Pegging: The Alphabet Is a Simple  Pegging List

Last week, we created fun alphabets. I asked all my readers to come up with a fun alphabet of their own. I suggested a list of favorite actors, singers or Facebook friends.  We could now use these alphabets which are forms of pegging lists to learn new material. 

Alphabets are easier to learn than most other lists because they already have an easily recognized order. After you have memorized the items in your fun alphabet, we can use them to memorize other lists.  Remember my fun alphabet of singers circa 1960:

Paul Anka, Pat Boone,  Chubby Checker, Bobby Darin, Everly Brothers, Fabian, Leslie Gore, Johnny Horton, Burl Ives, Stonewall Jackson, Kingston Trio, Brenda Lee, Johnny Maestro, Rick Nelson, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Que Sara Sara,  Bobby Rydell, Neil Sedaka, Johnny Tillotson, Leslie Uggams, Bobby Vinton, Andy Williams, X-Ray , Kathy Young and Zippidy Doo Dah

I  can now use this list to help me memorize another list. Say I want to memorize the first  26 American presidents in order.  A simple  way would be to attach or peg each president to a singer in the fun alphabet. 

I might picture Paul Anka washing a ton of clothes. I even see a scale that weighs piles of clothing and “By George,” says Anka as he is washing a ton of clothes.  I see the picture clearly in my mind.  Anka might be washing dollar bills with Washington’s picture on them.  By associating Washington with the first item in my fun alphabet, it is easier to learn.

If Paul Anka is too much ancient history, use another celebrity whose name beings with A.  Take Christine Aguilera, for instance. 

John Adams is second just like the letter “B.” I use my fun alphabet. Pat Boone (or Justine Beiber)  is singing the theme of the “Addams Family.”  I get a clear picture of my mind and even hear Boone working on those lyrics.  Watch the spellings if you are using this as a school project. John Adams not John Addams.

Thomas Jefferson, our third president,  I will peg to Chubby Checker who  is signing the Declaration of Independence as he does the twist.  It is a fun image, and after all our Civil Rights battles, I like the idea of Checker who is a Black singer signing the Declaration.  With Chubby is George Jefferson and his son or someone named Tom.

James Madison, our fourth president, is pegged to Bobby Darin.  Perhaps Darin is  is  taking a bath on Madison Avenue as he sings  “Splish Splash.”  Maybe Darin is in the cast of the television program “Mad Men.”

The next 21 presidents in order are:

5. James Monroe  6. John Quincy Addams  7. Andrew Jackson  8. Martin Ban Buran  9. William Henry Harrison (Tippecanoe)  10. John Tyler  11. James K. Polk  12. Zachary Taylor  13. Millard Fillmore  14. Franklin Pierce  15. James Buchanan  16. Abraham Lincoln 17. Andrew Johnson  18.Ulysses S. Grant  19. Rutherford B. Haynes  20. James Garfield  21. Chester Arthur  22. Grover Cleveland  23. Benjamin Harrison  24. Grover Cleveland (who served two nonconsecutive terms as president thus he gets the number  22 and number 24 slot.)

25. William McKinley 26. Teddy Roosevelt.

I will let you find your own associations for these presidents.  Use the items on your own fun alphabet or use mine.

Pegging lists can be used over and over. After I memorize the presidents in order, I can use the fun alphabet to memorize the Confederate States in the order they seceded, the state capitals or a list of Plantagenet  rulers in order. 

Alphabets can be used in many different ways. For instance, I might find it easier to memorize the presidents in alphabetical order. Three presidents had names that started with “A.” Two presidents named Adams, John and John Quincy, Chester Arthur.  

Under “B”  we have the two Bushes, and Buchanan.

Under “C” we have Carter, Cleveland (who we have to count twice because of his non consecutive terms) Clinton and Coolidge.

No presidents have names that started with “D” .  President Eisenhower was the only “E”.

I could add numbers later.  For the letter “J”, Andrew Jackson 7, Thomas Jefferson 3, Andrew Johnson 17, Lyndon Johnson 36. We will get to simple ways to memorize numbers in another column.  Usually U.S. presidents are memorized in chronological order, but I like over learning things.  And it is fun to use different orders.

So now we have at least one good pegging list - the alphabet.   If we can memorize all the presidents in any order, we have two pegging lists.   Any list you have already learned, can be used as a new pegging list.

A last note about alphabets. Our alphabet is not the only one. There are hundreds of alphabets and they come in handy in memorizing globs of information. Memory experts use Master Code and Dominic Code, both based on the alphabet to convert numbers into letters and vice versa. 

But alphabets are not the most popular or even the most used pegging list. Believe it or not there is an easier pegging list.  I will introduce you to that one and how it is used in an upcoming column.

SMART TIME MANAGEMENT AND THE ALPHABET AS A PEGGING LIST

BY MARY ANN SLAVCHEFF

       Today as I walked my dog Tiki, I decided to try something different. Instead of memorizing the license plates numbers in order as I sometimes do,  I reviewed the NATO alphabet.  

I had never put a lot of effort into memorizing this alphabet and I had not thought of it for some time. But it was time for a review; I looked at the letters on a license plate and converted them to Nato words. 

For those not familiar with the NATO alphabet it is an international phonetic  alphabet. When someone in the armed forces or a police officer wants to spell out say a license plate he does it with:

Alpha, Brava, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Limo, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee, Zulu

So a  license plate with the letters MAS (my initials) would read: Mike Alpha Sierra.

As I walked and reviewed, I was doing several things correctly as a learner. Time spent walking a dog or doing any mindless task like dish washing or driving a familiar route or folding laundry can also be spent testing ourselves on our knowledge.  I was using my time smartly. 

Using time for two compatible projects is called layering. It is different from multitasking which does not work because with multitasking, focus is difficult to impossible.  I can’t, for instance, give  a caller directions to my home, look up a pasta recipe  and balance my checkbook all at the same time. Each activity needs focus and they are being short changed.

What else was I doing right as a learner as Tiki and I walked? I was Pegging. One of the reasons the NATO alphabet was easy for me to memorize because it it an alphabet.  I already had the order down.  I just had to learn a list of associations.

Associating new learning with something already learned like the alphabet is called Pegging.   It has many forms, but let’s take one of its more basic forms which is a simple list like the alphabet. 

If the alphabet sounds too simplistic for those of us beyond kindergarten, then make it fun.  Create fun alphabets  or use one already created like the NATO alphabet. 

Okay, so the NATO alphabet isn’t fun.  What is a fun alphabet anyway?

I grew up in the 1950’s and early 60’s and like a lot of adolescents and teens, I loved certain recording artists. I bought their records and put the long playing records  in alphabetical order according to the singer’s name. To this day I remember that order.

Paul Anka, Pat Boone, Chubby Checker, Bobby Darin, Everly Brothers, Fabian, Leslie Gore, Johnny Horton, Burl Ives, Stonewall Jackson, Kingston Trio, Brenda Lee, Johnny Maestro, Rick Nelson, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Que Sara Sara,  Bobby Rydell, Neil Sedaka, Johnny Tillotson, Leslie Uggams, Bobby Vinton, Andy Williams, X-Ray , Kathy Young and Zippidy Doo Dah.

Note that where I did not have a singers name I made a substitute, songs for Q and Z and then the reliable X-Ray for X.  I also selected only one singer for each letter of the alphabet.  Having too many names could confuse me.

This list was easy to learn by just imagining my record collection. Later when I had a nice collection of DVD’s I could do the same thing with titles.

I have an actors list too.  Alan Alda, Dan Blocker, Jack Cassidy, Johnny Depp, etc. We could also create lists of sports stars, fictional character, words associated with a hobby or historic period.  We can create dozens of alphabets. I suggest working with just one fun alphabet until you get more practice.

You might get stuck on some letters like I did with my singers.  For those words that start with difficult letters have something that can be unrelated nonsense ready to plug in.

X = Xena, the Warrior Princess; Xanth, a fantasy land created by author Piers Anthony;  X Men, X Box or Xmas.  Z could stand for Zorro, Zipper, Zip codes, Zoey  or Zippidy Do Dah

If you get stuck too often  often enlarge your topic. Instead of names of boats, have transportation as your main category. Then you can include cars and even airplanes. When you get to “Q” you have the Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth both legendary ships, or you can also choose an aircraft type for which there are designation codes for most letters of the alphabet. 

What a great excuse for memorizing aircraft designations. It is now a fun alphabet.

The alphabet can be a great learning tool. Too bad it is often dismissed as too simplistic.  It has an easy order and it has already been learned; it is easy to tack new information onto it.

Create your own special alphabet, use the NATO  alphabet, or my list of singers circa 1960.  Now we all have at least one pegging list. In my next blog, I will show you how to use a pegging list.  Over the next several weeks, we will create other pegging lists. 

Pegging lists are as simple as ABC. The alphabet is not the only type of pegging lists. There is even a simpler method of pegging.  We will learn that too.

Then we will learn another technique.