
Do you want an easy, academically-tested way to remember things you study? What are some of the tricks to retaining knowledge? Are you willing to try things that don’t actually take much extra time during your study time and are much, much more effective than last minute cramming?
According to Professor Thad A. Polk in his lectures, The Learning Brain,1 one of the most useful ways to retain knowledge is to self-test. He recommends Spacing out your practice, Challenging yourself at just the right level of difficulty, and Randomizing your studies (SCR).
Why is spaced repetition so effective? According to research first carried out on himself, Hermann Ebbinghaus2 found that there is a “forgetting curve” when learning something. The forgetting curve describes the exponential loss of information that one has learned. The sharpest decline occurs in the first twenty minutes and the decay is significant through the first hour. The curve levels off after about one day.
Conversely, there is also a “learning curve” described by Ebbinghaus referring to how fast one learns information. The sharpest increase occurs after the first try and then gradually evens out. Like the forgetting curve, the learning curve is exponential. Spaced repetition3 therefore is a more effective technique for learning because of this learning curve.
Isn’t self-testing just a fancy way of asking yourself questions? Why ask questions to help yourself learn? According to some research into Event-Related brain Potential (ERP)4, “people immediately attempt to regain cohesion if a question-answer dependency is violated in an ongoing conversation”.
Presumably this includes a question-answer ongoing conversation with oneself in the form of self-testing. In other words, when a question goes unanswered, it “was found to lead to an increase in the amplitude of the P600 component5. We interpret these P600-effects as reflecting the increased effort in creating a coherent representation of what is communicated”. In other other words, when there is a question, the brain makes an increased effort to find the answer. Hence the effectiveness of self-testing with questions and not just reading over ones highlighted notes.
So let’s write down some questions at the time of learning them for later revision. In Study Book, the revision pages have numbered* lines for writing questions on one side of the page and a short grid to the right of that for noting dates to revise if you like to space your active recall.
You will notice that at the mid-point of the grid, there are two markers for folding at the top and bottom of the page. These folding guides are hidden when they are folded back, also hiding the grid but revealing the Answers column on the back of this page.
If you find the Answer column does not give enough space or you wish to write or draw a fuller explanation, you can also use the dotted grid next to the answers.
When I was a student, (I am a recent CELTA graduate, teaching English as a second language to adults) at first I took an ipad to class to write the questions / answers into a spreadsheet for concept-comprehension and self-testing later. I found it quite messy trying to write complete questions and answers into each small cell, and risky – I almost overwrote other questions and answers as I tried to listen to the teacher at the same time. It is better to write the questions on paper, as well as the answers directly as they are given by the teacher or the teaching material.
Never write down questions and answers that you already know, obviously, or anything else too simple – or too difficult. Challenge yourself at just the right level of difficulty. Concepts that are too complicated may need to be explained in another area of Study Book to grasp a wider understanding, then break down questions for the Revision section. Remember, the line numbers and page numbers are for cross-referencing.
Space out your practice by self-testing over days, ie the next day, then two days later, then one week after that, then two weeks after that etc to foil the “forgetting curve”. The learning curve experiment showed that spaced repetition compounds retention of the information, eventually with revision just before exam time as a final self-test asking the same questions and getting the correct answers. It will be clear which topics haven’t quite gelled and need further last-minute attention.
Another advocate for this method is a former medical student and YouTube vlogger, Ali Abdaal6. He uses a spreadsheet for active recall.
One standard way students randomize their studies is by using flashcards, either hardcopy or with online programmes like Quizlet quizlet.com, which can be quite time-consuming to set up. The convenience of writing questions as they are learned into Study Book is easier. Randomize your questions by writing questions from the same subject with gaps in between them so that other subjects are interspersed on the same page. (The revision section is not divided into Subjects). Or you can ask someone else to test you randomly.
Reverse-test by covering the questions while you look at the answers and make up an “explaining question” about them.
*Note your revision schedule with the page number and line numbers in the Tasks To Do at the back of Study Book. Also note the page and line numbers for Indexing by topic (or subject).
Hoeks JCJ, Stowe LA, Hendriks P, Brouwer H (2013) Questions Left Unanswered: How the Brain Responds to Missing Information. PLoS ONE 8(10): e73594. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0073594
- Thad Polk’s The Learning Brain
- Hermann Ebbinghaus (born January 24, 1850) on Wikipedia
- Making long-term memories in minutes: a spaced learning pattern from memory research in education
- Hoeks JCJ, Stowe LA, Hendriks P, Brouwer H (2013) Questions Left Unanswered: How the Brain Responds to Missing Information. PLoS ONE 8(10): e73594. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0073594 Read: Questions Left Unanswered
- peak in electrical brain activity
- Link to Ali Abdaal’s YouTube channel.