1. Read the text. Choose the correct answer.

Which sentence might Nelson Dellis say?

a. 'Training your brain is difficult - not everybody can do it'.

b. 'You can become a memory champion if you work hard.'

An amazing memory

Are you good at remembering names and numbers? If the answer is ‘no’, perhaps you need some help from Nelson Dellis. He was the winner of the USA Memory Championships in New York where he broke two American records. He was the fastest to remember a pack of playing cards - in sixty-three seconds. He also memorised the most numbers in five minutes - 248. 

The most important part of Dellis’s work is the training. ‘Everybody who's in this competition trained their memory, he said on the Today Show on NBC TV. ‘I train every day

... I work out my body, but I also work out my brain’. British-born Dellis was first interested in brain training when his grandmother had memory problems, and he

understood it was important for people to improve their memories.

However, Dellis doesn’t think he’s special or has got a ‘photographic’ memory. He thinks anybody can be a memory expert. People just need to learn about the brain and how images are important for memory.

If you want to memorise a word or number, you need to change it into a picture. Dellis gives the example of a shopping list. When you see the word ‘milk’, you need to see a picture of some milk in your head. It’s a simple idea, but one that all memory experts use.