Ask a child what he or she learned over the last year and in the top ten items, the child will list a field trip, guest speaker, something extraordinary that happened in the class, to name a few. As an adult when I am driving down the road, I can hear a song that reminds me of a specific event in high school, or of a party I might have attended. Those memories are context memories, or episodic memories. Episodic memories center on something that happens and can be triggered by hearing a certain song, or driving by a certain place. On the other hand, we have memory that is content memory, or semantic memory.
Semantic memory is rote memorization and list-oriented material.
This memory requires constant rehearsing over and over, such as multiplication tables, and is quite unnatural for the brain. The brain wants to rely on connection and searches for that motivator to trigger memories. There are several variations, but if that sentence rings a bell in your context memory, then you know the first letter of each of those words are the first letters of the nine planets, in order from the sun. Every Good Boy Does Fine. Those are mnemonic devices used as a memory tool.