How to study effectively: principles and a typical week

What really works for studying?

In 2013, a team of psychologists gathered around John Dunlosky reviewed ten techniques that students use to learn. Two clearly stand out: testing yourself, meaning answering questions without looking at your notes, and spreading your reviews over time. Their benefits show up in students of different ages and levels, and across many types of exams.

Three other techniques are judged promising, with less evidence: interleaving types of exercises, asking yourself why a fact is true, and explaining how new information connects to what you already know. Rereading, highlighting and summarizing, on the other hand, are ranked among the techniques of low usefulness when you settle for them.

• Testing yourself: look for the answer from memory, then check it.
• Spacing: go back over the same concept several times, over several days.
• Interleaving: mix exercises from different chapters in one session.
• Explaining: say in your own words why and how, without reading your notes.

Why is testing yourself better than rereading?

In 2006, Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke had students study texts. Some reread them, others wrote down from memory everything they remembered, without correction. On the test given five minutes later, rereading won. Two days and then a week later, it was the opposite: those who had tested themselves remembered clearly more.

One detail of the study concerns you directly: the students who reread felt more sure of themselves. Rereading makes the text familiar, and that familiarity feels like knowing. Testing yourself is more uncomfortable, because you see what is missing, and that is exactly what tells you what to work on again. This habit is called active recall.

The formats are many: flashcards, quizzes, a blank sheet on which you write everything you know, an exercise redone without looking at the correction. Fichea can create a quiz from your course notes (PDF, pasted text, Word file or photo depending on your plan), with an explanation for each question, and your mistakes can then become flashcards.

How do you spread and mix your studying?

In 2006, a meta-analysis led by Nicholas Cepeda brought together 317 experiments on how reviews are spread out. It shows in particular that the ideal gap between two reviews gets longer when the exam is further away. Dunlosky draws a practical rule from it: for the same amount of work time, spreading your sessions makes you remember longer than cramming everything into one go.

Interleaving means mixing, in a single session, exercises from different chapters, instead of doing twenty exercises of the same type in a row. In a study described by Dunlosky, students who interleaved did worse during practice, but much better on the exam taken a week later. Mixing forces you to recognize which method applies, which the exam will ask of you too.

To plan the reviews, the D-day method sets reviews at growing intervals after the lesson. Spaced repetition flashcard software can also calculate the dates for you.

What does an effective study week look like?

Here is an example for a test covering three chapters, in eight days, with about an hour available each evening. The durations are suggestions: adapt them to your tiredness, your courses and what the exam asks.

Each session follows the same order: a few minutes to note what you already know, most of the time to test yourself and correct, then one minute to write down what you will go back over next time. If you lose focus quickly, cut it into 25-minute blocks separated by a short break, on the model of the Pomodoro method. The day before the test, keep a light session and sleep.

• Monday, 45 minutes: read chapter 1 once to understand, then write from memory what you remember of it and correct with your notes.
• Tuesday, 45 minutes: same work on chapter 2, then 10 minutes of questions on chapter 1.
• Wednesday, 30 minutes: mixed exercises from chapters 1 and 2, without looking at the corrections until the end.
• Thursday: rest or another subject.
• Friday, 45 minutes: chapter 3, then a short quiz on the first two.
• Saturday, 1 hour: a practice paper in the format of the test, under time limits.
• Sunday, 20 minutes: go back over only the mistakes from the week.

Which mistakes waste the most time?

Rereading over and over. It is a very common method among students, and its effects are uneven: according to Dunlosky, it sometimes helps you remember a text, does not always improve your understanding of it, and its benefit may not last. Reread once to understand, then move on to questions.

Highlighting the whole chapter. Compared with simply reading, highlighting did not help the pupils and students in the studies reviewed. It can serve as a first sort, to spot what you will then turn into questions, as long as you do not stop there.

Keeping everything for the night before. Cramming can help for the next day, but what is learned in bulk is quickly forgotten, and you will have to relearn everything for the final exam or the following year. If the exam is tomorrow, focus on the priority concepts and keep time to sleep.

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