Active recall: why testing yourself beats rereading

What is active recall?

Active recall is the effort of retrieving information without having it in front of you: answering a question, reciting a definition, redoing a line of reasoning. In English, it’s called active recall or retrieval practice. Researchers call it the “testing effect” when this effort improves memorization.

The difference with rereading lies in the direction of the work. When you reread, the information comes from the page and you recognize it. When you test yourself, it has to come from your memory, and you see right away what’s missing. Recognizing a sentence doesn’t mean you could rebuild it on the day of the test.

The test also changes role. At school, it’s mostly used for grading; here, it’s used for learning, and you can practice it on your own, without waiting for the teacher’s assessment.

Why does testing yourself beat rereading?

In 2006, the psychologists Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke had students read short informational texts, one about the Sun, the other about sea otters. Afterwards, they either reread the text or wrote down everything they remembered, with no correction at all. A final test took place five minutes, two days or one week later.

Five minutes later, rereading gave better results. Two days and a week later, it was the opposite: the students who had tested themselves remembered clearly more. Yet those who had reread several times thought they were better prepared. This gap helps explain why rereading remains so widespread: it gives an immediate feeling of mastery.

In 2013, a review led by John Dunlosky went over ten study techniques. Practice testing and spaced practice are judged the most effective; rereading, highlighting and summarizing are among the least useful. This research describes average trends. It guarantees no grade, but it shows where to put your time.

Six ways to practice active recall

All these forms have one thing in common: you produce an answer before seeing it. Choose them according to what your exam asks for, whether that’s a precise definition, a line of reasoning or a written text.

An answer you have to produce in full shows your gaps better than a choice among options. So vary the formats: a flashcard checks a word or a rule, an exercise checks that you know how to use it.

• Written questions: before closing the course, write down a few check questions, then answer them later without your notes.
• Flashcards: a question on the front, the answer on the back, which you say out loud or write down before flipping the card.
• Blank page, or blurting: write down everything you know about a part of the course, then fill in the gaps in another color.
• Multiple-choice quiz: choose an answer and justify it before showing the correction, otherwise you’re mostly working on recognition.
• Oral explanation: tell the chapter to someone, or out loud to yourself, with no support at all.
• Exercises without the correction in front of you: solve the problem all the way through, then compare your approach with the solution.

How to apply active recall step by step

Here is a typical session of about forty minutes on one chapter. The durations are guidelines, to adjust to the length of the course.

Prepare a sheet to note, for each question, whether you found it on your own, with a hint or not at all. This list will tell you what to go back to in the next session, more reliably than a general impression.

• 10 minutes: read part of the course to understand it and write down three to five questions a teacher could ask.
• 10 minutes: close the course and answer in writing, even partially. An incomplete answer teaches you more than an empty page.
• 10 minutes: correct with the course in another color and note the type of each mistake: forgotten, confusion between two notions or misunderstanding.
• 10 minutes: rework only the mistakes, then redo the missed questions without looking.
• Two or three days later: redo the test in a different order, before any rereading.

Common mistakes and limits of active recall

Active recall is demanding, and several habits take away its value without you noticing.

Another limit: active recall doesn’t replace practice in the exam format. An essay, a proof or an oral are also prepared by writing, proving and speaking.

• Flipping the answer after three seconds: give yourself time to search, even if it’s unpleasant.
• Not correcting: a wrong answer you don’t check may stay in your memory.
• Only redoing the questions you got right, because they’re reassuring.
• Testing yourself on a passage you haven’t understood: start by getting it explained, otherwise you remember words without their meaning.
• Always studying in the same order: you end up remembering the position of the answer rather than the answer.

Using it with Fichea

Fichea starts from your course, as a PDF, pasted text or photo depending on your plan, and creates a quiz of 1 to 24 questions: multiple choice, true/false or short answer, on three difficulty levels, with an explanation for each question. After an attempt, you can review your mistakes and turn them into flashcards, which spaced repetition then brings back to you.

Keep the habit of checking: an AI-generated question can contain a mistake, and your course remains the reference. The features and volumes available depend on the plan and are detailed on the Pricing page.

Frequently asked questions