A study from Beijing Normal University found that students who actively tested themselves on study content remembered more than those who just reread their notes. What’s more interesting is that the gap between these two groups kept growing as more time passed.
That explains a frustration many students recognise. If you’ve ever spent three hours rereading lecture slides only to blank during an exam, you simply need to change how you study.
In this article, we’ll walk through effective study techniques that work with how your brain retains long-term knowledge. You’ll learn why retrieval practice is better than passive review, the way spaced repetition prevents the forgetting curve, and three active methods that help you preserve information better.
Let’s begin with the science behind effective study techniques.
Why Certain Study Methods Lead to Long-Term Memory
Some study techniques help you remember everything for a long time because they make your brain work harder to recall information. This is the core principle behind why some study habits produce long-term retention while others fade within days.
When you force yourself to recall information from memory, you’re strengthening the neural pathways that store that knowledge. And each time you successfully retrieve something, the connection becomes stronger and easier to access later.
Now, compare that to rereading your notes five times in a row. Your eyes move across familiar words, and the information stays in short-term awareness. However, that doesn’t build the in-depth understanding required to perform well in an exam.
Pre-Study Habits That Set You Up for Success
Preparing your environment and your body before studying helps information last longer. Even small changes can greatly improve focus and retention. So before you dive into flashcards or practice problems, take a few minutes to set yourself up properly.
Take a look at these small adjustments to create the conditions your brain needs:
- Sleep and Memory Consolidation: Students who average seven hours of sleep each night show better academic performance overall. Your brain processes and stores new knowledge while you sleep, particularly during deep sleep cycles. If you’re cramming on four hours of rest, you’re trying to build retention on a foundation that isn’t there.
- Study Location Variety: When you vary your surroundings, you create multiple retrieval cues instead of depending on one familiar spot. This might sound counterintuitive, but research shows that studying material in different environments helps your brain form stronger associations with the content.
- Removing Distractions: Creating a distraction-free zone gives your brain the conditions it needs to engage with difficult material. For instance, phone notifications and background noise break your focus constantly, and every interruption costs you about 23 minutes to regain full focus.
Getting these basics right might not guarantee perfect retention on its own, but it removes the obstacles that sabotage your study sessions before they even start. Once your environment and energy levels support learning, the techniques we’ll cover next become far more effective.
Retrieval Practice: Why Testing Yourself Beats Rereading
Testing yourself works better than rereading because it forces your brain to actively recall information
Most students instinctively reach for their highlighter or reread chapters when preparing for tests. But familiarity isn’t the same as genuine retention, and that gap shows up when you need to recall information under pressure.
A good way to close that gap is by quizzing yourself. This forces your brain to actively engage in retrieval practice of the neural pathways connected to that information. Even one quizzing session is more effective than reading the same paragraph five times.
Another great technique is practical application. After reading a chapter, close the book and write out everything you remember in your own words without peeking. The gaps you discover show you exactly what needs more attention.
These methods build knowledge retention far more reliably than underlining sentences or making elaborate colour-coded notes you’ll only look at once.
Spaced Repetition Helps Your Brain Remember
Your brain naturally forgets information over time unless you revisit it at strategic intervals. The forgetting curve affects every single study session you sit through, whether you’re aware of it or not. That’s why understanding how this process works gives you an advantage because you can structure your reviews to work with your memory.
Here’s what happens when you don’t space out your learning.
The Forgetting Curve Explained
German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered something fascinating about memory back in the 1880s. He found that people forget roughly 50% of new information within one day of learning it. On top of that, the decline continues rapidly from there and by day three, you’ve lost about 70% unless you’ve reviewed the material.
This pattern is called the forgetting curve. It explains why cramming the night before an exam produces disappointing results. You might remember enough to scrape through the test, but that information never makes it into long-term storage because your brain treats it as temporary data that isn’t worth keeping.
Conversely, spacing reviews out over days or weeks counteracts this natural forgetting pattern. When you revisit material just before you’re about to forget it, you basically reset the curve and the information sticks around longer each time.
The Problem with Cramming and Effective Study Strategies
Cramming only creates temporary recall that disappears right after your exam finishes. It’s because when you study the same content repeatedly in one marathon session, you’re not giving your brain time to process and store it properly.
In contrast, spacing study sessions across multiple days allows your brain time to consolidate memories between reviews. Throughout our teaching journey, we’ve seen university students who adopt this approach spend less time re-learning material before finals because the knowledge is already there.
Here’s what this looks like in practice: instead of studying Chapter 5 for three hours straight, review it for 30 minutes today, then again in two days, then once more a week later. The total time investment is similar, but spaced repetition produces retention that lasts months instead of days.
Practical Study Methods for Active Engagement
Memory works best when information is connected to existing knowledge and revisited over time. Active study methods are the fastest way to convert vague familiarity into genuine mastery you can demonstrate under pressure.
Take a look at the methods below that require active engagement:
The SQ3R Technique for Better Retention
This method (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review) renews passive textbook reading into an interactive process. It improves how much you retain from assigned reading because you have to engage with the material multiple times in different ways.
Instead of highlighting your way through a chapter, you start by skimming headings and subheadings to get the layout. Then you formulate questions about what you expect to learn. As you read, you’re actively looking for answers rather than letting your eyes drift across pages. And after each section, you close the book and recite the main points in your own words.
Teaching Others to Find Gaps
Explaining concepts aloud to yourself or a study group exposes gaps in your understanding immediately. When you teach something, you have to organise the information clearly enough for someone else to follow.
We’ve seen students who form study groups and take turns teaching each section to their peers consistently outperform those who study alone. The act of putting knowledge into your own words and fielding questions strengthens your grasp on the material far better than silent reviews.
Handwritten Notes for Information Absorption
Research on learners shows that students who take handwritten notes during lectures process information more deeply. It’s because writing notes by hand rather than typing engages different cognitive processes that support better learning retention.
This method forces you to synthesise and summarise in real-time, which leads to a stronger understanding. The slower pace of handwriting also gives your brain more time to encode the information properly.
Make These Techniques Part of Your Routine
Actively testing yourself, reviewing material at spaced intervals, and fully engaging with the content leads to much better memory retention than simply rereading. Students who apply these methods consistently see improvements in their exam scores as well as how well they understand and retain material months after a course ends.
You can start by testing one or two techniques during your next study session and track what works for your learning style. Pick the method that feels most doable, because building these study habits takes time and effort. However, the payoff will show up in academic performance and genuine knowledge retention.
For more evidence-based educational insights and resources that support student success, explore the library at ECCE 2012. Here you’ll find additional research-backed strategies to improve your learning experience.
