Blurting: the blank-page method for studying

What is the blurting method?

The word comes from the English to blurt out, to let a word slip out without a filter. Applied to studying, it refers to a precise exercise: emptying onto a sheet everything you know about a passage, without looking at the course, without worrying about order or nice wording. In French, it’s often called the méthode de la page blanche.

The name spread through social media, but researchers in the psychology of memory use a very similar exercise, free recall: writing down everything you remember from a text. In a study by Karpicke and Blunt published in 2011, students read a science text, freely recalled it, reread it, then recalled it again. A week later, they remembered more than those who had built a concept map with the text in front of them.

Blurting is therefore a form of active recall. What sets it apart: it gives you no questions. It’s up to you to rebuild the structure of the passage, which quickly shows whether you understood how the ideas follow each other.

How to do blurting step by step

Take a blank sheet, two pens of different colors and a short part of the course, one or two pages. Here is a typical session of about thirty minutes; the durations are indicative.

Write fast, without worrying about spelling or order: the sheet is only for you. What matters is getting everything out before opening the course.

• Read the chosen part for about ten minutes, trying to understand the links between the ideas.
• Close the course and write for five to ten minutes everything that comes back: keywords, dates, definitions, arrows, small diagrams.
• When nothing more comes, wait one more minute before putting the pen down.
• Open the course and compare line by line. Add the gaps in the second color, cross out the mistakes and correct them.
• Spot what’s missing most: a chain of causes, a date, an example or an exact definition.
• Start again on a new sheet the next day or two days later, without rereading beforehand.
• Keep your sheets: from one attempt to the next, the second color should take up less and less room, a more reliable sign than the feeling of knowing the chapter.

Full example: the 1929 crisis

You’re studying the history chapter on the 1929 crisis. You read the part about its causes and its spread, you close the notebook and write for six minutes. Your sheet contains: Wall Street crash in October 1929, speculation, bank failures, unemployment, Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1929.

When you compare, almost all the words are there, but a correct date is missing, along with the mechanism that links these words together. This kind of gap goes unnoticed when rereading, because every term feels familiar.

When blurting works, and when it isn’t enough

The blank page suits courses you have to recall, like history, biology, law, economics or philosophy, and any notion you should be able to explain in your own words. It also works as a quick check before a test, to see which parts still hold.

It isn’t enough for everything. In math or physics, writing formulas from memory doesn’t prove you can solve an exercise: you also have to do some. On a passage you haven’t understood, the sheet stays empty or fills up with sentences learned without their meaning. On a whole chapter, the comparison gets too long: split it up.

Finally, it has a weakness of its own: it asks no precise question. You can forget a whole section without realizing it if you compare too quickly. Complete it with targeted questions, a multiple-choice quiz or flashcards on the points the comparison revealed.

The mistakes that make the blank page useless

On social media, the blank page often shows up as a pretty colorful sheet. What makes it valuable, though, is the comparison that follows the writing.

If the same notion comes back in color on every attempt, change your approach: ask yourself why it doesn’t stick, redo an example or turn it into a precise question.

• Glancing at the course while writing: the sheet no longer measures what you know.
• Comparing by skimming and ticking “I knew it” without checking the details.
• Choosing a part that’s too long, then dropping the comparison halfway.
• Spending more time on the layout than on the gaps.
• Never redoing the blank page, when the second attempt shows whether your corrections held.

Using it with Fichea

Fichea doesn’t do the blank page for you, but it can prepare the comparison. Create a study sheet from your course, as a PDF, pasted text or photo depending on your plan, check it against the course, then use it as a grid to correct your sheet.

Then a multiple-choice quiz on the same chapter asks about the precise points the blank page lets slip, with an explanation for each question. The mistakes from one attempt can become flashcards, reviewed with spaced repetition. The features available depend on the plan.

Frequently asked questions