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  3. How to Remember: Some Basic Principles How do you communicate something you’ve forgotten? You can’t! Now’s the time to fit

How to Remember: Some Basic Principles How do you communicate something you’ve forgotten? You can’t! Now’s the time to fit

admin2010-03-26  71
问题                      How to Remember: Some Basic Principles
    How do you communicate something you’ve forgotten? You can’t! Now’s the time to fit memory into the communication picture. Don’t be content with a 10 percent level of remembering. Tap into the following three basic laws and triple that figure. After all, improved memory means improved communication. THE PREREQUISITES
    Most of us, psychologists say, don’t use more than 10 percent of our native ability to remember. That’s comparable to running a car on one or two cylinders and just poking along.
    Why don’t we use more of our inherent memory power? There are several answers. First, because we haven’t been trained to. Nowhere in our schooling were we taught how to use our powers of memory. And second, because we often just don’t care. And that leads me to the three things that I feel are essential to a more powerful memory.
    First, you must have a burning desire to improve your memory. You must care about it. Most people struggle along with poor memories, enduring endless frustrations and embarrassments in their daily lives, because they just don’t want to be bothered remembering the constant barrage of names, numbers, facts, and information. What you have to do is remind yourself of the many benefits of a good memory: the increased confidence I promised you, the popularity and the peace of mind. Aren’t those three alone enough to stir a desire in you to improve?
    The second prerequisite is the ability to concentrate. You will be effective in remembering to the degree that you are enough to concentrate. A short period of intense concentration will often enable you to accomplish more than years of dreaming.
    The third prerequisite was revealed to me by former Postmaster-General James Farley of New York City. Mr. Farley was cited by associates for having the most remarkable memory in this century. I asked him his secret.
    "There’s no real secret," he said. "You simply must love people. If you do, you won’t have any trouble remembering their names, and a lot more about them than that."
    And that’s the third essential: You must care about people. It wasn’t long after I talked to Mr. Farley that I came across an interesting line from Alexander Pope. "How vast a memory has love," he wrote. Certainly a deeper interest in people, and in your work as well, should make your desire to remember and your concentration much easier.
THE BASIC LAWS
    Visualize. Now you’re ready to learn the basic techniques for developing your memory. The first essential is to visualize. Picture what you want to remember. Since 85 percent of all you learn and remember in life reaches you through your eyes, it is absolutely vital that you visualize the things you want to recall later. To do that, you must above all become aware. And awareness involves becoming both a keen observer and an active listener. You have to see clearly and hear accurately in order to picture vividly what you want to remember. Too many people go through life only partly awake, only partly aware. They don’t forget names; they never hear them clearly in the first place. That art of retention is the art of attention.
    Become curious, observant, and sensitive to everything around you. See the roof detail on that old building. Notice the difference between the tree greens of April and of August. Hear the difference between the sirens of an ambulance, a fire track, a police car. Sharpen your senses of sight and hearing -- they’re the most important. Together, those two senses account for 95 percent of our memory power. Two ancient sayings highlight the importance of visualizing. "One time seeing is worth a thousand times hearing." And "A picture is worth ten thousand words."
    Repeat. If school didn’t bother to teach us formal memory work, it did teach us the need for repeating. We were taught to memorize by repeating a poem, a date, or the alphabet over and over again. Radio and television commercials rely heavily on repetition to remind listeners to buy, buy, buy.
    Is there an American who doesn’t recognize "Try it, you’ll like it" or "I can’t believe I ate the whole thing"? Burger King’s famous "Have it your way" line, "You, you’re the one." When slogans like these are set to music, people don’t just remember them -- they even sing them. And there you have the secret of success: repetition.
    Associate. Before we get into actual demonstrations of the kinds of memory and the application of techniques, there’s one more key to memory, and it’s the most important. The one indispensable fundamental is the requirement that you associate anything you want to recall later. Association is the natural as well as the easy way to assure instant recall. Your brain is more remarkable than even the most amazing computer in the world. And the principle on which it works is association. The brain is, in fact, an associating machine. To recall a name, date, or fact, what the brain needs is a cue, a clue.
    Let’s step back into history for a moment. Over 2 000 years ago Aristotle defined what he called the Primary Laws of Association. There is the Law of Resemblance or Similarity, where one impression tends to bring to mind another impression which resembles it in some way. There is the Law of Contrast or Opposites, which says that where there are two or more opposing impressions, the presence of one will tend to recall the others. And finally there is the Law of Contiguity or Togetherness. If two or more impressions occur at the same time, or follow close on one another in either time or space,thinking of one will recall the other.
    There are secondary Laws of Association as well, and these are known as Recency, Frequency, and Vividness. Recency means we tend to recall associations made recently much better than those made months or years ago. Frequency, implies that the more often you repeat an association, the easier it will be to recall. And vividness means that the more graphic or striking the association is, the quicker you’ll be able to recall it.
    In summary, the requirements for improving your memory are concentration, a desire to remember, and a love for people.
    And the techniques for mastering the art of memory are visualizing, repeating, and associating.
    One final n6te, this time on how to study: Memorizing anything is easier and faster when you practice for a half hour or so, and then go off and forget it for a while. Work again later for another half hour, then take another break. Tests have proved time and time again that we learn better and faster when we alternate work and rest in a sort of wave pattern. The rest period actually reinforces the learning.
    Now then, can you remember all that?  
One essential factor for better memory mentioned in Paragraph 4 is ________.
选项
答案a burning desire/desire/having a burning desire
解析 此题可以从第四段第一句“First，you must have a burning desire to improve your memory.”中找到答案。
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