Active Recall — Testing Yourself to Learn

If there is one technique that deserves the title of "most effective revision strategy," it is active recall. Decades of research, across hundreds of experiments and thousands of participants, consistently show the same thing: testing yourself on material produces dramatically better learning than re-reading, highlighting, or summarising.

This is known as the testing effect (sometimes called the retrieval practice effect), and it is one of the most robust findings in all of cognitive science.

---

What Is Active Recall?

Active recall is the process of deliberately retrieving information from memory without looking at the answer. Instead of passively reviewing your notes, you close the book and try to produce the information from scratch.

The distinction is simple but powerful:

Passive Review	Active Recall
Re-reading notes	Closing notes and writing down what you remember
Looking at a diagram	Drawing the diagram from memory
Reading through flashcards and nodding	Covering the answer and trying to produce it
Reviewing worked examples	Attempting the problem before checking the solution
Listening to a lecture recording	Pausing the recording and summarising what was just said