Ask most students how they study and you will hear some version of the same answer: read the notes again, highlight the important parts, maybe rewrite them neatly. It feels like work, and while you are doing it the material feels familiar. The trouble is that familiar is not the same as remembered, and a test asks you to produce the answer, not to recognize it.
Retrieval practice flips the routine. Instead of putting information back into your head, you practice pulling it out: answering questions, writing down what you remember, explaining an idea without looking. It is one of the best-supported findings in the learning sciences, and it costs nothing.
What the research says
In a well-known study, Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke (2006) had students read short science passages. Some reread the passage; others read it once and then wrote down everything they could recall. Five minutes later, the students who reread did slightly better. A week later the picture had reversed: the students who practiced recalling remembered far more, even though they had spent less time looking at the text.
Later work pointed the same way. In a large 2013 review of ten popular study techniques, John Dunlosky and colleagues rated practice testing as one of only two techniques with high utility for learners of all ages. The other was spreading study out over time. Rereading and highlighting, the two most common habits, were rated low.
Why does it work? Every time you retrieve a memory, you make it easier to find again. You also discover what you cannot retrieve. That second part matters: a blank on a practice quiz is cheap information. A blank on the real exam is not.
A practice quiz is not only a measurement of learning. It is one of the ways learning happens.
Eight ways to use retrieval practice
For students
- Close the book and write. After reading a section, write everything you remember on a blank page. Then open the book and fill the gaps in a different color. The gaps are your study list.
- Turn headings into questions. "The causes of the French Revolution" becomes "What were the causes of the French Revolution?" Answer it before you reread.
- Use flashcards properly. Say or write the answer before you flip the card. Flipping too early turns flashcards back into rereading.
- Take practice quizzes the next day, not straight away. A little forgetting makes the retrieval harder and the learning stronger.
For teachers
- Start class with three questions on last week's material, not today's. Keep it ungraded or worth very little.
- Use exit tickets with one question that asks students to recall something, not just rate their confidence.
- Mix old and new. A quiz on this week's topic can include one or two questions from last month.
- Always give feedback. Retrieval works best when students find out the right answer soon after, especially when they got it wrong.
Common mistakes
- Making it high-stakes. Anxiety about grades pushes students back to cramming. Frequent, low-stakes quizzes work better than a few big ones.
- Only asking easy questions. If everyone scores 100% every time, the questions are probably asking for recognition rather than recall. Mix in questions that make students produce an answer: fill in the blank, short answer, explain why.
- Checking the answer too soon. Much of the benefit comes from the effort of trying. Make an honest attempt first.
- Stopping once it feels easy. Retrieval that feels easy today will feel harder again next week. That is normal, and a reason to come back to it.
Making it practical
The biggest obstacle to retrieval practice is usually not motivation. It is the time it takes to write good questions. A teacher who wants a short quiz for every lesson, or a student who wants practice questions for every chapter, quickly runs out of hours.
This is where a question generator helps. With Quizbot's practice question generator you can paste a page of notes or upload the chapter you are studying and get a set of questions with an answer key in seconds. Use true/false and fill-in-the-blank questions for quick recall, and multiple-choice or open-ended questions when you want to check understanding. Then comes the part that matters: answer them before you look at the key.
The short version
- Recalling beats rereading, even when rereading feels more productive.
- Keep practice quizzes frequent and low-stakes.
- Always check your answers, and pay special attention to the ones you missed.
- Come back to the same material after a few days. Spacing out your retrieval makes it last even longer.
