How to learn effectively: the techniques that really work

Why rereading gives the illusion of learning

Rereading a passage makes it familiar. On a second pass, you recognise the sentences, feel at ease and believe you understand everything. This familiarity is easily confused with memorising, yet they are two different things: recognising a text is not the same as being able to reproduce it without having it in front of you.

One experiment shows this well (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). Students read a text, then either read it again or take a recall test. A few minutes later, those who reread do better. But after two days, then after a week, those who tested themselves remember more.

A review of ten study techniques (Dunlosky et al., 2013) ranks rereading and highlighting among the techniques of low utility for the average learner. These habits can serve as a first contact with a subject, but they are not enough to remember.

Testing and spacing: the two best-supported techniques

Among the ten techniques reviewed by Dunlosky et al. (2013), two are rated as having high utility: practice testing, which means testing yourself, and distributed practice, which means spacing out your sessions. Each deserves its own guide: testing yourself to remember better, then spaced repetition.

Testing yourself forces you to search for the information in memory instead of rereading it. Spreading study over time also improves retention compared with a single block (Cepeda et al., 2006). The two techniques combine well: you test yourself at regular intervals, on what you studied in the previous days.

Mixing topics rather than grouping them

Practising one type of exercise for a long time gives a sense of ease, and you progress quickly. Rohrer and Taylor (2007) compared the two approaches in mathematics: on a test taken a week later, mixing the types of problems during practice gave much better results than grouping them by type, even though the grouped approach seemed easier at the time.

This idea can be transposed to general knowledge, although these studies did not test it in that field. Alternating geography games, for example capitals, flags and placing places on the map, forces you to recognise each time what you are looking for, instead of repeating the same movement. Dunlosky et al. (2013) classify interleaved practice among the techniques of moderate utility.

Explaining to yourself: asking why

Asking yourself why an answer is right, or why another is wrong, is a technique of moderate utility according to Dunlosky et al. (2013). It forces you to link a piece of information to what you already know, instead of leaving it isolated, like a rule to learn by heart.

In practice, after an answer, you can explain out loud why the other options are wrong, without looking at the course. The explanations that follow each answer in the Mnemoz quizzes are a starting point: read them, then rephrase them in your own words. This is not a universal rule, but a habit that takes a little patience.

Sleeping to consolidate what you have learned

Learning and sleeping are not separate activities. Sleep helps consolidate the memories learned during the day (Diekelmann and Born, 2010). A review followed by a good night's sleep is therefore not useless, even though sleep does not replace tests or spaced sessions.

Spreading sessions over several days also lets you sleep between two reviews, which fits with the spacing described above.

A one-week routine, as an example

Here is one way to organise these techniques over a week. It is an example and not a rule from research: each person should adapt it to their timetable and level.

• Monday: read the chapter once, without trying to remember everything.
• Tuesday: test yourself on this chapter, without looking at the course, then check.
• Wednesday: mix this chapter with a topic seen the previous week.
• Thursday: explain a difficult idea out loud, in your own words.
• Friday: go back over the answers you got wrong and write them down.
• Saturday: a short review of older topics.
• Sunday: a break, with no revision.

On Mnemoz, the daily quiz works as a daily test, and the Spaced review (free account) brings back the questions you got wrong later. The Endless mode, which asks questions non-stop, can also serve as a free-form test.

Frequently asked questions

Should I highlight my course?

Not as a main method: highlighting is classed among the techniques of low utility (Dunlosky et al., 2013). It can help you spot the passages to work on, but the main work comes afterwards, when you test yourself on those passages without looking at them.

How long should I revise each day?

There is no universal length, and the studies cited here give no figure to follow. However, several short sessions spread over time are better than one long block (Cepeda et al., 2006). The most useful approach is therefore to spread your study time over several days, rather than cramming it all into one go.

Is rereading useless?

No, but it is not enough. Rereading helps in the short term, whereas recalling the content gives better results after two days and a week (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). Rereading can therefore serve as a first contact with a text, and then you need to test yourself to check what remains in memory.

Read next

• Spaced repetition: revise at the right time to remember for longerReviewing at ever longer intervals helps you remember for the long term. Forgetting curve, sample calendar, Leitner method and the tools on Mnemoz.
• Testing yourself to remember better: the testing effectWhy recalling what you have read sticks better than rereading, how to test yourself without any tool and how to use the quizzes on Mnemoz to do it.
• Remembering capitals and flags: methods and exercisesWhy capitals are forgotten, how to learn them in small groups, on a map and with flags, then how to test yourself with the games.
• How to remember dates and events in historyWhy isolated dates are forgotten, which landmarks to fix, how to place a century and practise putting historical events in their order.
• Memory techniques: acronyms, memory palace and chunkingAcronyms, mnemonic phrases, chunking and the method of loci: what studies say about these techniques and how to combine them with Mnemoz.