ACTIVE RECALL || THE BEST WAY TO STUDY
If rereading, highlighting and summarising aren’t effective methods of revising, then what should we be doing? The two most effective methods that I’ve come across are active recall and spaced repetition which, in combination, will help make your studies more efficient, effective and rewarding. I’ll cover spaced repetition in a future post but for now I’ll concentrate on active recall. Active Recall Theory and Evidence We often think that learning is a process whereby you test yourself after having learnt all the information. Surely it’s counterintuitive to do anything else? In fact, this can't be further from the truth! Active recall involves retrieving information from memory through, essentially, testing yourself at every stage of the revision process. The very act of retrieving information and data from our brains not only strengthens our ability to retain information but also improves connections in our brains between different concepts. Research from 2013 which analyse...