Imagine a student from Spain, named Juan, is coming to your school for a semester abroad, and everyone in your class has a specific topic to teach him about the United States. Your job involves teaching him everything about two famous American symbols, the American flag and the Statue of Liberty. At first, you feel excited, because you see the flag every day, and know a lot of details. Plus, in school, you have learned about the Statue of Liberty more times than you can even count. Then, you see the questions you must answer from memory, and start to worry a bit. Take a look. Do you know answers to all of the below questions without doing any research?

• What color is the top stripe on the American flag?
• How many red and white stripes does the American flag have?
• In what hand does the Statue of Liberty hold her torch?

Most likely, you did not recall with certainty that the top stripe on the American flag is red, there are six white stripes and seven red strips on the American flag, or that the Statue of Liberty holds the torch in her right hand. This is just one example that shows how little you encode compared to all of the information around you.

Since you learned in this topic how difficult it is to encode information and store it in your long term memory, for this application, you will come up with one strategy that you feel would best help Juan remember all of the information he is about to learn from you and your peers. As you decide on your strategy, keep in mind that you learned several in this topic, but many others exist which you may choose to research. What encoding, storage, or retrieval strategy did you pick for Juan? Why? Provide an example that shows how the strategy works.

Post your answers in the discussion area. Then, return to the topic several times over the next few days to read your course-mates’ posts. Reply to at least two of them, making sure to offer new insights, ask questions, and further conversation about how to best help Juan enhance his memory.

Before you begin, review the Memory Strategies Checklist to help you complete your assignment and understand how your work will be graded.

Once you have completed your discussion posts, please submit any relevant Works Cited documents to the dropbox.