psychtip: how to memorize your presentation script

As a research student (previously psych undergrad), my year’s been filled with presentations after presentations (3-minute thesis, academic conferences, guest lectures) I tend to memorise my speech verbatim, i.e., word-for-word. Despite doing this a lot, it always remains a challenge. Here are some of the strategies I use to free recall and hopefully it helps fellow students out there 🤧

🌟1. Break your script into mini segments. Memorising the whole thing at once is overwhelming. You’ll find that digesting it in smaller chunks makes it easier (I actually end up visualizing the first word of each chunk in my mind when I am presenting, if you have trouble with this, see point 2)

🌟2. Create an acronym with the first word of each chunk. It kind of serves as ‘mental checkpoints’ as you go through the script.

🌟3. Repeatedly read your script out loud. Consistenly over the few days leading to your presentation, do it even when you’re showering. This helps facilitate the encoding process - fun fact: 3MT speakers tend to practise more than 50 times in the days leading up to the presentation! (yea might not be viable for longer presentations, but you get the gist)

🌟4. Don’t always recite from start to end. Usually the middle parts tend to be the most fuzzy - randomly start from somewhere in between to get yourself familiarized with every section.

🌟5. Sleep on it! That’s the time when your brain consolidates information and stores all of that in your long-term memory.

Even though they might seem like common sense, these techniques have been found to aid memorizing! Atb to anyone out there who’s prepping for a presentation 🫶🏻

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