known as the “art of memory,” referring to the use of creative techniques to retain information.

In Greek mythology, memory was represented by Mnemosyne, daughter of Uranus and Gaia. She gave birth to the nine muses, including Calliope (muse of heroic poetry), Thalia (comedy), Melpomene (tragedy), and Euterpe (music). 

These muses represent arts that use stylistic elements like rhyme and chorus — techniques that are common in mnemonics.

Ultimately, this system is a valuable tool to promote what’s known as “learning to learn.” In other words, it’s about learning strategies to study more efficiently and with more motivation while boosting memory capacity.

If we were to explain the meaning of mnemonics in simple terms, we could define them as any method that helps us remember something.

Even changing the finger you wear a ring on can be a memory aid. Small tricks like this fall under what are called mnemonic collections or dictionaries.

What mnemonics are not 

To understand what mnemonics are, it’s also essential to clarify what they are not: 

• They are not a strategy to increase memory capacity, but rather to enhance the effectiveness of memory use and support long-term recall.
• They are not study techniques themselves. While related, memory and learning are not the same. Memory stores and retrieves information, while learning focuses on acquiring new knowledge, skills, and educational competencies.
• They do not solve memory problems. For that, a professional should be consulted. However, mnemonics are an excellent mental exercise to stimulate memory.

What are mnemonic techniques used for? 

Mnemonic techniques can be applied in education, personal development, and professional settings. They serve to:

• Help memorize data more efficiently, saving study time and reducing frustration when forgetting key concepts.
• Retain large volumes of information in a short time, especially useful for exam preparation involving complex content.
• Improve communication skills for professionals like speakers, teachers, and lawyers during presentations and speeches.
• Assist in memorizing names or any kind of information — useful for professionals and memory athletes or magicians.
• Deepen learning in new languages by grouping elements and ideas for better retention. This simple, meaningful sentence — easy to memorize — includes the main coordinating conjunctions in French: mais (but), ou (or), et (and), donc (so), or (however), ni (nor), car (because).

What skills do mnemonics help develop? 

Mnemonics boost the ability to remember hard-to-retain data by enhancing the cognitive processes of encoding and retrieving information, reinforcing long-term memory.

They also accelerate learning by making information more meaningful and support three essential skills:

1. Learning to learn: They help stimulate metacognitive strategies through active learning by providing students with tools to plan, monitor, and assess their own learning. At the same time, they encourage students to become more autonomous and to understand the value of learning.
   
2. Critical thinking: While it’s true that we are talking about a memory-based strategy, it does not simply involve memorizing data without understanding. First, it’s essential that the student actively processes the information, finds logical connections and structures that make sense to them. Inevitably, this leads to the development of other skills, such as creativity for building associations and mental agility.

3. Knowledge management: In an era of information overload, improving the ability to classify, store, and retrieve information strategically is becoming increasingly essential. Mnemonics facilitate quick access to prior knowledge, enhancing decision-making and problem-solving.
   

All of these are key educational skills.

Most effective types of mnemonic techniques 

You can apply several methods or combine them for greater effectiveness. Mnemonic types vary based on the elements used for creating memory associations:

• Verbal: words, phrases, acronyms.
• Visual: mental images.
• Spatial: placing concepts in mental locations.
• Auditory: rhymes, songs, sayings.
• Kinesthetic: It involves body movement to enhance information recall. For example, moving your fingers as if playing an instrument to remember a musical score.

Mnemonics: examples and techniques to boost memory

Below are widely used mnemonic techniques, along with examples that help illustrate them.

Associations 

These are the basic dynamics of mnemonics. The technique is based on linking the information you want to retain with something familiar, such as objects or images.

Emotional value plays a crucial role — the more emotional significance an object holds for you, the more effective the technique becomes, as supported by cognitive psychology. In fact, different studies have shown that emotional memory strengthens recall.

For example, if you need to remember a specific time, visualizing the watch you inherited from your father showing that time will help you retain it more easily.

The same applies to images of a place you love or where you have been especially happy — these high-sensory-value experiences help anchor information more effectively in your memory.

Method of Loci

This involves building what’s known as a memory palace using the method of Loci. It consists of visualizing a place or a route and associating each location with a concept you need to remember. It works especially well for recalling sequences in a specific order.

To make it easier, you can start with a familiar place such as your home, classroom, or gym, and always walk through it in the same order.

Let’s say you need to remember the order of the planets from the sun. You could build your mental palace like this:

• You begin at the front door, where you meet the messenger of the gods (Mercury), who points you to where you should go next.
• In the hallway, there’s a mirror with a woman looking at herself (Venus).
• In the kitchen, you see a globe (Earth) bouncing and rolling out the door until it lands at the feet of a warrior (Mars).
• You continue to the bathroom, where a huge storm is happening and a giant lightning bolt crashes down (Jupiter).
• In the living room, books spin around enormous rings (Saturn).
• Finally, you enter your bedroom and find a block of ice blocking the way (Uranus), but someone throws a trident (Neptune) that shatters it.

Rhymes and songs 

Rhymes, verses, or songs make memorization easier. A common example of this technique is using sayings or proverbs.

Take this one, for instance, which helps you easily remember how many days are in each month:

“Thirty days have September, April, June, and November; all the rest have thirty-one, except for February alone.”

Mnemonic acrostic

This technique involves remembering information by creating grammatical constructions made up of words whose initials correspond to the concepts that need to be memorized.

When studying the nitrogenous bases of DNA and RNA, the following acrostics can be used to help remember them:

• DNA: Great Cats Are Talkative → Guanine, Cytosine, Adenine, Thymine
• RNA: Great Cats Are Unique → Guanine, Cytosine, Adenine, Uracil

These phrases use simple, easy-to-visualize words that begin with the same letters as the bases, making them effective for mnemonic recall.

Acronym 

Acronyms are words formed from the initials of other words, although they do not always match exactly, since the goal is for the resulting word to be easy to pronounce in syllables.

Examples include UN (United Nations) or SMART goals — which should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

The word modem comes from the acronym for modulator-demodulator, as another example.

Acronyms are also useful for remembering letter sequences, like on keyboards: QWERTY or AZERTY, which refer to the order of the first row of keys in English and French layouts, respectively.

Storytelling 

In this case, memorization is reinforced through the creation of stories or narratives built around the sequence of events or lists of items you need to remember.

The more absurd, exaggerated, or surprising the story is, the easier it will be to retain the information.

You’ll find an example of this in the next section.

Herigone’s mnemonic or phonetic code 

This technique is often used to remember important dates, phone numbers, or any kind of numerical sequence.

It works by transforming numbers into letters, then letters into words, and words into images. The goal is to turn a list of digits into something visual and memorable.

Here’s a practical example:

Let’s say you need to memorize the number 7135962. First, assign a word to each number based on something it resembles or can be associated with:

• 7 – Awning
  
• 1 – Candle
  
• 3 – Mountain
  
• 5 – Hook
  
• 9 – Balloon
  
• 6 – Cherry
  
• 2 – Duck
  

Then, build a story using those words. It might go like this:

The awning (7) looked like a candle (1) drifting over a mountain (3). Suddenly, it got caught on a hook (5) and turned into a giant balloon (9) that floated to a planet shaped like a cherry (6), where a duck (2) lived and ate it.

Mental maps

Mental maps are a type of composition that graphically represents ideas connected to each other.

Their effectiveness lies in the combination of logic and creativity, enhancing memorization through an organized and visually appealing layout of content using images, arrows, and colors.

Keyword method 

It is often used to reinforce vocabulary when studying a language. It involves linking a word in the language being learned to another word in the learner’s native language that can be associated with it, either because it looks similar or sounds alike.

For example: imagine you need to memorize the French word “fenêtre,” which means “window” in English. For a memory trick, you could imagine a “fun ether” (a magical gas) coming through a window.

Mnemonics and inclusive classrooms 

Mnemonic techniques can be used as a tool to create more inclusive classrooms, especially when students have special educational needs.

Since they can be adapted to different learning styles (visual, kinesthetic, verbal), and use various methods (rhymes, songs, word games, etc.), they make it easier to personalize education.

Students with dyslexia or cognitive difficulties can improve their outcomes and boost their self-esteem, instead of feeling isolated or frustrated when participating in class.

How to develop mnemonic strategies 

Now that you know what mnemonics are and the most common techniques, you can start practicing by creating your own strategies. To do this, follow these steps:

• Identify the key information you need to remember. This could be the most meaningful part of a statement, but also the information you find hardest to memorize.
  
• Choose the memorization method you will use and associate it with words, sounds, or images. Remember, the more powerful, emotional, and surprising they are, the easier it will be to recall the concepts. Likewise, including them in a story will improve your results. The essential condition is to engage in active and conscious study.
  
• Repeat the mnemonic structure you have created several times to cement it in your memory. Here, you can use what is known as spaced repetition. This technique helps consolidate long-term memory by reviewing information at systematically increasing intervals. For example, you might start reviewing daily, then every two days, once a week, once a month, and so on.

Benefits of mnemonics in education 

The use of mnemonics in education provides great benefits to your students that go beyond the classroom.

Beyond developing long-term memory in a process that focuses not only on retention but on understanding what is being fixed in the mind, actively exercising memory offers other advantages, such as:

• Improving attention and developing reading comprehension, since the information the student needs to memorize must be processed first.
  
• Encouraging students to become autonomous learners and to be aware of their responsibility in the learning process. This independence, in turn, increases their commitment to acquiring knowledge.
  
• Helping develop key skills such as learning to learn and critical thinking.
  
• Reducing student frustration by showing how their results improve and how study time decreases as they become more efficient.
  
• Enhancing mental agility through the association of ideas and preventing the mind from going blank during presentations or speeches.
  
• Supporting inclusive and personalized education by using a wide variety of techniques based on different cognitive processes.
  

One of the major contributions of applying mnemonics in the classroom is that they can be combined with other educational strategies to enhance them, as you will see next.

Mnemonics and educational strategies: combination examples 

If you want to maximize the benefits of mnemonics in education and build more effective and memorable learning environments, consider the following ideas:

• Discovery learning: This educational constructivist approach allows students to acquire knowledge through direct experience. The process fosters meaningful learning, where mnemonics help anchor new information to existing knowledge structures.
  
• Visual thinking or mental visualization: This supports the creation of memorization rules in a visual format, making understanding easier and promoting long-term recall.
  
• Cooperative learning: Creating mnemonic techniques as a group reinforces teamwork and encourages co-creation of meaning. These strategies can even be combined with game elements (gamification) to further strengthen long-term memory.

How to use mnemonics in digital learning 

When it comes to motivation and engagement in the classroom, the integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) offers great opportunities to enhance the student experience.

Digital tools make it easier to plan study sessions using interactive calendars, automatic reminders, and access to educational materials.

They also help create meaningful connections between ideas and concepts through tools like mind maps, interactive simulations, and multimedia resources that stimulate critical thinking and support a deeper understanding of content before memorizing it.

Here are just a few digital solutions you can use:

• MindMeister or Coggle: for creating concept maps.
  
• Anki or Quizlet: for working easily with flashcards.
  
• Memrise or LingQ: educational platforms with mnemonic-based resources that support language learning.
  

These are examples of how you can harness the power of technology to create engaging educational experiences that also help students manage knowledge more effectively.

Formative assessment and mnemonics 

To effectively apply mnemonics in studying, it’s essential to work with a combination of analysis, planning, creativity, and adaptability.

This requires the use of a continuous evaluation process to determine which strategies are effective and which ones should be replaced if they are not fulfilling their purpose.

In this context, you can offer your students spaced repetition-based assessments, such as quizzes or online forms, to check whether the content is retained beyond short-term memory.

Another option is free recall tests, which measure the ability to retrieve memorized information without any cues. These involve asking students to write down everything they remember about a specific topic.

Additionally, contextualized assessments — which ask students to apply what they have learned to new situations, promoting knowledge transfer — are equally effective.

As we have explored throughout this article, mnemonics are not just about remembering — they are about keeping memories active through techniques and strategies rooted in association.

In this process, it’s just as important to choose the right method for each case as it is to evaluate the outcomes and make necessary adjustments.

To be truly effective, formative assessments must ensure that the retrieval of information is a result of actual learning, and not the use of external aids, especially in digital learning environments.

That’s where our remote proctoring plans come into play, designed to ensure that assessments are fair and secure for all students.

You can request a free demo, where we will walk you through our innovative remote monitoring solutions tailored to support academic integrity and improve the evaluation process.

---

---