My Way to Memorize

Assalamu’alaikum to all, today I would like to share with all of you other steps of memorizing the Quranic verses. In my first post, I already mentioned about the most important basic steps in memorization of the Quran that is to be sincere first. This time, I will conclude all the rest steps I used before in order to share with all of you the best way to do the memorization. Here are the steps:

1)      Sincerity. Our heart must be sincere first and our intention must be based on doing worship (the memorization as one form of ‘Ibadah) for the sake of Allah. As the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said: “Indeed all started with the intent and practice for everyone is what is intended”.

2)      Familiarity means that we should use same mushaf from the first time we start our memorization until the end. Then, it also means same place to do like at one same corner in mosque and at same time every day, for instance after Isya’ prayer.

3)      Choose the right and suitable time. Some people might say that the best time to do it is before Subuh prayer (about 4 am to 5 am) and continuously after the prayer in the morning. However, others say that the best time is between Maghrib and Isya’ prayers then continuously after the Isya’ prayer at night. Actually, it depends on individual capability and convenience.

4)      Recite certain verses or pages those we tend to memorize repeatedly before we try to memorize them about ten times. It will be better if we see someone who is an expert in Tajwid and recite before him or her either he or she is our teacher or friend or relative. This is very important to do in order to make sure our recitation is good and right because the wrong and bad recitation will make it hard for us to memorize.

5)      Now, we have to make several phrases for each verse first and this will acquire a little understanding of Arabic language. It is okay if we do not know much about it but at least, we know how to divide the verse into certain short phrases.

6)      We have to start memorize every phrases one by one and try to repeat every single phrases in many times until we sure enough that it is sticky in our memory. Do this till we finish memorizing each phrase in one particular verse and then repeat it from the beginning part of the verse to the end continuously before we proceed to next verse and so on.

7)      When we are finished about half page of the mushaf, it is better for us to repeat it again from the first verse until the verse we stopped at. This step is to avoid our earlier memorization disappears from our minds because it is located in short-term memory storage at this point. So, we have to do simple basic maintenance rehearsal by repeating it and this is just the same thing we have to do in the another half page.

8)      Next, we need to combine both of the two halves page and repeat from the very beginning verse we memorized just now until the end of the page. During this, we are still doing the basic maintenance rehearsal.

9)      When we finished the memorization of certain pages of any surah, do find a partner to recite it in front of him or her in order to improve our memorization quality (this is the next maintenance rehearsal we should do).

10)  Another form of maintenance rehearsal is through auditory application (echoic) whereas we listening to any famous recitation from particular Imam (leader in prayer) using any audio device after we finished the memorization.

11)  Besides that, the best maintenance rehearsal I think is we repeat the memorization during performing a prayer in our daily lives.

To summarize, I hope we will get some benefits from what I have shared with you this time and soon, we could fully apply it in order to finish our projects successfully. Thank you.