01 February 2015 / by Vincent Chieppa

Chunking information & the power it unlocks

The most common way of chunking information is by arbitrarily grouping it together. For example, imagine you have to remember the names of four of your students. You will simply split them into two pairs and memorize the first pair followed by the second.

This this refers to chunking information based on its meaning. For instance, if you want to memorize the age of everyone in a group, you can begin by chunking the information by organizing people by their age. The next step would be to remember the people that belong to each group.

It comes more naturally to commit information to memory by identifying a pattern in the given information. This is because you simply have to remember the pattern rather than a list of separate pieces of information.

As an example, look at this letter sequence: AEIMQUY. Did you notice that these letters are just every fourth letter of the alphabet? So if you want to commit this information to short term memory, you now have the pattern that is the key to unlock the whole sequence.

As we have seen, chunking information can also help overcome some short term memory restrictions. Experiments have shown that short term memory has a limited capacity to remember 7 (plus or minus 2) chunks at a time. Nevertheless, we are able to remember more by chunking information.

For example, if you have to commit an (international) 11-digit phone number to your short term memory you will probably be unable to do it. However, by chunking the information in units, you will be able to do it with greater ease.

As an example, imagine you have to remember the phone number of your Kenyan Director of Studies (+25490573681). You will find that by chunking these numbers into groups you will now be able to remember it with ease (2-54-90-57-36-81).

Here you will find an activity to illustrate how chunking information works. Also, feel free to read up more about not only about chunking and other memory techniques, but also on how to apply it in the classroom:

The Atlantic

The Peak Performance Center

Professional Teacher Board

Skills Toolbox

20

January 2012

Friday Fun: The History of English #3

by Radmila Gurkova

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMkuUADWW2A&feature=relmfu The series of posts about the history of the English language continues with this video about Shakespeare and his impact on the development of English. Have you ever seen a Shakespeare play? Can you recognise any of the roots of the words?...

13

January 2012

Mystery “GOLD BARS” Found on Paris Train are Fake

by Radmila Gurkova

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apD5cPVsDjc A suitcase containing an estimated $1 million in gold bars was abandoned on a commuter train near Paris, but police now say the 20 gold bars were fake. The ingots would have been worth around 800,000 Euros ($1m; £670,000) if they had been genuine. The bars, made from a base metal were l...

13

January 2012

New Year’s Resolutions – Can You Keep Them?

by Radmila Gurkova

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVA9IOMKl-A&feature=fvst “I love a good checklist. A to-do list starts my day off on the right foot. So when it comes to creating New Year’s resolutions, I take it pretty seriously. I mean, it’s a year-long to-do list, it better be a good one.” Resolutions are what you make of them. Without some thought...

13

January 2012

Can...Auxiliary Verb subject + can + main verb

by Radmila Gurkova

Can is an auxiliary verb, a modal verb: talk about po...

13

January 2012

Talking about likes and dislikes.... I love ice cream

by Radmila Gurkova

We use the present simple tense to express likes and dislikes in English. For Example: I like chocolate I don't like chocolate. I like cycling I...

13

January 2012

softEST and most valuable.... Comparison of adjectives

by Radmila Gurkova

(See if you can spot the mistakes in the picture - scroll down to check for answers) Suffixes are groups of letters added to the end of other words t...

13

January 2012

I am going to......do more exercise

by Radmila Gurkova

I AM GOING TO - Future simple to express things in the immediate future. So when we make New Year's Resolutions we normally use GOING TO to express actions in the nea...

13

January 2012

Friday Fun: The History of English... #2

by Radmila Gurkova

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B8TwBrCIEY Another fun post for a Friday at the end of a busy week... this continues the history of English series that is produced by the Open University in the UK. This short clip talks about the Norman Conquest in 1066 and the influence of French on the development of English. How many of these words do ...

06

January 2012

Elephant Poaching: 'Record Year' for Ivory Captures

by Radmila Gurkova

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbMNaGt8qjc Charity organisation TRAFFIC said that 2011 it had seen high numbers of large ivory captures. TRAFFIC represents the support of Illegal ivory trade. Illegal ivory trade has increased since 2007, the increase is over 800 kg in weight. But in 2010 they only had 10 large captures. There...

06

January 2012

FOR years TO stop

by Radmila Gurkova

FOR & TO ...

Inicio

Contact us

01 February 2015 / by Vincent Chieppa

Chunking information & the power it unlocks

20

13

13

13

13

13

13

13

06

06