Rereading your notes is the most common revision strategy among secondary school students — and among the least effective for long-term memory. The research is clear: testing yourself on material you have already covered produces far stronger memory traces than reading it again, even though rereading feels more comfortable and less demanding.
What is rereading and why do students rely on it?
Rereading is exactly what it sounds like: going back over notes, textbook pages, or revision guides that you have already covered and reading through them again. It is the default revision strategy for many students because it is familiar, low-effort, and produces a comfortable sense of progress — the content feels increasingly familiar with each pass.
The problem is that familiarity is not the same as memory. When you reread a page you have seen before, the words feel recognisable, which the brain interprets as a signal that the material is well known. But recognising something when you see it is far easier than recalling it from scratch — which is exactly what an exam requires. Rereading trains recognition; exams test recall.
What is retrieval practice and how does it work?
Retrieval practice is the act of deliberately trying to recall information from memory, without looking at your notes. It goes by several names — the testing effect, active recall, self-quizzing — but all describe the same principle: the effort of retrieving a memory strengthens that memory in a way that passively reading it does not.
When you struggle to remember something and then successfully retrieve it, the neural pathway associated with that memory is reinforced. When you struggle and fail, then check your notes and retry, the same strengthening occurs — plus you now know precisely what you did not know, which focuses subsequent revision efficiently.
Common retrieval practice methods:
- Flashcard self-testing: covering the answer side and attempting to produce the answer before flipping.
- Blurting: covering your notes and writing everything you can recall about a topic on a blank page.
- Practice questions: answering exam-style questions without referring to your notes.
- Brain dumps: writing freely on a topic from memory before checking for gaps.
What does the research show?
The evidence that retrieval practice outperforms rereading is among the most replicated findings in educational psychology. The EEF's evidence review on metacognition and self-regulated learning identifies retrieval practice as one of the highest-impact, lowest-cost strategies available to students. Studies consistently find that students who test themselves remember significantly more material at a later date than students who spend the same time rereading.
One robust finding is the generation effect: information you actively produce from memory is retained better than information you passively read. This is true even when the retrieval attempt is difficult or imperfect.
A direct comparison of the two strategies
| Factor | Rereading notes | Retrieval practice |
|---|---|---|
| Effort during revision | Low — the material feels familiar | High — you have to work to recall |
| How it feels | Comfortable, productive-seeming | Uncomfortable, particularly early on |
| What it trains | Recognition of previously seen material | Recall from memory — what exams test |
| Effect on long-term retention | Weak — fades quickly after the session | Strong — each retrieval strengthens the trace |
| Benefit of discovering what you do not know | Low — rereading does not reveal gaps clearly | High — failed retrieval immediately reveals gaps |
| Suitable for | Initial encounter with new content | All subsequent revision once content is read once |
When is rereading actually appropriate?
Rereading is not entirely without value. There are two situations where it is a sensible starting point:
- When you are encountering content for the first time. Before you can retrieve something, you need to have read it at least once. A first reading of a new topic is a necessary step — the problem arises when students continue rereading the same material rather than switching to retrieval.
- When retrieval has revealed a specific gap. If you test yourself and find a topic you cannot recall at all, rereading the relevant section of your notes before re-testing is a legitimate response. The sequence should be: retrieve → discover gap → read → retrieve again.
How do you switch from rereading to retrieval practice?
If your current revision relies heavily on rereading, the switch to retrieval practice feels harder initially — which is precisely why it works. Follow these steps:
- Read a section of your notes (once) to ensure you have a basic understanding.
- Close or cover your notes completely.
- Write down everything you can remember about the topic from scratch.
- Reopen your notes, identify what you missed or got wrong, and mark those gaps.
- Return to step 3 after 24–48 hours, again without looking at your notes.
Each cycle of close → recall → check → identify gaps → recall again builds a progressively stronger and more accurate memory.
Frequently asked questions
If retrieval practice is harder, does that mean students will give up on it?
The discomfort of retrieval practice is a well-documented barrier to adoption — students tend to prefer strategies that feel easier, even when harder strategies produce better results. Awareness of this pattern is part of the solution: knowing that the difficulty is the mechanism (not a sign that you do not know the material) makes it easier to persist. Starting with short retrieval sessions — five minutes of blurting on a single topic — is less daunting than committing to an hour of self-quizzing. Positive results over the first week or two typically provide enough motivation to continue.
Does retrieval practice work for subjects like English literature where there are few facts to recall?
Yes, although the format of retrieval practice adapts to the subject. In English literature, retrieval practice might involve: writing quotations from memory, recalling the main arguments you would make about a theme without referring to your notes, or producing a timed plan for an essay question you have not seen before. The principle — generating from memory rather than recognising on the page — applies across all subjects. Even analytical skills benefit from retrieval-type practice: writing a short argument paragraph from memory, then checking it against your notes, strengthens both content knowledge and writing skill.
Is highlighting notes a useful revision strategy?
Highlighting is one of the most commonly used revision strategies and one of the least evidence-supported. Like rereading, it produces a sense of engagement while requiring very little active processing. A highlighted page looks different from an unmarked one, which creates an impression of work done — but unless you subsequently test yourself on the highlighted material, the highlighting itself produces little memory benefit. If you already highlight notes, try treating highlighted sections as the input for retrieval practice: cover the page and try to reproduce the key points from the highlighted sections before checking.
How quickly will I notice the benefits of switching to retrieval practice?
Most students notice a difference within one to two weeks. The first sign is typically discovering that you know more at the start of a revision session than you expected — material you retrieved and reviewed several days ago comes back more quickly and more completely than material you only reread. The longer-term benefit is that your knowledge remains accessible under exam pressure rather than vanishing the moment you sit down. The discomfort of retrieval practice in week one is the investment that makes week six before your exams considerably less stressful.
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