Curious about your memory? Let’s talk about the forgetting curve.
Have you ever wondered how your memory works? Or why you can remember all the lyrics to a song but struggle to recall the name of someone you met just days ago?
Let’s consider this scenario: you attend a French class today and learn a few conjugations as well as the rules for singulars and plurals. By tomorrow, if you don’t practice or review that information, you could lose about 50% to 80% of what you learned. By day 30, your retention might drop to just 2% to 3% of those conjugations. And what’s more, when you try to study it months later for your midterm exams, it may feel like you’ve never learned it at all, and you might need to completely re-learn the information you were supposed to learn days ago.
This phenomenon is known as the forgetting curve, a theory that explains how quickly we lose newly acquired knowledge and illustrates the decline in memory retention over time.
So, how can we combat memory decay? Here are some strategies to reshape the forgetting curve:
Immediate Review: Spend 10 minutes reviewing the material the day after you learn it.
Weekly Reinforcement: A week later, dedicate 5 minutes to reviewing the same information. By day 30, just 2-4 minutes should be enough to remember.
Consistent Practice: Depending on your courses, experts recommend setting aside about half an hour weekly to review new information you have checked during the week.
Additionally, don’t underestimate the power of sleep and exercise. Quality sleep allows your brain to consolidate new knowledge into long-term memory, while regular exercise enhances cognitive performance.