Q.You have to remember four errands on your way home from school: return a library book, buy milk, post a letter, and collect a parcel from a neighbour. Explain, step by step, how you would use the Method of Loci to remember all four in the correct order.

Mnemonics (pronounced 'ni-mo-nicks') are strategies used to improve memory. Some mnemonic techniques work by having a person build vivid, interacting mental images around the material to be remembered, while others work by imposing some kind of deliberate organisation on that material.

Among the image-based techniques, the keyword method is especially useful for learning vocabulary in an unfamiliar language: a person identifies an English word that sounds similar to the foreign word (the 'keyword') and then forms a vivid interacting image linking the keyword to the meaning of the foreign word — for instance, imagining a duck sitting in a pot to remember that 'pato' is Spanish for duck, using 'pot' as the keyword. The method of loci is especially useful for remembering items in a fixed order: a person visualises a sequence of familiar physical locations and mentally 'places' each item to be remembered at one location in turn, later recalling the items by mentally walking the same route.

Among the organisation-based techniques, chunking combines several smaller units of information into larger, more meaningful chunks, making otherwise unmanageable amounts of material easier to hold and recall. The first letter technique creates a new, memorable word or sentence out of the first letters of the items to be remembered, such as the well-known acronym VIBGYOR for the colours of the rainbow. …