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Research papers on Active recall vs. re-reading

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  1. Intentional and incidental second language vocabulary learning: a reappraisal of elaboration, rehearsal and automaticity

    Jan H. Hulstijn · 2001 · Cambridge University Press eBooks · 765 citations

    Introduction Most learners of a second language (L2) feel concerned with the burden of vocabulary learning and worry about the question of how to cope with the formidable task of learning thousands of words. This has been documented by a number of questionnaire, interview and case studies (Gu & Johnson, 1996; Jones, 1995; Lawson & Hogden, 1996; Porte, 1988; Sanaoui, 1995). Because of the sheer magnitude of the vocabulary learning task it is only quite natural that many L2 teachers feel uncertain about how to guide their students. Should they require their students to learn words intentionally, perhaps even by rote, or should they believe the rumours that intentional learning is not conducive

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  4. Not New, but Nearly Forgotten: the Testing Effect Decreases or even Disappears as the Complexity of Learning Materials Increases

    Tamara van Gog, John Sweller · 2015 · Educational Psychology Review · 161 citations

    The testing effect is a finding from cognitive psychology with relevance for education. It shows that after an initial study period, taking a practice test improves long-term retention compared to not taking a test and—more interestingly—compared to restudying the learning material. Boundary conditions of the effect that have received attention include the test format, retrieval success on the initial test, the retention interval, or the spacing of tests. Another potential boundary condition concerns the complexity of learning materials, that is, the number of interacting information elements a learning task contains. This insight is not new, as research from a century ago already had indica

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  5. Generative Learning: Which Strategies for What Age?

    Garvin Brod · 2020 · Educational Psychology Review · 148 citations

    Abstract Generative learning strategies are intended to improve students’ learning by prompting them to actively make sense of the material to be learned. But are they effective for all students? This review provides an overview of six popular generative learning strategies: concept mapping, explaining, predicting, questioning, testing, and drawing. Its main purpose is to review for what ages the effectiveness of these strategies has been demonstrated and whether there are indications of age-related differences in their effectiveness. The description of each strategy covers (1) how it is supposed to work, (2) the evidence on its effectiveness in different age groups, and (3) if there are age

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  6. Practicing Retrieval Facilitates Learning

    Kathleen B. McDermott · 2020 · Annual Review of Psychology · 126 citations

    How do we go about learning new information? This article reviews the importance of practicing retrieval of newly experienced information if one wants to be able to retrieve it again in the future. Specifically, practicing retrieval shortly after learning can slow the forgetting process. This benefit can be seen across various material types, and it seems prevalent in all ages and learner abilities and on all types of test. It can also be used to enhance student learning in a classroom setting. I review theoretical understanding of this phenomenon (sometimes referred to as the testing effect or as retrieval-based learning) and consider directions for future research.

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  7. Strengthening concept learning by repeated testing

    Carola Wiklund‐Hörnqvist, Bert Jonsson, Lars Nyberg · 2013 · Scandinavian Journal of Psychology · 100 citations

    The aim of this study was to examine whether repeated testing with feedback benefits learning compared to rereading of introductory psychology key-concepts in an educational context. The testing effect was examined immediately after practice, after 18 days, and at a five-week delay in a sample of undergraduate students (n = 83). The results revealed that repeated testing with feedback significantly enhanced learning compared to rereading at all delays, demonstrating that repeated retrieval enhances retention compared to repeated encoding in the short- and the long-term. In addition, the effect of repeated testing was beneficial for students irrespectively of working memory capacity. It is ar

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  8. Using Testing as a Learning Tool

    Brenda W. Yang, Juan Razo, Adam M. Persky · 2019 · American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education · 81 citations

    Objective. The purpose of this review is to discuss some principles from cognitive psychology regarding the benefits of testing and translate those findings into practical applications for instruction and studying. Findings. Testing or retrieval practice is superior to re-study for promoting long-term retention. The benefits of testing can be see with open-ended responses (eg, cued or free recall) and multiple choice questions. The use of multiple-choice questions during testing may have an additional benefit as it may stabilize information that is stored in memory but temporarily inaccessible due to disuse (eg, marginal knowledge). Summary. Testing can have multiple learning benefits. We em

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  9. Retrieval Practice in Classroom Settings: A Review of Applied Research

    Bruna Fernanda Tolentino Moreira, Tatiana Salazar Silva Pinto, Daniela Siqueira Veloso Starling, et al. · 2019 · Frontiers in Education · 77 citations

    Tests have been vastly used for the assessment of learning in educational contexts. Recently, however, a growing body of research have shown that the practice of remembering previously studied information (i.e., retrieval practice) is more advantageous for long-term retention than restudying that same information; a phenomenon often termed “testing effect”. The question remains, however, whether such practice can be useful to improve learning in actual educational contexts, and whether in these contexts specific types of tests are particularly beneficial. We address these issues by reviewing studies that investigated the use of retrieval practice as a learning strategy in actual educational

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  11. Pretesting versus posttesting: Comparing the pedagogical benefits of errorful generation and retrieval practice.

    Steven C. Pan, Faria Sana · 2021 · Journal of experimental psychology. Applied · 72 citations

    The use of practice tests to enhance learning, or test-enhanced learning, ranks among the most effective of all pedagogical techniques. We investigated the relative efficacy of pretesting (i.e., errorful generation) and posttesting (i.e., retrieval practice), two of the most prominent practice test types in the literature to date. Pretesting involves taking tests before to-be-learned information is studied, whereas posttesting involves taking tests after information is studied. In five experiments (combined n = 1,573), participants studied expository text passages, each paired with a pretest or a posttest. The tests involved multiple-choice (Experiments 1-5) or cued recall format (Experiment

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  13. The Optimal Learning Strategy Depends on Learning Goals and Processes: Retrieval Practice Versus Worked Examples

    Darren J. Yeo, Lisa K. Fazio · 2019 · Journal of Educational Psychology · 47 citations

    Testing (having students recall material) and worked examples (having students study a completed problem) are both recommended as effective methods for improving learning. The two strategies rely on different underlying cognitive processes and thus may strengthen different types of learning in different ways. Across three experiments, we examine the efficacy of retrieval practice and worked examples for different learning goals and identify the factors that determine when each strategy is more effective. The optimal learning strategy depends on both the kind of knowledge being learned (stable facts vs. flexible procedures) and the learning processes involved (schema induction vs. memory and

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  14. Comparison of Rewatching Class Recordings versus Retrieval Practice as Post-Lecture Learning Strategies

    Shannon Palmer, Youn Chu, Adam M. Persky · 2019 · American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education · 36 citations

    Objective. To assess the relative effectiveness of two study strategies, rewatching a recorded lecture and retrieval practice, on Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) students’ long-term retention of lecture material presented in a pharmacotherapeutics class. Methods. One hundred two first-year pharmacy students were recruited for the study. All students attended two in-class lectures on different topics. The following week, students either re-studied from the recorded lecture on one of the two topics or, on the other topic, retrieved information about class content by responding to the course objectives. Half of the students were quizzed immediately after studying both topics. One week later, all st

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  15. Effect of uniform versus expanding retrieval practice on the recall of physiology information

    John L. Dobson · 2012 · Advances in Physiology Education · 30 citations

    The purpose of this study was to compare the retention of selected physiology concepts throughout 30 days of two different uniform schedules of retrieval and two different expanding schedules of retrieval. Participants ( n = 250) first read and reread 30 immunology and reproductive physiology concepts and were then repeatedly assessed, without feedback, according to one of the following four randomly assigned schedules: 1) immediately after learning and again 9 and 19 days later [uniform ( days 1, 10, and 20)]; 2) 7, 14, and 21 days after learning [uniform ( days 8, 15, and 22)]; 3) immediately after learning and again 5 and 15 days later [expanding ( days 1, 6, and 16)]; and 4) 1, 6, and 1

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  17. The Use of Retrieval Practice in the Health Professions: A State-of-the-Art Review

    Michael J Serra, Althea N. Kaminske, Cynthia L. Nebel, et al. · 2025 · Behavioral Sciences · 8 citations

    Retrieval practice, or the active recall of information from memory, is a highly effective learning strategy that strengthens memory and comprehension. This effect is robust and strongly backed by research in cognitive psychology. The health professions—including medicine, nursing, and dentistry—have widely embraced retrieval practice as a learning and study tool, particularly for course exams and high-stakes licensing exams. This state-of-the-art review examines the historical development, current applications, and future directions for the use of retrieval practice in health professions education. While retrieval-based learning has long been used informally in these fields, its formal reco

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  18. Retrieval-based learning versus discussion; which review practice will better enhance primary school students’ knowledge of scientific content?

    Anna Jakobsson, Jenny Loberg, Maria Kjörk · 2023 · International Journal of Science Education · 7 citations

    ABSTRACT Retrieval-based learning, using tests for content review, frequently proves more effective for knowledge retention compared to alternative methods. Extensive research has explored this with older students, often in contrast to more passive techniques like rereading or note rewriting, typically focusing on vocabulary content, in non-classroom settings and assessing knowledge retention within a week. In this study we conducted a classroom experiment to compare the efficacy of retrieval-based learning to another active method of reviewing content, namely discussion, in promoting long-term knowledge retention among primary school science students. Additionally, we assessed the students’

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  19. The Moderating Role of Learning Rounds: Effects on Retrieval Practice and Context Dependence in Digital Flashcard Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning

    Shan Huang, Hongwen Cao, Jiayin Wang, et al. · 2025 · Behavioral Sciences · 7 citations

    Digital flashcards are widely used in foreign language vocabulary learning. Research attributes their effectiveness to retrieval practice, where learners actively recall target information, thereby enhancing learning performance. The superiority of retrieval practice over non-retrieval methods such as restudying is referred to as the retrieval practice effect (RPE). Despite extensive research on the RPE, two key questions remain underexplored: how the number of learning rounds modulates the RPE in digital flashcard learning and whether the benefits of retrieval practice are consistently observed across different test modalities, a factor related to the context-dependence of memory. To addres

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  20. Virtual language learning: potential and practice

    Uschi Felix · 1998 · ReCALL · 7 citations

    How realistic is it to achieve good quality language learning and teaching using technology? This paper looks at the advantages and disadvantages of using CD-ROMs and Web-based materials in the quest for providing meaningful interactive language learning strategies to students. It will demonstrate that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, at least in terms of pedagogy, and that there is no need to reject technology despite difficulties and frustrations because the latest developments in technology, especially on the WWW, have significantly increased the potential for even more authentic interaction in the classroom. Illustrations from our Vietnamese course are included.

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  22. The battle of question formats: a comparative study of retrieval practice using very short answer questions and multiple choice questions

    Elise V. van Wijk, Mario de Jonge, F. V. van Blankenstein, et al. · 2024 · BMC Medical Education · 4 citations

    Retrieval practice is a highly effective learning strategy that enhances long-term retention by encouraging the active recall of information. However, the optimal question format for maximizing knowledge retention remains uncertain. In this study, we compared the effect of very short answer (VSAQ) versus multiple-choice question (MCQ) practice tests on students’ knowledge retention. By analyzing these two formats, we aim to identify the most effective approach to retrieval practice, thereby helping to optimize its implementation and improve learning outcomes. In this randomized within-subjects study, students (n = 45) practiced with both VSAQs and MCQs in an extracurricular lifestyle course,

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  24. Effects of Cued-Recall Versus Recognition Retrieval Practice on Beginning College Students’ Exam Performance

    T. Lawson · 2021 · College Teaching · 3 citations

    Abstract Cognitive psychologists have found that taking practice tests improves students’ learning, and some claim that tests that require recall are more effective than those that require recognition. This study examined whether recognition (i.e., multiple-choice) quizzes were as effective as cued-recall (i.e., fill-in-the-blank) quizzes for improving introductory psychology students’ exam performance. Chapters covered on each of four exams were assigned to either a no-quiz, fill-in-the-blank-quiz, or multiple-choice-quiz condition, and I evaluated students’ average exam performance on questions related to each quiz condition. Both the multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank quizzes improved

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