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How to study on your own
To study on your own, use a loop and not a list of chapters. Set one question. Read a short piece that answers it. Close the page and say the answer aloud. Check what you missed. Review it one day later. Then set the next question.
Key points
- A short loop of six steps beats a long, uninterrupted read.
- One week after study, a group that took three tests recalled 61% of a passage. A group that read the passage four times recalled 40%.
- The advantage of a test appears only after a delay. On a test five minutes later, the repeated read won: 81% against 75%.
- Write your question before you read. The question gives the read a target.
What does a course give you that you must replace?
A course gives a learner four things. A person who studies alone must supply all four. Most people supply the first one and forget the other three.
- An order. A syllabus decides what comes first.
- A pace. A timetable spreads the work across weeks.
- A test. An examination forces you to produce the answer from memory.
- A correction. A teacher tells you where you are wrong.
The third and the fourth items carry most of the value. A test moves a fact from the page into your memory. A correction stops you from practising an error. The loop below supplies both, and it needs no teacher.
- Self-study
- Study that a learner directs alone. The learner chooses the subject, sets the pace, and checks the result without a teacher and without a class.
What is the six-step loop?
One loop covers one small question. Repeat the loop for each new question. Do not read a whole chapter before you start the loop.
- Write one question. Make it small enough to answer in a paragraph. "Why does a black hole have an event horizon?" is a good size. "Explain black holes" is not.
- Read a short piece. Stop as soon as the text answers the question. Two hundred words are often enough.
- Close the page. Remove the text from view. This step is the one that most people skip, and it is the step that does the work.
- Say the answer aloud, or write it. Use your own words. A gap in your answer shows you a gap in your memory.
- Check, and mark the gap. Open the text again. Mark each point that you missed. Do not re-read the parts that you produced correctly.
- Set a review for one day later. A single line in a calendar is enough. Review only the marked gaps.
Step 3 and step 4 together have a name in the research: retrieval practice. Step 6 has a name too: distributed practice. A 2013 review rated both as high utility.
How long should one loop take?
A loop takes ten to twenty minutes. A session holds three or four loops. Stop when your answers get worse, and not when the clock reaches an hour.
Length matters less than the gap between sessions. Two sessions of 30 minutes on two days beat one session of 60 minutes on one day. The reason appears in the research section below.
One warning about difficulty
The loop feels harder than a second read. That feeling is normal, and it is not a sign of failure. Robert Bjork named this effect a "desirable difficulty" in 1994: a practice condition that slows apparent learning, and that improves long-term memory. A difficulty helps only when you can meet it. If you cannot produce any part of the answer, the piece was too long. Read a shorter piece.
Which techniques work, and which ones do not?
In 2013 five researchers reviewed ten common study techniques. They rated each one on the evidence for it. Practice testing and distributed practice reached the top rating. Five popular techniques reached the lowest rating.
| Technique | Rating | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Practice testing | High utility | Close the page. Produce the answer from memory. |
| Distributed practice | High utility | Split the same work across two or three days. |
| Summarisation | Low utility | Replace the summary with a test. |
| Highlighting and underlining | Low utility | Write a question in the margin instead. |
| The keyword mnemonic | Low utility | Keep it for a short list of names. |
| Imagery use for text learning | Low utility | Draw a picture only for a spatial fact. |
| Rereading | Low utility | Read once. Then test yourself. |
A low rating does not mean that a technique does nothing. It means that the evidence for it is weak, or that it works only in narrow conditions. A high rating means that the technique works across ages, materials and tests.
What does the research show?
A test beats a second read, after a delay
Roediger and Karpicke ran the clearest experiment in 2006. Students read a passage. One group then took three recall tests. Another group read the passage four times. One week later the test group recalled 61% of the passage. The repeated-read group recalled 40%.
The same paper holds an important limit. On a test five minutes after study, the order reversed: the repeated-read group scored 81% and the test group scored 75%. So a second read helps you for the next hour. A test helps you for the next week.
The people who feel most ready are often least ready
In the same 2006 experiment, the repeated-read group predicted the best memory for themselves. That group then recalled the least after one week. Koriat and Bjork named this effect the "illusions of competence" in 2005. A familiar page feels like a known page. The two are not the same.
Retrieval beats an elaborate note
Karpicke and Blunt tested retrieval practice against concept maps in 2011. One week later, on a short-answer test, the retrieval group scored 0.67 and the concept-map group scored 0.45. The effect size was large (d = 1.50).
A gap between sessions beats a single long session
Cepeda and four colleagues combined 254 studies with 14,811 participants in 2006. Spaced study produced 47.3% correct recall. Massed study produced 36.7%. Note one limit: the best gap grows as the delay to the test grows. A longer gap is not always better.
Sources
- Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. doi:10.1177/1529100612453266
- Roediger, H. L., III, & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-Enhanced Learning. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
- Karpicke, J. D., & Blunt, J. R. (2011). Retrieval Practice Produces More Learning than Elaborative Studying with Concept Mapping. Science, 331(6018), 772–775. doi:10.1126/science.1199327
- Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
- Koriat, A., & Bjork, R. A. (2005). Illusions of competence in monitoring one's knowledge during study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31(2), 187–194.
- Bjork, R. A. (1994). Memory and metamemory considerations in the training of human beings. In Metacognition: Knowing about knowing (pp. 185–205). MIT Press.
Common questions
Do I need a flashcard application?
No. A card deck is one way to force retrieval. A closed page and a spoken answer do the same work. Use a deck when you must memorise many small facts, such as words in a new language.
What do I do when nobody can check my answer?
The text checks your answer. Say your answer first. Then open the text and compare. Mark each point that you missed. That mark is your correction.
Is a second read always a mistake?
No. A second read helps for a short time, and it wins on a test a few minutes later. It loses after a day. Read once, test yourself, and re-read only the parts that you missed.
How many subjects can I study at once?
Two or three works well, because the gaps between sessions fill each other. Keep one question open per subject. Close a question before you open the next one.
Where do you go next?
- How to test yourself while you read — step 3 and step 4 of the loop, in detail.
- When to review what you read — step 6 of the loop, with a schedule.
Start with a topic
The loop needs a subject. Pick a topic from the catalogue, read one short step, then highlight any phrase that you do not understand.
Open the catalogue