You begin by practising retrieval!

• If your teacher provides practice tests, or there are practice questions in your textbook, be sure to do them – but without looking at your book or notes!

• If you don’t have practice questions (or you’ve already answered all of your practice questions a few times), you can make your own questions. This process takes time, but if you create a study group you can each create a few questions and swap. Here’s a blog post that takes you through the process of creating questions from a textbook and practising retrieval: Be Your Own Teacher: How to Study a Textbook.

• You can also create flashcards, but make sure that you really use them to practise retrieval (bring to mind what you think is on the other side) rather than peeking. Make sure you practise retrieving more than just the simple concept definitions that you write on your flashcards, though – try linking concepts, or trying to remember how two concepts compare. Here’s a great blog post on more advanced flashcard techniques: Be Your Own Teacher: How to Study with Flashcards.

• Even simpler than practice questions and flashcards, you can just grab a piece of paper and write down everything you know on a topic. All you need is pen and paper – so, no excuses!!

• If you like sketching, you can try to draw everything you know on a topic from memory! It doesn’t have to be pretty – it just needs to make sense to you. Here’s a step-by-step guide for how to use pictures to help you remember: Be Your Own Teacher: How to Study with Pictures.

• While sketching, you can also try to organise your ideas into a concept map. In a concept map, you take the main ideas and link them together with phrases, explaining the relationship between the concepts. But, always try to make the concept map from memory first!

What should you do after you practise retrieval?

After practising retrieval, it is best to then check your book and notes from class to make sure you correctly and completely retrieved the information. This process corrects any misunderstandings, and gives you feedback about what you know and what you don’t know. Then, a bit later on, practise retrieving the same information again, and watch it get easier!