The ultimate guide to active recall

Active recall is one of the best ways to study, and for that reason, it’s basically like famous in the studygram/studytube communities. However, it can be a pretty difficult concept to understand, so consider this your guide to active recall!

What is active recall?

One of those things that you can’t really explain, so it’s pretty difficult to define. The dictionary definition of active recall is “when you actively stimulate your memory for a piece of information”. I know sounds super complicated, but the best way to explain it is by comparing it to the opposite of active recall, which is passive recall.

Passive recall is when you just idly take in information. so this can include reading a textbook or re-reading notes. You’re not doing anything with the information, you’re just passively taking it in. Active recall is the opposite of this, it’s when you actively try to remember the information you’ve learnt. You’re just testing your brain to see what you’ve learnt.

The benefits of active recall

Improves memory

Active recall can improve your memory of a topic, and you’ll be able to remember it much better than you would if you were just doing passive recall. Researchers say that the reason active recall works is that you strengthen the connections in your brain between memories.

Saves time

Obviously, you might think that rereading a textbook or copying down lecture notes takes less time than doing some practice questions, but we have to consider yield. Yield is basically how much of the information actually goes into your brain. Passive recall techniques have a low yield, so you remember very little of the information. Therefore, if you’re reading a textbook, you’d have to read it like 50 times in order to remember the same amount of information as if you were answering practice questions. Because active recall is so much higher yield, you spend less time remembering the same amount of information.

Lower effort

With passive recall, there isn’t that much thinking involved, you just passively take in information. However, with active recall, you actually have to remember the information you’re learning, so it does take more effort. But again, we have to consider yield – doing a few challenging practice questions will help you infinitely more than reading a textbook. Obviously, reading the textbook is less effort, but you’d have to do it a lot more (therefore put in more effort) to remember the same amount of information.

Better grades

Now, this is the benefit that everyone wants! So basically because active recall can improve your memory, and save you time and energy, and this all adds up to better grades. Not only can you remember more content in the same amount of time, but the information that you remember is more likely to be accurate, and you won’t forget it the second the exam starts. Ergo, better grades.

Ways to use active recall in your studying

Flashcards

My favourite way is through flashcards. They can be paper, so made on little index cards, or online, through websites like Quizlet or Anki. I really like using flashcards because they’re relatively low effort. Of course, you have to make them first, but the actual active recall bit – quizzing yourself – requires very little effort. You just sit there, look at the question, and you try to remember the information. As well as this, you don’t even have to make your own flashcards, especially if you use digital flashcards, since there are a lot of great pre-made sets on Quizlet.

Blurting

The premise of blurting is a lot like flashcards – you have to regurgitate information from a prompt – but they differ in that you don’t need anything to do blurting. It’s basically like quizzing yourself. I like to use it for my summary sheets – I’ll read a few pages of the textbook about a specific subunit, and then I’ll close the textbook and write down everything I can remember. There are other ways to do blurting as well – you can read a chapter then make a mindmap of what you remember, or try to explain it to someone, or just talk to yourself and recite what you’ve learnt.

Past papers & practice questions

Past papers and practice questions are really good ways to incorporate active recall in your studying since they give you a little taste of what the exam will be like. They’re also a great way to practice your exam technique! However, they do require a lot more effort than flashcards or other methods, since you have to actually write down your answers, which is good to improve your writing speed, but sometimes you just might not have the energy and you’d prefer to do sometime a little less taxing. As well as this, a few subjects, especially the humanities, can have really long essay-like questions, which aren’t the best way of memorising information.

Quizzing yourself

I think quizzing yourself is the most low-effort study method, and that’s because you really don’t need anything to quiz yourself. It’s very low effort, and it’s still pretty high yield. I do this a lot of the time when I’m trying to memorise quotations for an English test, so I might be baking bread and in my head, I’ll be reciting “fair is foul and foul is fair, hover through the fog and filthy air”. Again, it’s very similar to flashcards and blurting, just a little variation. This is also a great method since you can do it with friends! Obviously, if you’re studying with friends be sure to study with people that won’t distract you from studying.