Active Recall Studying Methods

Whether it’s history, geography, math, or science, studying is a long process that typically involves us looking through our notes over and over again the night before the test, only for it to keep slipping out of our minds. But there’s a better strategy than simple memorization to remember everything you’ve learned: the active recall study method.

What is active recall?

Active recall is a proven study technique where instead of passively repeating information, you stimulate your brain to actively retrieve the information you’ve just learned. This makes the information more memorable so that you remember it during your next test or quiz, and it also makes the studying process less dull. But how do you use active recall effectively?

No matter how you’re doing it, the 3-step active recall strategy requires you to look through the information you’re trying to learn, use active recall to “rephrase” the information, and then check to make sure that you got it correct. Since there are many different subjects in school that require different types of information to remember, here are four methods of active recall studying you can use to “rephrase” the content.

Active recall methods

1. Summarize what you just read in your own words

If you only repeat everything you just learned, you’re just reproducing words. But if you summarize the page or chapter in your own words, you’re producing ideas.

Teaching the topic to someone else is a very effective way to do this. If you’re trying to remember a series of events for history class, like the American Revolution, summarize them as if you’d explain them to a kid: “The British were in tons of debt after the French and Indian War, and to make money, they taxed the colonists through many acts which angered them and led them to resist through nonviolent means like boycotting, but also through violent means like tarring and feathering.” Then use the same method to explain key vocabulary terms and important events. This helps you organize your thoughts and bring them together into a simple but detailed summary.

2. Get creative

You’re much more likely to remember information if you did something interesting with it. In a way, you’re doing Step 1 of the active recall method (summarizing in your own words), but this time, you’re taking it a step further. If you’re trying to remember how protein production works in biology, you can try writing out a step-by-step tutorial for a cell on how to transcribe DNA and translate RNA into proteins.

While you work on this, you’ll come across parts of the process where you think, “Which of these comes first?” or “Where does the RNA have to go before it can be translated?” or “Do these two processes happen at the same time?” By the end, you’ll be an expert in the subject!

3. Draw it out

This applies to most science topics. For visual learners, it’s much easier to understand a clear and simple diagram depicting a concept than to passively read a paragraph describing it. For example, if you’re studying for a biology quiz, instead of memorizing the many steps of mitosis and meiosis from your notes, draw out the stages of the cell during those processes.

If you’re trying to remember the many steps of how the heart pumps blood, draw out a diagram of the heart chambers and blood vessels, then add arrows to show the blood flowing from the right atrium, to the right ventricle, through the pulmonary artery, to the lungs, and so on. It’s much clearer than reading out the steps if you’re a visual learner.

4. Ask questions

This is where you figure out the spots you’re unsure about. Before you even open your notes, think of everything you can comfortably talk about in the topic you’re studying and ask yourself why you don’t understand other parts. Keep track of those questions, and once you open your notes, look for the answers. If you don’t find them there, then ask your teacher.

By actively searching for specific information, you’re engaging more with the content as you learn. A similar strategy used in active recall is called the Cornell note-taking method, where you look at your notes and come up with quiz questions that they would answer—in other words, you’re working backward to create questions based on the information you have.

This forces your brain to organize the information you’ve learned and actively analyze it. Additionally, if you can access actual questions online or on practice tests, be sure to use those as well!

When should you use active recall?

It comes in handy when studying for a test the night before, but like all things, it’s most effective when you don’t cram it all in a short period of time. When you’re doing homework and don’t understand it, use active recall to remember what you learned in class that day.

Try studying small sections of the content each day using active recall so that you’re not using all these techniques in one night and burning yourself out.

Since active recall is meant to help you remember the information over a longer period of time, you’ll still remember it on the test day, but if you’re worried about forgetting some of it, you can always go back to those diagrams and summaries you made before.