“Squeezing Milk from an Orange: An Easy Approach to Remembering Scripture,” New Era, May 1977, 11
Squeezing Milk from an Orange:
An Easy Approach to Remembering Scripture
Mike is a BYU student who works part-time as a custodian at the Language Training Mission. One day at work he found a packet of missionary scripture cards. Just for fun, he decided to use the cards to practice some of the memory techniques he had learned recently. According to a couple of missionaries he later talked with, it takes most of them several weeks of study to learn these scriptures as well as Mike knew them. He had studied them for about half an hour.
Is this a fictional story? Is it a true story about a person with a photographic memory? Neither. This is a true incident about a young man who was so motivated to improve his memory that he was willing to work at it. You also can improve your ability to learn and remember the scriptures. That is the purpose of this article.
Before some specific techniques are described, there are four general points that need to be emphasized. First, you should realize that there is nothing magic about memory techniques; there is no one easy secret to mastering your memory. Remembering is a skill, and like any other skill, you must learn the techniques and practice them if you want to get good at it. Second, anyone can improve his memory. Whether you currently have a bad memory or a good one, you can make it better. People with so-called photographic memories are much more rare than most people think; most people who have amazing memory abilities have developed them by learning specific techniques, such as those discussed in this article, and by practicing them.
The third general point is that remembering is different from understanding. The purpose of the techniques discussed in this article is to help you learn and remember scriptures better, but they will not necessarily help you understand the meaning of the scriptures. Fourth, when studying the scriptures, especially in preparation for missionary work, you are entitled to inspiration from the Lord to help you understand and remember them. These memory techniques are not intended to replace a reliance on the Spirit.
When people talk about remembering scriptures, there are two different kinds of remembering that they may have in mind: (1) What the scripture says. Memory for the content of the scripture may involve word-for-word memorization of verses of scripture. (2) Where the scripture is. Memory for the location of the scripture involves remembering the general idea of the scripture and where it can be found (book, chapter, and verse). The next section of the article offers some hints for the first kind of memorizing, word-for-word memorizing. The rest of the article discusses the second kind.
Remembering the Words
The following four hints may be helpful when you want to memorize verses of scripture so you can quote them word-for-word.
1. Recite it. Recitation means saying the scripture to yourself or out loud, looking at it only when necessary to see what the next word is. Suppose, for example, that you plan to spend 20 minutes studying a scripture that takes two minutes to read. It would be more efficient for you to read it through a couple of times and spend the other 16 minutes reciting rather than merely reading the scripture over and over ten times. Generally you should spend as much of your memorizing time as possible reciting rather than just reading and rereading.
2. Overlearn it. When you have studied the scripture enough that you can recite it all the way through once without looking at it, you have learned it. Some people think that further study beyond this point would be a waste of time. That is not true. Overlearning, which is learning beyond the point of barely being able to recite all of the scripture once, is beneficial. So when you reach the point where you can say the scripture through once, do not quit studying; say it through several more times, and you will be able to remember it much better later.
Overlearning is the reason most people can remember some things that they learned as children, such as the alphabet and multiplication tables, even though they may not have used them for a long time. Overlearning also suggests one reason why cramming is not a good study technique—it usually results in just barely learning the material. This leads us conveniently to the next hint.
3. Space it out. Cramming, which means to memorize a lot of material in one study session, is not an efficient way to learn. It usually results in remembering the material for only a short amount of time. Spacing your study out into several shorter study times with breaks in between will result in better learning and remembering. For example, if you plan to devote five hours a week to memorizing scriptures, it would generally be better to space this study time out to one hour a day than to try to do it all in one five-hour session.
4. Review it. Regardless of the method you use for memorizing something, you are likely to forget it later if you do not review it occasionally. The best time for the first review is soon after memorizing the scripture. A review generally takes the form of reciting the scripture. Reviews should be fairly frequent and close together at first, then less frequent later. For example, one useful systematic program for memorizing scriptures is to review each scripture at least once a day for a week after learning it, then once a week for a month, then once a month for as long as desired. I used this program as a missionary by carrying seven scripture cards with me each day—the new one I was memorizing that day, plus the six from the six previous days.
Remembering the Book
Although some memory for scriptures involves word-for-word quoting, much memory for scriptures is more concerned with knowing only the general content of the scripture and where to find it. “Where to find it” consists of the name of a book (Matthew, Alma, etc.), a chapter number, and a verse number. This section briefly describes a technique that can help you remember the names of the books in the scriptures. The next section describes a system for remembering chapter and verse numbers, which are hard for most people to remember because numbers are abstract and not very meaningful.
The techniques described in this section are based on two important principles of memory—association and visualization. Association means relating the thing that you want to remember with something you already know. Visualization means making the association by using mental pictures. Associating and visualizing have been used by memory experts for at least 2,500 years and form the basis of virtually all memory systems.
To illustrate how one can use association and visualization, suppose you want to remember a shopping list of the following ten items: oranges, milk, bread, cookies, meat, cheese, butter, bananas, cereal, and sugar. You could remember the list by associating each item with the previous item in a chain of mental pictures. To associate oranges and milk, you might picture milk pouring out of an orange, or a milk bottle full of oranges. Try to actually see the picture in your mind. Then associate milk and bread, perhaps by seeing a loaf of bread being used to soak up spilled milk. Then associate bread and cookies, perhaps by picturing yourself eating bread out of a cookie jar. Continue associating each item with the previous item until you finally associate cereal and sugar. Then to remember the first item on the list you could associate oranges with the store where you will be shopping. Try it.
How can association and visualization help you remember the names of books in the scriptures? Suppose that you wanted to remember the names of the 15 books in the Book of Mormon, in order. First, you would think of some object that could be pictured and would remind you of the name of each book. The object might be something that plays a central part in the book (such as the liahona for 1 Nephi), or it might be something that sounds like part of the name of the book (such as a jack for Jacob). Then you would associate the 15 objects representing the names of the books in the same way you associated the 10 items to remember the shopping list—using mental pictures. The same technique could, of course, be used to remember the names of the 27 books in the New Testament or the 39 books in the Old Testament, feats that are very difficult without a technique.
How can association and visualization help you remember the location of a certain scripture? To remember what book to find certain scriptures in, you associate the main idea of the scripture with the object that represents the book. For example, if you want to remember that Lehi’s vision of the tree of life is in 1 Nephi, you could picture liahonas growing on a tree; to remember that the parable of the tame and wild olive tree is in Jacob, you could picture an automobile jack jacking up an olive tree; to remember that the parable of the pearl of great price is found in Matthew, you could picture a doormat made of pearls.
Remembering Chapter and Verse
So far we have seen how a person can remember what book to find a scripture in, but usually we want to know the chapter and verse also. Association and visualization can be of use here also, but we need to add another technique—a system for converting numbers into words, which are more meaningful than numbers and can be pictured. The system is more than 300 years old and can be adapted to recall any kind of information that consists of numbers.
Briefly, the system consists of substituting a consonant sound for each of the ten digits, 0 to 9. These consonant sounds are then used to make words, which represent objects that can be pictured. I call the system the phonetic system because it is based on sounds. The complete system is constructed so that every consonant sound in the alphabet is associated with a digit, and every digit is represented by a distinct consonant sound (or group of similar sounds). The only consonants that have no numerical value are W, H, and Y, which you can remember with the word why. Following is an abbreviated version of the system. The consonant sound that is paired with each digit is shown in the following display (along with some memory aids to help you learn the system):
|
Digit |
Consonant Sound |
Memory Aid |
|---|---|---|
|
0 |
z, s, soft c |
z for “zero,” c for “cipher” |
|
1 |
t, d |
t and d each have one downstroke |
|
2 |
n |
n has two downstrokes |
|
3 |
m |
m has three downstrokes |
|
4 |
r |
last sound in the word four |
|
5 |
l |
L is Roman numeral for 50 |
|
6 |
j, sh, ch, soft g |
reversed written j resembles a 6 |
|
7 |
k, q, hard c, hard g |
k can be made from two 7’s |
|
8 |
f, v |
written f resembles an 8 |
|
9 |
p, b |
p is a 9 reversed |
After you have learned the system, you can make a word or words out of any number by adding vowels, which have no numerical value. For example, number 1 could be represented by the words tie, doe, or eat; 9 could be represented by pie, ape, or bee; 14 could be represented by tire, tree, or door; and 146 could be represented by trash or torch.
To use the phonetic system to remember scriptural references, translate the chapter and verse numbers into words and associate them like we did the items on the shopping list and books in the Book of Mormon. For example, one of the missionary scriptures is James 1:5—if you lack wisdom, ask of God. You could use association and visualization to relate jam (James) to tie (1), the tie to eel (5), then eel to wisdom (perhaps represented by an owl). Thus, you might picture jam spilled on a tie, an eel wearing a tie, then an eel being eaten by an owl. A few additional examples from the missionary scriptures are the following: To remember John 14:15—if you love God, keep his commandments—you could associate yawn (John), tire (14), tool (15), commandments. To remember Joseph Smith 2:30 [JS—H 1:30]—Moroni’s appearance—you could associate Joseph Smith, hen (2), mouse (30), angel Moroni. To remember that 3 Nephi, chapters 11–30 [3 Ne. 11–30], tell of Christ’s visit to America, you could associate Three Nephites (3 Nephi), tot (11), maze (30), Christ.
Do These Techniques Really Help?
Will these techniques really help you remember scriptures, or are they just elaborate time-wasting schemes that are more trouble than they are worth? Would it be easier to memorize scriptures your usual way than to take the effort to learn the phonetic system and use association and visualization? Some people may find that this is true—at first. However, the person who seriously wants to remember the scriptures, and is willing to put forth some effort to do so, will find that these techniques are worth the effort in the long run. Anyone who is a good typist can testify that when they were first learning the skill, it was less efficient to type than to write longhand, but once they learned to type, then typing became more efficient and neater. The same is true of memory skills. Once you learn the techniques and get used to using them, you will find that they are much more efficient than your old ways of memorizing scriptures.
The descriptions of the memory techniques, especially the phonetic system, in this article have been extremely sketchy. Actually, the phonetic system is more complicated to explain than it is to use. I have taught it to my daughters, ages seven and nine, and they are using it to help them memorize the Articles of Faith. Two years ago they memorized the Ten Commandments using a similar system.
When a list of 20 items is read once to people, they remember an average of about half the items; hardly anyone can remember all 20. However, after association and visualization are explained to them, the average number of items they can remember jumps to over 18, and more than half of the people usually remember all 20 items (see New Era, December 1975, p. 45).
Additional examples show that the techniques really can help you remember scriptures. Mike’s experience, described at the beginning of this article, shows that a person who has made the effort to practice memory techniques can remember more efficiently than those who have not. When I was a missionary, I memorized a total of about 1,000 verses of scripture, word-for-word, with chapter and verse references, using some of the techniques described in this article. I have also used these techniques to memorize the major contents of each of the 239 chapters in the Book of Mormon.
So the answer to the question, “Do these techniques really help?” is yes. You can improve your ability to learn and remember the scriptures..
Following is a list of some of the scriptures that are found in the lessons currently being used in the missionary discussions. Also included are brief statements describing the contents of each scripture. The list is not complete but could give you a good start in memorizing some useful scriptures for spreading the gospel.
|
First Vision | |
|
If any of ye lack wisdom | |
|
After many testimonies, He lives! | |
|
Moroni’s appearance | |
|
Gave some prophets, etc., for edifying of saints | |
|
Christ in America | |
|
Promise of testimony | |
|
Story of—prayer, answer, forgiveness | |
|
Faith | |
|
Father and Son have bodies of flesh and bone; Holy Ghost is personage of spirit | |
|
Aaron in land of Nephi converts king Lamoni and his household | |
|
Love me, keep my commandments | |
|
In Adam all die, in Christ all made alive | |
|
Not hair of head lost, all restored | |
|
All in graves to hear voice; good unto life, evil unto damnation | |
|
Baptism for the dead | |
|
Gospel preached to dead; judged according to the flesh | |
|
Christ suffered for sins, preached unto spirits in prison | |
|
Except a man be born of water and spirit | |
|
Little children need no repentance neither baptism | |
|
Lord does nothing without revealing his secrets to his servants the prophets | |
|
Believe prophets, eternal life | |
|
Give heed to prophets or be cut off | |
|
Word not pass away, all fulfilled, same if word of servants | |
|
What doth it profit if faith and not works | |
|
Be ye doers of word and not hearers only | |
|
Not every one that saith Lord, but he that doeth; I never knew thee | |
|
Truth is knowledge of things past, present, future | |
|
Truth shall make you free | |
|
Apostasy, not endure sound doctrine, itching ears | |
|
Falling away first | |
|
Learning but no knowledge of truth | |
|
Spirit of Christ to every man; evil not of Christ | |
|
Remember sins no more | |
|
Joy of knowing forgiven | |
|
Believe and be baptized; signs follow them that believe | |
|
Follow, baptized, Holy Ghost given | |
|
Aaronic Priesthood conferred | |
|
Keep commandments and endure; eternal life greatest gift | |
|
Tithed not burned at coming | |
|
Tithing; windows of heaven opened | |
|
Word of Wisdom promise | |
|
Sacraments upon my holy day | |
|
Sabbath day commandment | |
|
Confess not hand in all things and obey not commandments | |
|
Those who do his will will know of doctrine | |
|
Knowledge of Savior shall spread throughout all | |
|
Cornerstone | |
|
Church called in my name | |
|
Come all heavy laden | |
|
Christ Creator—the Word | |
|
Sabbath day commandment | |
|
Ten Commandments | |
|
Created all things by Christ | |
|
Christ is risen, visit to tomb | |
|
Christ is risen, visit to tomb | |
|
Announcing Christ in America; Father’s voice | |
|
All restored to perfect frame, judged according to works | |
|
Say have no sin, truth not in us | |
|
No unclean thing can enter | |
|
Take transgression of those who believe, they have eternal life | |
|
If not repent, suffer as I suffered | |
|
Many mansions | |
|
Three degrees of glory vision | |
|
Faithful to end, eternal life in mansions | |
|
Baptized to repentance | |
|
Judged out of books | |
|
All judgment committed to Son | |
|
Be perfect | |
|
Repent and be baptized | |
|
Follow Son and take on name; two baptisms | |
|
Steadfastness in Christ, endure to end | |
|
Bound when do what say; when not, no promise | |
|
Desire blessing, abide the law | |
|
Obtain priesthoods; those who receive, receive me | |
|
Light of the world, bushel, let shine | |
|
Not lifted up to pride, boast in own strength | |
|
Nephi’s vision of life of Christ | |
|
Three in Godhead |
Illustrated by Preston Heiselt