Active recall means generating knowledge from your brain, even if it is hard. The more you are forced to think deeply about something, the more you remember it.
If revision feels easy, you’re probably not learning!
- Realising something is hard, and choosing to do it anyway. Know your academic pain points and attack them.
- Copying notes and highlighting text can make you feel like you’ve done lots of ‘work’ leading to a feel good factor. However, it has little impact on your learning/memory.
- Also, ask yourself, is the revision technique you are using making you think? Do the harder stuff – try a past paper, apply your knowledge or explain concepts to another.
- Without actively recalling information – you don’t know what you already know. One useful technique to address this is blank page.
- Blank page – recite everything you know about a topic – attempt to structure the information in a logic way.
- Flashcards – instead of looking at information on a flashcard, you should write a question to force yourself to produce the information.
- Quizzing – quizzing is an effective active recall technique because it makes you think!
Below we have some revision strategy posters that can be printed off.
