The best study techniques, ranked by the research

How the techniques were ranked

In 2013, five psychologists led by John Dunlosky published a review of ten study techniques that students actually use. For each one they read the experiments, in labs and in classrooms, and asked four questions: does it work for different kinds of learners, for different materials, on different kinds of tests, and after long delays as well as short ones? Each technique got a rating of high, moderate or low utility.

The review is long, careful and still the most cited guide to the subject. It isn't the last word: newer meta-analyses on testing alone, by Christopher Rowland in 2014, Olusola Adesope and colleagues in 2017, and Pooja Agarwal and colleagues in 2021, combined hundreds of experiments and reached the same conclusion for the top of the list. When the evidence from labs, classrooms and real courses points the same way, it's worth listening to.

The ranking at a glance

Low utility doesn't mean useless. It means the benefit was small, inconsistent or short-lived across the studies. The problem is that the low-utility techniques are the ones most students rely on.

1. Practice testing: the clear winner

Practice testing means pulling an answer out of memory before you look at it. It isn't about grades: a flashcard, a past exam question, or writing down everything you remember about a topic all count. Each successful recall makes the memory stronger and easier to find next time, an effect called the testing effect or retrieval practice. More in our guide to active recall.

The best-known demonstration is a 2006 experiment by Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke. Students read a short prose passage four times, or read it once and then tried to recall it three times. Five minutes later, the readers did better: 83% of the passage against 71%. A week later the result flipped. The students who had practised recalling remembered 61% of it; the ones who had read it four times remembered 40%. The rereaders, asked how well they'd do, were the more confident group.

Testing even beats techniques that sound more sophisticated. In a 2011 study in Science, Karpicke and Janell Blunt compared practising recall with drawing detailed concept maps of a text. A week later, the retrieval group did better on the final test, including on questions that asked them to draw a concept map.

How to use it

• Flashcards for facts, definitions, numbers, mechanisms and rules, reviewed with spaced repetition.
• Past exam questions answered closed-book, then marked against the solution.
• The blank page: after a lecture, write everything you remember, then check your notes for what's missing.
• Headings as questions: “Causes of acute kidney injury” becomes “What are the causes of acute kidney injury?”
• Always check the answer. Recall without feedback can strengthen a mistake as well as a fact.

2. Distributed practice: the same hours, spread out

Distributed practice (spacing) means studying the same material in several sessions with gaps between them instead of in one long block. It's the opposite of cramming, and it's one of the oldest findings in psychology: Hermann Ebbinghaus described it in 1885. A 2006 review by Nicholas Cepeda and colleagues gathered more than 400 reports on spacing in verbal learning, and spaced study beat massed study across them.

How long should the gaps be? In 2008, Cepeda's team taught more than 1,350 people a set of facts, reviewed them once after a gap of up to three and a half months, and tested them up to a year later. The best gap grew with the time until the test. For recall, it worked out at roughly these values:

Compared with reviewing on the same day, the best gap increased recall on the final test by 64% on average. You don't need to calculate gaps yourself: a spaced repetition app does it for every card, growing the gap each time you remember. The reason it works is the forgetting curve: a review that comes as memory starts to fade strengthens it more than one that comes while it's fresh.

3. Elaborative interrogation: ask why

Elaborative interrogation means asking yourself why a fact is true, and answering. Why does an ACE inhibitor cause a dry cough? Why does the law protect a buyer in good faith? The answer ties the new fact to things you already know, which makes it easier to find later and harder to confuse with its neighbours.

It works best when you already know something about the topic, which is why it suits the second pass through a subject better than the first. It's also quick: one question per important fact. Turn the best of your answers into “why” flashcards, so the explanation itself gets practised.

4. Self-explanation: talk yourself through it

Self-explanation means explaining, step by step, how each part of a solution, a mechanism or an argument follows from the last. What does this step do? How does it connect to the rule? Students who explain worked examples to themselves understand them better and transfer more to new problems than students who only read them.

The so-called Feynman technique, explaining a topic in simple words as if to a beginner, is a version of this. Do it without your notes and it becomes practice testing as well: the gaps in your explanation show you exactly what to review.

5. Interleaved practice: mix it up

Interleaving means mixing different but related topics or problem types in one session, instead of finishing one type before starting the next. Blocked practice (ten problems of type A, then ten of type B) feels smoother. Interleaved practice (A, C, B, A, B, C) feels messier, because each time you first have to work out what kind of problem it is. That is exactly the skill an exam tests.

In a 2007 study by Doug Rohrer and Kelli Taylor, students who practised mixed maths problems did worse during practice but far better on a test a week later. In a 2008 study by Nate Kornell and Robert Bjork, people learned painters' styles better when the paintings were interleaved, yet most of them believed blocked study had worked better.

A 2019 meta-analysis by Marion Brunmair and Tobias Richter found the benefit depends on the material: it's strongest when the things being mixed are similar and easy to confuse, and small or absent for simple word lists. So interleave drug classes, similar diagnoses, related legal doctrines and problem types. Reviewing flashcards from several topics in one session does this automatically. See interleaving, in depth.

The low-utility five, and when they still help

Rereading

Rereading makes material familiar, and familiarity feels like knowing. But recognising a page isn't the same as recalling it in an exam. A first read is necessary; a second read is better spent testing yourself.

Highlighting and underlining

Highlighting is fine for marking what to come back to. The trouble is that it feels like studying and needs almost no thought, and students tend to highlight too much. If you highlight, use the highlights as material for questions.

Summarising

Writing a good summary helps if you're already good at it, because you have to decide what matters. Most students copy rather than summarise. A summary written from memory, then checked, is far better: it's practice testing in disguise.

The keyword mnemonic

Linking a foreign word to a similar-sounding word and a vivid image works for small sets of words, but the benefit fades faster than with plain retrieval, and making the images takes time. Keep it for the few words that won't stick. More in how to memorize vocabulary.

Imagery for text

Picturing what you read helps for short, concrete passages and little else. Drawing a diagram from memory and then checking it is the stronger version.

Why the best techniques feel worse

If testing and spacing work so well, why do so few students use them? Partly because they feel worse. In a 2009 survey by Karpicke, Andrew Butler and Roediger, 84% of 177 college students said they reread their notes or textbook, and 55% named rereading as their main strategy. Only 11% said they practised recalling information, and 1% named it as their main strategy.

Robert Bjork calls the effort of recall a desirable difficulty: conditions that slow you down during study often make learning last. The smooth feeling of rereading comes from fluency, not memory. A 2019 Harvard study by Louis Deslauriers and colleagues found the same in lectures: students learned more in active classes but felt they had learned less than in polished lectures.

The practical lesson: judge a study session by what you can recall a few days later, not by how good it felt.

What about the Feynman technique, Pomodoro and mind maps?

• The Feynman technique is self-explanation, and practice testing if you do it without notes. Recommended.
• Pomodoro (25 minutes of work, 5 of rest) is a way to manage time and attention, not a learning technique. Use it if it helps you start and keep going; it doesn't change how well you remember.
• Mind maps and concept maps help you see structure. Draw them from memory, then check against the source, and you've added retrieval.
• Sleep isn't a technique, but it belongs here: sleep after learning helps consolidate memories, as Susanne Diekelmann and Jan Born describe in their 2010 review. An all-nighter undoes much of the day's work.

A week of study built on the top tier

1. After each lecture, the same day or the next: turn it into flashcards, one idea per card, in your course's words (how to make flashcards).
2. Every day: review the cards that are due before adding new ones. Twenty to forty minutes covers a lot (how many flashcards a day).
3. Twice a week: a mixed set of past exam questions, closed-book, marked honestly. Every miss becomes a card.
4. For each card you miss: ask why the answer is what it is, and fix or split the card if it was unclear.
5. Once a week: the blank page for each course. Write what you know, check it, and note the gaps.
6. One day a week: rest. Spacing works over weeks, so a day off costs little.

Where FlashCardz fits

FlashCardz was built around the top of this list. It turns your own lecture slides, notes and past exams into recall questions, so practice testing starts the day of the lecture. Every card quotes the line and page it came from, so you check against your course, not a guess. Every card is scheduled with FSRS spaced repetition, on every plan, and planned around your exam date. On Plus, the cards you miss come back the next night from a different angle, a built-in form of elaboration. See how it works or read about our AI study tool.