Testing yourself beats re-reading

The idea in one sentence: trying to pull something back out of your memory helps it last longer than reading it again does. A quick quiz isn’t just a way to check learning. It is one of the best ways to build it.

You’ve seen this already

Think about a new PIN for your bank card. You could read the letter with the number on it ten times. Or you could cover the number, try to recall it, then check. Most people find the second way sticks. Each time you have to dig the number out of your head, it gets a little easier to find next time.

The same goes for a pub quiz. The answers you had to strain for, and then heard, are often the ones you still know a week later. The ones you just read on a card are gone.

Why it matters for your teaching

Most of us end a session with a recap. We put up a summary slide, or send the slides round afterwards. It feels helpful, and people nod along. But looking at the answers again is the weak version. Asking people to recall the answers is the strong one.

Say you’ve taught a team a new way to check a patient’s fluid balance. A week later, you could re-send the guide. Or, at the start of the next huddle, you could ask: “Without looking, what are the three things we now check?” Let people try. Then go through the right answer together. The second takes two minutes, and it is likely to do more to help it stick.

This links back to what people need to do differently. If you want a healthcare assistant to remember the new checks on a busy shift, give them practice remembering, not just practice reading.

One warning: clear teaching still matters. People can only recall what they took in first. Clear explanation gets the material in; recall helps it stay.

Try this

• Open with a question, not a recap. “Before we start, write down what you remember from last time.” Paper is fine. Then fill in the gaps together.
• Always give the right answer afterwards. Even a failed attempt to remember helps, as long as people then find out the right answer. Without that step, mistakes can stick.
• Wait before you rescue. When someone gives half an answer, give them a moment and a prompt before you fill the gap. Then make sure they hear the full, correct answer.
• Keep it low stakes. No scores on the wall, no marks that count. The aim is practice, not a pass or fail.

How sure are we?

This is one of the best-tested findings about learning. It has been repeated many times, in labs and in real classrooms. A large review of the research (Dunlosky et al., 2013) rated practice testing as one of only two study methods with high usefulness. Another review, which pooled results from many studies (Adesope et al., 2017), found the benefit held across age groups, settings and types of quiz.

There are limits. Most studies tested facts and ideas, such as remembering a passage of text. There is less evidence for hands-on skills, for using knowledge in new situations, and for staff learning at work in healthcare. Re-reading does help a little, and in the short term it can even win. In the best-known study, testing pulled ahead by two days and stayed ahead at a week.

Nobody is completely sure why it works. Researchers still debate the reasons. Feedback makes it work better: a quiz followed by the right answers beats a quiz on its own.

Where it comes from

The idea is old. Teachers have known for centuries that reciting helps. Scientists started measuring it about a hundred years ago. Interest grew again in 2006, when Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke showed that students who practised recalling a passage remembered much more of it a week later than students who re-read it (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). Their work brought the “testing effect” back into the spotlight. An older theory about how deeply we think about things is on the Craik and Lockhart page.