Effective Study Techniques: What the Research Says
Highlighting, rereading, practice tests: which study techniques actually work? A plain-English summary of the Dunlosky et al. (2013) review.
6 min read
Highlighting, rereading notes, writing summaries, doing practice questions: everyone has a go-to study method, and most of us picked it because everyone else uses it. But which of these techniques actually leads to lasting learning?
In 2013, John Dunlosky and four fellow cognitive and educational psychologists reviewed the evidence on ten study techniques that students can easily use on their own. Their monograph in Psychological Science in the Public Interest is a widely cited answer to the question "what actually works?" Here's a plain-English summary and how to apply it to your next exam.
How were the study techniques rated?
The authors asked how well each technique's benefits generalize: across students of different ages and abilities, across different materials (from simple concepts to math problems and science texts), across different outcomes (memory, problem solving, comprehension), and in real classrooms. Each technique then received a high, moderate or low utility rating.
"Low utility" doesn't mean useless. It means the benefits show up only under limited conditions or not consistently, so the technique isn't a top recommendation.
Which study techniques work best? The results
| Technique | What it means | Utility rating |
|---|---|---|
| Practice testing | Doing practice questions, flashcards, quizzing yourself | High |
| Distributed practice | Spreading study sessions out over time | High |
| Elaborative interrogation | Asking and answering "Why is this true?" | Moderate |
| Self-explanation | Explaining a step or idea to yourself | Moderate |
| Interleaved practice | Mixing different types of problems or topics | Moderate |
| Summarization | Writing down the main ideas of a text | Low |
| Highlighting / underlining | Marking important passages | Low |
| Keyword mnemonic | Linking a new word to a similar-sounding word and an image | Low |
| Imagery for text learning | Forming mental images while reading | Low |
| Rereading | Reading the text again | Low |
The two most effective techniques: practice testing and spacing
1. Practice testing
Retrieving information from memory makes it easier to retrieve later. In Roediger and Karpicke (2006), students who reread a passage did better on a test 5 minutes later, but students who tested themselves remembered substantially more after 2 days and after 1 week. Dunlosky and colleagues rated practice testing highly because it helps learners of different ages and abilities and works in real educational settings.
In practice: end-of-chapter questions, past papers, flashcards, writing what you remember on a blank page. See our guide to active recall for details.
2. Distributed practice
Spreading the same amount of study over several days, instead of cramming it into one session, leads to better long-term retention. A meta-analysis by Cepeda et al. (2006), pooling hundreds of experiments, found this effect to be robust and showed that the best gap depends on how long you need to remember the material.
In practice: short reviews the day after you learn something, a few days later and a week later. Our guide to spaced repetition shows how to schedule them.
Moderately effective techniques
- Elaborative interrogation: Asking "Why is this so?" about a fact and trying to explain it. Answering "Why do desert plants tend to have small leaves?" from what you already know ties the fact to other knowledge.
- Self-explanation: Explaining the steps of a solution or what you just read to yourself: "Why did we divide both sides by two here?"
- Interleaved practice: Mixing different problem types instead of doing them in blocks. Rohrer and Taylor (2007) found that students who practiced mixed math problems struggled more during practice but did better on a test a week later. Kornell and Bjork (2008) showed that people who viewed paintings by different artists interleaved were better at identifying the artist of new paintings, even though most of them believed blocked study had worked better.
The authors call these techniques promising but note they hadn't been tested enough, especially in real classrooms, to earn a high rating.
Why are highlighting and rereading rated low?
This part surprises many students, because these are the two most common habits. Dunlosky and colleagues note that most students report rereading and highlighting, yet these techniques don't consistently boost performance, and they recommend practice testing in place of rereading.
- Rereading breeds familiarity. The text feels known, so you think you know it, but that doesn't mean you can recall it on your own.
- Highlighting may help you focus while reading, but choosing what matters is hard, and marking text isn't the same as processing it.
- Summarization helps some students in some situations, but writing good summaries takes skill and the conditions where it helps are limited. We cover how to use summaries more actively in how to summarize lecture notes.
- The keyword mnemonic and imagery can help with specific materials (like foreign vocabulary) and over short delays, but they're hard to apply to every subject.
How to put this research into your study routine
You don't have to drop the low-utility techniques entirely; use them as a stepping stone to the effective ones. Some easy swaps:
| Your habit | A more effective version |
|---|---|
| Rereading notes a third time | Closing your notes and recalling the content from the headings |
| Highlighting everything | Turning highlighted sentences into flashcard questions |
| Reading the whole unit the night before | Spreading the same time over the final week as short daily reviews |
| Doing 40 problems of the same type in a row | Mixing problems from different topics |
| Reading a summary and moving on | Writing the main ideas from memory, then comparing with the summary |
Effective techniques often feel harder. Struggling while you test yourself or mix problem types doesn't mean the method is failing; the research suggests the opposite.
Where Recallow fits in
Recallow is built around the two high-utility techniques: it creates quiz questions and flashcards from the notes you upload (practice testing) and schedules those cards with spaced repetition (distributed practice). It also offers summaries and key passages, but we suggest using those as a map before you start testing yourself, not as something to reread.
The bottom line
The research message is clear: before adding more study hours, look at how you use the ones you have. Swapping some rereading and highlighting for self-testing, and one-night marathons for short reviews spread over days, is one of the most solid steps you can take toward lasting learning.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most effective study technique according to research?
In the Dunlosky et al. (2013) review, only two techniques received a high utility rating: practice testing (practice questions, flashcards, self-quizzing) and distributed practice (spreading study over time). Combining them usually works best.
Is highlighting a waste of time?
Not entirely, but on its own it doesn't reliably improve learning. It becomes far more useful if you later turn the highlighted parts into questions and test yourself on them.
Does summarizing help you learn?
Summarization was rated low utility because its benefits appear only for some students under some conditions, and good summaries take skill. Using summaries actively, for example rewriting the main ideas from memory, works better.
Why does interleaved practice feel so hard?
When problem types are mixed, you have to decide which method to use each time. That can lower your performance during practice, but studies such as Rohrer and Taylor (2007) show interleaved learners can do better on delayed tests.
References
- Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J. & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. doi.org (opens in a new tab)
- Roediger, H. L. & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. doi.org (opens in a new tab)
- Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T. & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. doi.org (opens in a new tab)
- Rohrer, D. & Taylor, K. (2007). The shuffling of mathematics problems improves learning. Instructional Science, 35(6), 481–498. doi.org (opens in a new tab)
- Kornell, N. & Bjork, R. A. (2008). Learning concepts and categories: Is spacing the "enemy of induction"? Psychological Science, 19(6), 585–592. doi.org (opens in a new tab)