Most revision advice is a list of forty techniques. That’s useless, because it takes longer to evaluate the list than to revise.
So here are four, chosen because they share the same underlying mechanism and because the evidence behind that mechanism is unusually solid. A large review by Dunlosky and colleagues rated dozens of study strategies and found practice testing and distributed practice came out on top, while the ones students actually use most — rereading and highlighting — came out near the bottom.
Everything below is a way of doing one of those two things.
Quick answer
– Four methods with real evidence: active recall, spaced repetition, the Feynman technique and blurting.
– All four do the same thing — make you produce the answer instead of reviewing it.
– Rereading and highlighting are the two most common revision activities and the two least effective.
1. Active recall
Reading an answer and thinking “yes, I knew that” is not the same as having produced it.
What it is: answering questions from memory instead of reviewing material.
Close the book. Ask yourself what the four causes were, write them down, then check. The check matters, but the effort of retrieving before checking is what does the work — and it’s why this feels harder than rereading. It’s supposed to.
How to do it:
- Turn your notes into questions as you make them. A cue column, as in Cornell notes, gives you a set for free.
- Use past paper questions closed-book before you look at any mark scheme.
- Test in the wrong order. Sequence becomes a crutch faster than you’d think.
Watch out for: recognition masquerading as recall. Reading an answer and thinking “yes, I knew that” is not the same as having produced it.
2. Spaced repetition
What it is: revisiting material at increasing intervals rather than in one block.
Four sessions across four weeks beat four sessions in one evening, for the same total time. Forgetting a little between sessions is not a failure of the method — it’s the mechanism.
How to do it:
- Review new material the next day, then three days later, then a week, then a fortnight.
- Keep a simple deck or list per subject and cycle through it rather than starting fresh each time.
- Set the reviews as repeating tasks so they turn up without you deciding. A planner does this better than willpower — in MyStudyLife a repeating weekly review sits next to your classes and deadlines.
Watch out for: letting the intervals grow so large that everything is forgotten. If a review feels like learning it from scratch, shorten the gap.
3. The Feynman technique
What it is: explaining a concept in plain language, as if to someone who knows nothing about it, and noticing exactly where you get stuck.
Named after the physicist Richard Feynman, who was famously good at reducing complicated things to simple ones. The value isn’t the explanation — it’s the moment mid-sentence when you realise you can’t continue.
How to do it:
- Write the concept at the top of a blank page.
- Explain it in everyday words, no jargon, as if to a twelve-year-old.
- Mark every point where you stalled, hedged, or reached for a technical term you can’t unpack.
- Go back to the source for exactly those points, and only those.
- Rewrite the explanation.
Best for: concepts, mechanisms, anything you have to understand rather than remember. Less useful for vocabulary and formulas.
4. Blurting
What it is: a blank page, a topic, and everything you can remember, written down as fast as possible. Then check your notes and add what you missed in a different colour.
It’s active recall at the topic level rather than the question level, and it’s popular in UK revision for a good reason: it’s fast, it needs no preparation, and the page of missing material in red is an unusually honest picture of what you don’t know.
How to do it: one topic, ten minutes, no notes. Then ten minutes filling gaps from the specification. The red is your revision list for the week.
Which to use when
If you take notes in the Cornell format, the cue column gives you a ready-made set of recall questions, and blurting scales the same idea up to a whole topic. For the scheduling side — how many blocks a real week holds — see building a study schedule and our Pomodoro timer.
| Technique | Best for | Time per session | When in the term |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active recall | Everything | 20–45 min | All term |
| Spaced repetition | Facts, vocabulary, formulas | 15–20 min | From week one |
| Feynman | Concepts and mechanisms | 20–30 min | When something won’t stick |
| Blurting | Topic-level coverage checks | 20 min | Two to six weeks before exams |
Putting them into a real week
You don’t need a new routine. You need your existing study blocks to contain these instead of rereading.
- Monday to Friday: one 20-minute spaced-repetition session, whatever else you do.
- Two blocks a week: past paper questions, closed book, marked afterwards.
- One block a week: blurt the topic you covered in class, then fill the gaps.
- Whenever something won’t stick: Feynman it onto a blank page.
Our guide to study habits that actually work covers the scaffolding around this, and building a study schedule covers where the blocks go.
What to drop
Just as useful as knowing what works: knowing what to stop doing, because the hours have to come from somewhere.
Rereading. The most common revision activity and one of the least effective. Fluency with the text is not knowledge of the material.
Highlighting. Marks what you’ve read, teaches nothing, and gives a sense of progress that survives right up until the exam.
Copying notes out neatly. Transcription, not learning. If the notes are a mess, turn them into questions instead.
Watching videos passively. Fine for a first pass at something confusing. Useless as revision unless you’re answering questions afterwards.
Making another timetable. The most sophisticated form of procrastination available to students.
Making the switch
Most students already have study time; they’re just spending it on the wrong activity. Changing that is a two-week job, not a new system.
Week one. Keep your existing blocks. Replace rereading with blurting in half of them, and mark the gaps against your notes. Expect it to feel worse — difficulty is the signal that something is happening.
Week two. Add one closed-book past paper session and one spaced review of last week’s material. Keep everything else the same.
After a fortnight the comparison is obvious: you’ll know what you can produce from memory rather than what looks familiar on a page, and the difference between those two is most of the gap between a predicted grade and an actual one.
In short
Produce the answer, space the reviews, explain it in plain words, and blurt the topic to find the gaps. Then stop rereading. The evidence for practice testing and distributed practice is about as settled as study advice gets.
FAQ
What’s the most effective study technique?
Practice testing — retrieving answers from memory — with spacing a close second. Both beat rereading and highlighting by a wide margin in the research.
How is active recall different from blurting?
Blurting is a form of active recall aimed at a whole topic rather than individual questions. Use blurting to find gaps, and question-level recall to close them.
Does spaced repetition work without an app?
Yes. A folder of flashcards and a weekly review is enough. Apps automate the intervals, which helps at volume but isn’t the mechanism.
Why does rereading feel so much more effective?
Because it’s fluent. Familiar text is easy to process, and that ease gets mistaken for knowledge. Difficulty during study is a good sign, not a bad one.
How long before an exam should I start?
Spacing needs time to work, so from the start of the topic rather than the end of the term. Blurting and past papers belong in the final six weeks.
Can I combine these?
That’s the intended use. Blurt to find the gaps, Feynman the concepts you couldn’t explain, then put the rest into spaced review.
