Test yourself using questions based on how you’ll use the material later; don’t just recite it verbatim

19. Test yourself using questions based on how you’ll use the material later; don’t just recite it verbatim

Cost: There’s no expense involved, nor does it require extra time. The only change is the practice method: replace “reciting it verbatim” with “creating questions based on future usage.” The real challenge is figuring out exactly how you’ll apply this material later on.

In plain terms: Testing yourself after closing the book offers benefits far beyond rote memorization. Extensive experimental comparisons confirm that practice testing transfers effectively to varied question formats, practical applications, and complex reasoning tasks. However, its benefit diminishes in two scenarios: when question-and-answer pairings are reversed, and when the underlying concepts were merely read without any active retrieval attempt.

Benefit: This meta-analysis examined over 40 years of research, drawing from 67 published and unpublished papers, 122 experiments, and 192 measures of transfer effects involving 10382 participants total. Compared to simply reviewing material without testing, practice testing led to measurable learning transfer, with an effect size of d = 0.40 (95% CI 0.31–0.50). Transfer was strongest when participants answered questions of a different type, application or reasoning problems, or medical‑diagnosis‑style queries involving similar concepts. Transfer was weakest when the stimulus–response pairing was reversed, when material had only been encountered but never tested, or when dealing with example‑style problems. Factors such as whether the practice and test formats matched, whether detailed feedback was provided, and whether participants answered correctly on the initial test all strongly influenced whether positive transfer occurred. Two separate methods were used to correct for publication bias; while these adjustments modestly affected effect sizes, they substantially lowered the baseline intercept value. Under these conditions, positive transfer is often not observed at all.

Evidence grade: A

Sources: Pan SC, Rickard TC (2018). Transfer of test-enhanced learning: meta-analytic review and synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 144(7), 710-756. <https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000151>

Notes: The term “memorization” usually bundles two distinct activities: repeatedly reading or highlighting material, and actively recalling it after closing the book. The former receives the lowest rating in a review that ranked ten learning strategies; for those ratings themselves, see item 16 (avoid relying on highlighting, repeated reading, or summarization as primary methods). What matters here is the latter: actively recalling information without looking at the source, as described in item 14 (self‑testing after closing the book). This practice should also be spread across several days, as noted in item 15 (distributed practice). Begin by determining how you’ll ultimately use the material—whether you’ll need to select answers on a test or make judgments in a real‑world setting—and then create questions that mirror those situations. It’s also valuable to reverse the question–answer order during practice, because the meta‑analysis showed that transfer is weakest in that direction; both orientations should be practiced.