Retrieval Practice: The Study Technique That Beats Rereading

Most students study by rereading their notes and highlighting the important parts. Both feel productive. Both are among the least effective ways to learn. The technique that consistently beats them feels harder, and looks like it isn’t studying at all: testing yourself.

What retrieval practice is

Retrieval practice means pulling information out of your memory, rather than putting it in again. Instead of reading your notes a third time, you close them and try to write down what you remember. Instead of rereading a chapter, you answer questions on it.

The key is that you produce the answer from memory before you check it.

The evidence

In a well-known 2006 study, Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke gave students a short passage of science writing to learn. Some students read it four times. Others read it once, then practised recalling it three times.

Tested five minutes later, the students who had reread did slightly better. Tested a week later, the students who had practised recalling it remembered far more.

This pattern has been repeated in hundreds of studies, across subjects, ages and kinds of material. Recalling information is one of the most powerful ways to make it stick.

Why it works

Recall strengthens the memory. Every time you successfully pull something out of memory, you make that path easier to follow next time. Rereading doesn’t exercise the path; it just shows you the destination.

It shows you what you don’t know. Rereading makes everything feel familiar. Testing yourself reveals exactly which parts you can’t produce, so you know where to spend your time.

It works best when it’s a little hard. Struggling to recall something, and then getting it, strengthens it more than easy recall does. Psychologists call this a desirable difficulty.

Why rereading feels better

After a couple of readings, the material looks familiar, and familiarity feels like knowing it. But recognising something when you see it is much easier than producing it from nothing, and exams (and life) usually ask you to produce it.

Highlighting has the same problem. It marks what looks important without making you think about it or recall it.

How to use it

1. Close the book and write. After reading a section, cover it and write down everything you remember. Then check what you missed.
2. Turn headings into questions. “The causes of inflation” becomes “What causes inflation?” Answer before you read.
3. Use flashcards properly. Say or write the answer before you flip the card, and be honest about whether you knew it.
4. Do practice questions early, not just the night before. Getting them wrong is part of how they work.
5. Explain it to someone, or to an empty room. If you can’t explain it simply, you’ve found a gap.
6. Combine it with spacing. Test yourself on a topic again after a gap of days. The combination is more powerful than either alone. See the spacing effect.

A common worry: what if I get it wrong?

Getting answers wrong while practising isn’t a problem, as long as you then check the right answer. In fact, trying first and then being corrected often leads to better memory than being shown the answer straight away.

Where this shows up in Cognosc

Cognosc asks before it tells. Lessons open with a question, you explain ideas in your own words, and check-ins later ask you to recall them from memory, with nothing to look at.

Try it now

The free how learning works test is itself a bit of retrieval practice on the science of studying.