Practice questions and active recall: how to study by testing yourself

You read the chapter. You read your notes again. You highlight. It all looks familiar, so it feels like you know it. Then the exam asks a question in different words and the answer isn't there.

Familiar is not the same as remembered. Recognising something on the page is easy. Producing it from memory is the skill the exam tests. The good news is that practising it is simple: ask yourself questions and answer them with your notes closed. This guide explains why it works, how to write questions that help, and how to fit it into your week.

What active recall is

Active recall is any study where you have to produce the answer yourself:

• answering a practice question before you look at the answer;
• covering a definition and saying it out loud;
• writing down everything you remember about a topic on a blank page, then checking;
• explaining a process to a friend without your notes.

What these have in common is effort. You have to search your memory. Rereading, highlighting and copying notes don't make you do that, because the answer is already in front of you.

What the research says

Testing beats rereading, but only later

In 2006, Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke published a pair of experiments in Psychological Science (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). College students read short prose passages on topics like the sun and sea otters. Some students reread the passage. Others read it and then wrote down as much as they could remember, with no feedback.

In the second experiment, one group read the passage four times. Another read it once and then took three recall tests. The results:

Five minutes later, rereading won. A week later, testing won clearly. The tested group did better even though they read the passage about 3 times in total and the rereading group read it about 14 times.

There is one more finding worth knowing. The students who only reread were more confident that they would remember the passage a week later. They were wrong. Rereading feels like learning because the material gets familiar. That feeling doesn't last.

Most students still reread

In 2009, Karpicke and two colleagues asked 177 college students to list the strategies they used when studying (Karpicke, Butler & Roediger, 2009). 84% listed rereading, and 55% said it was their number one strategy. Only 11% said they practised recalling the material, and only 1% (2 students) ranked it first.

The big reviews agree

A 2013 review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest rated ten common study techniques (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Practice testing and distributed practice (spreading study over time) got the highest rating. Rereading, highlighting and summarizing got low ratings.

A 2017 meta-analysis in Review of Educational Research pulled together results from 118 articles and found that practice tests helped learning more than restudying and the other comparison conditions in those studies (Adesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017). How much they helped depended on things like the type of test and the way it was used.

It isn't only for memorising facts

A common worry is that self-testing only helps with lists and definitions. A 2011 study in Science compared retrieval practice with building concept maps while studying a science text (Karpicke & Blunt, 2011). Students who practised recall did better on the final test, including on questions that asked them to make inferences, not just repeat what they had read.

Where it may not help

Be careful with big claims. Most of this research uses text and word lists. A 2023 study with university students tested whether solving maths word problems after studying worked examples helped more than restudying the examples (Huang et al., 2023). Across three experiments it found no advantage. The authors suggest learning a procedure may work differently from learning facts and ideas. So in problem-solving subjects, keep doing the practice problems your course sets. Self-quizzing on the theory is a useful extra, not a replacement.

How to write good practice questions

Use your notes, your slides or your study guide as the source. Aim for questions that make you produce an answer, not just pick one.

Some rules that make questions better:

• One idea per question. If the answer has two parts, write two questions.
• Use different words from your notes. If the question copies the sentence, you will recognise the answer instead of recalling it. The exam won't use your notes' wording either.
• Cover everything. It is easy to write ten questions about the first topic and none about the last. Go section by section.
• Write the answer down too, with where it came from: "(slide 12)" or "(notes, week 3)". You need it to check yourself.
• Mix the question types. Recall questions build the base; "explain" and "apply" questions show whether you understand it.

A note on multiple choice

Multiple-choice questions are quick, and they are useful for checking many topics. But they show you wrong answers too, and you can end up remembering a wrong option. A study by Butler and Roediger found that feedback after a multiple-choice test increased its benefits and reduced this problem (Butler & Roediger, 2008). So always check the correct answer after you choose, and read why the others are wrong.

How to use your questions

Writing questions is half the job. Here is a simple way to use them.

1. Close your notes. Really close them.
2. Answer every question in writing or out loud. Guess if you're not sure: a wrong guess you then correct is still useful practice.
3. Check each answer straight away against your notes or slides.
4. Mark the ones you got wrong or only half right.
5. Come back another day and answer them again, wrong ones first.

Spreading the sessions out matters as much as the testing itself. The 2013 review rated distributed practice as highly as practice testing. You don't need a strict system. For example:

Common mistakes

• Looking at the answer too early. Give yourself a real chance to remember. The effort is the point.
• Only easy questions. If you get everything right, the questions are too easy or too close to your notes' wording.
• Rewriting notes instead of testing. Making neat notes feels productive, but it is mostly copying.
• Stopping when you get it right once. Getting it right on a second day is a much better sign.
• Testing only on the night before. Testing works best with time between sessions.

Doing it with FileAI

FileAI is a tool that reads your files and writes from them. Upload your lecture slides (PowerPoint or PDF), a reading or your notes, and press Practice questions. You get ten questions:

• 4 multiple-choice questions with options A to D;
• 3 short-answer questions;
• 3 "explain why or how" questions.

The questions come first, with the answers in a separate section below them, so you can try every question before you look. The answers are in the same order. Each one gives the correct answer, one sentence on why, and a link to the slide or page it came from. Click it to open that slide or page with the passage highlighted. For a very short file (under 5 slides or pages), you get 5 questions instead of 10.

FileAI only asks what the material answers, and it tries to cover all of it, not just the start. Want more? Type a request, such as "Quiz me on the key terms" or "Write 5 practice questions about topic 3". You can type it in your own language and the questions come back in that language. The Practice questions button writes in the language of your file, or in simple English if you turn on Simpler English.

Check before you learn. AI can make mistakes, including in answer keys. When an answer surprises you, open its source and read it. If the source says something different, trust the source, and tell your tutor if the slide itself seems wrong.

You can see practice questions made from a real lecture deck, without an account, on the study guide from lecture slides page. The demo shows how the numbered sources work on a sample document. The free plan needs no card; Pro adds more files and questions each month. If you need a study guide to write questions from first, see how to make a study guide from lecture slides.

Sources

• Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255.
• Karpicke, J. D., Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L. (2009). Metacognitive strategies in student learning: Do students practise retrieval when they study on their own? Memory, 17(4), 471–479.
• 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.
• Adesope, O. O., Trevisan, D. A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). Rethinking the use of tests: A meta-analysis of practice testing. Review of Educational Research, 87(3), 659–701.
• Karpicke, J. D., & Blunt, J. R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science, 331(6018), 772–775.
• Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). Feedback enhances the positive effects and reduces the negative effects of multiple-choice testing. Memory & Cognition, 36(3), 604–616.
• Huang, X., Zheng, S., Yu, Z., & Chen, S. (2023). Retrieval practice may not benefit mathematical word-problem solving. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1093653.