r/YouShouldKnow • u/Friendly_Hivemind • Feb 17 '26
Education YSK that highlighting and re-reading are two of the least effective study methods, despite being the most popular
Why YSK:
Because most people never question their study methods.
I was one of those "gifted kids" that never needed to learn how to learn.
If you struggled in school (or like me in university), there's a real chance it wasn't because you didn't work hard enough or weren't smart enough.
The student who quizzes themselves for 30 minutes will outperforms the student who highlights and re-reads for 3 hours.
The research is extremely consistent on this.
The simplest way to start:
After studying a section, flip over your notes and write down everything you can remember. Compare what you wrote to the original. Study the gaps. Repeat. Costs nothing, requires nothing.
The irony is that the most effective methods feel harder and less pleasant.
That's actually the signal that they're working.
Learning that feels easy usually isn't learning.
Note: The study is worth reading in itself because they target 10 different learning methods and rank them by effectiveness.
Source:
Dunlosky, J. (2013). "Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques." Psychological Science in the Public Interest. (currently writing my thesis on the topic)
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u/DumpsterAflame Feb 17 '26
I wish I'd read this 25 years ago. I was also one of those "gifted" kids who didn't know how to study. I did manage to make it into vet school, but I wasn't able to go further (I had wanted to specialize). When put against the brightest of the bright, my lack of study skills really made a negative difference!
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u/heliamphore Feb 17 '26
I wish I'd known this 25 years ago so I wouldn't have wasted so much time studying and done something else instead.
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u/yasipants Feb 17 '26
Nothing like vet school to make you realize you are a small fish in a big, brilliant pond eh?
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u/Noiz_desu Feb 17 '26
Well, just like that, I’m not going to vet school
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u/yasipants Feb 17 '26
Good call. The only person I told not to go that listened to me is way happier and more successful than I am.
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u/shoobawatermelon Feb 17 '26
What you are describing is Active Recall (immediately testing your knowledge). It is the most effective way of retaining information, as proven by various academic studies. It is also the least enjoyable way of studying.
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u/Early_Bad8737 Feb 17 '26
Where were you with this sacred knowledge when I went through uni?
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u/Friendly_Hivemind Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26
Failing myself
super fast edit:
Now that I am looking into all of the science behind learning and what is proven to work I am feeling like a caveman.
Feels like seeing the loop in high jump live
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u/Lieutenant_Corndogs Feb 17 '26
Saving this thread so I can learn from it later
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u/Phelyckz Feb 17 '26
Didn't you read it? Flip it over and write down what you remember.
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u/DorkusMalorkuss Feb 17 '26
I've been using this method for a long time, but my god, I've gone through so many phone cases.
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u/spooniefulofsugar Feb 17 '26
Definitely could have used this back in the day for sure.
Dang 'gifted' kid slide through school to failing uni student was such an eye opener.
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u/Schmigolo Feb 17 '26
Funnily this is the very first thing they teach teachers at uni, and then they forget by the time they are teachers.
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u/MyFavoriteDisease Feb 17 '26
My kid bumped her math SAT score by 70 points using Khan Academy (free online). You take a fake SAT. It only quizzes and teaches you the stuff you missed. And it’s free to everyone. Democratizing tutoring.
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u/BronnOP Feb 17 '26 edited Mar 01 '26
This post's content has been permanently wiped. Redact was used to delete it, potentially for privacy, to limit digital exposure, or for security-related reasons.
tan sharp command sleep sand sink shelter rainstorm voracious unpack
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u/ThenThereWasReddit Feb 17 '26
I don’t understand how you quizzed yourself without having first read the material and how did you quiz yourself without determining what you wanted to focus on first? Genuinely asking as someone who will be hopefully going back to school soon and definitely spent a ton of time studying.
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u/SucculentFire Feb 18 '26
I pretend I'm teaching someone. What are the broad strokes? How does it get more specific from there? Can I give practical examples or create metaphors to help explain?
When I get stuck, that's what I know I need to go back and study.
Additionally, quizzing yourself would start with questions like:
What are the key ideas of this concept?
What are the relevant statistics and numbers from this study?
Who are the important figures in this concept?
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u/wterrt Feb 18 '26
what got me through school was turning the notes into notecards and quizzing myself with those. just re-writing them as note cards was like half the process. then once i'd been through them a few times I'd only re-do the ones I didn't get. got my doctorate, graduated magna cum laude.
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u/Natto_Assano Feb 17 '26
How my German school did it - and what I absolutely hated for years - was
- Read the text
- Re-read. Split into paragraphs that make sense to you
- Give those paragraphs a title
- Summarize the most important points of each paragraph in 2-3 sentences max. Give line references.
I got really good at it eventually. In the end I was also known for obsessively highlighting in different colours. e.g.
Key ideas - red Numbers - yellow Examples - blue Arguments - green
(I don't know what exactly the categories were tbh but STH like that)
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u/SarryK Feb 17 '26
One thing I also found incredibly helpful but really fucking hated over in Swiss primary school:
We read a book and had to summarise every chapter on half an A4 page max. Full sentences, no tiny writing, only writing within the margins and on the lines.
Interesting thing re what you were taught in school: It‘s basically the inverse of how we were taught to write in English lessons, i.e. separate topics into paragraphs, start paragraphs with topic sentence(s) giving an overview of the paragraph‘s topic.
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u/exusu Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26
it is extremely time-consuming though. might work for high school but if you go to uni, sometimes you barely have time for reading and highlighting, let alone reading, taking notes, then repeating and comparing. what worked best for me to read, take notes, than half memory/half reading out loud, repeating the parts that are the most important/harder to memorise and on the last day of the exam, i would just pretend that im at the oral exam and go over every topic like this.
(tbf my method is pretty time-consuming but manageable)
source: i went to law school, graduated summa cum laude
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u/Lung_doc Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26
Are there study aides that are popular? For medical school it's anki (note card app) and u world questions bank, which is pricey but very helpful: it has questions in the style of the USMLE step tests. A paragraph, often a clinical scenario, and then multiple choice questions.
Anki is basically free and made by students themselves, and certain sets of cards get famous - there's whole articles on this and which to use and such. Some go to class and make their own; others do class but use premade decks. And still others skip class and just study, study, study.
These methods are so effective that they keep raising the passing score (the percent that fail is 10-20%)
https://www.ankify.app/blog/best-anki-decks-for-medical-students-2025
Source: med student myself in the 90s (we had none of this), and then helped my kid figure things out when he struggled with med school a few years ago.
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u/exusu Feb 17 '26
i used anki in law school (in hungary, you gotta learn a lot of legislation by heart, word by word so it was useful for those most important paragraphs) but i didn't know many other people who did
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u/DreadnoughtPoo Feb 17 '26
As a law grad myself, the study is great for SOME subjects.
I have bs and ms degrees in a hard science. For that type of work (significant memorization and ensuring systems level connectivity) - the advice is great.
But some subjects (like how law school curriculum is taught), this would lead to terrible results most of the time. Highlighting for quick reference of key facts and analysis during class when you’re being cold called is the absolute best way to prepare in most cases (pun intended).
Writing it out is great when outlining, but little else for most JD curricula.
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u/Expended1 Feb 17 '26
What about highlighting what is inportant, reading that, then quizing yourself on just what you highlighted? Cuts down on the amount of material you quiz on. Would that work?
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u/AccountantSeaPirate Feb 17 '26
It typically doesn’t matter for your grade at all how you perform in class, but how you perform on a single hours-long test at the end.
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u/DreadnoughtPoo Feb 17 '26
That was true decades ago, but most law schools have moved to a more hybrid approach, where at least *some* of your grade is based on quality of class participation.
That said, I agree that the overwhelming majority of a grade is still based on the final.
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u/SpeccyScotsman Feb 17 '26
What worked best for me was telling myself I'd get my schedule in order, then having constant panic attacks while I crammed all of the work into the days before the deadline.
Also summa cum laude so technically just as viable?
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u/CatmatrixOfGaul Feb 17 '26
One faster method I have found way too late in life, was to read and then pretend to teach what I’ve read. Yes, I had to talk out loud, but it was pretty fast. I never had the patience for writing what I have read. I would start great, but never finish.
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u/birds-and-words Feb 17 '26
I do something similar when preparing for tough interviews or important presentations. While I'm reading out loud (as you mentioned), I record voice memos of the parts I'm struggling with, toss them into a Spotify playlist, then listen a few times before I go bed and again the next morning before I practice again. It's a good passive way to help the concepts stick in my mind when I need a break from reading or note-taking--like benevolent brainwashing lol I also think there's a benefit to hearing it said in my own voice. I seem to retain the information better and can restate it in a more organic way than I can with other forms of studying.
The older I get, the more I appreciate mixing learning styles (tactile, audio, etc) when preparing for something.
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u/kishan29j Feb 17 '26
What about technical subjects like Math and Engineering?
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u/Friendly_Hivemind Feb 17 '26
Generally speaking you want a "feedback layer".
That's why people learn programming at such a young age.
The error messages are a great feedback layer.Both Math and Engineering are generally great "learning by doing" topics because they offer such a feedback layer.
Personally as somebody who studied Math Math (like university math not calculus) what helped me a lot was to understand that Math is a language to express your ideas.
This dissolved the pressure of having to deliver a "right" solution and allowed me to approach problems more playful.
That being said math and engineering are hierarchical topics.
While social sciences for example have more points of entry knowledge in hierarchical topics is learned a little bit different.My post above is targeted at general learning methods. I can make a new one more about this distinction.
Super interesting topic in general.
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u/kishan29j Feb 17 '26
Being a student with fear of Math, yes I completed a stem course with fear of Math, It was something like scaling a wall. I did miss out some middle topics and boom now everything becomes hard exponentially. I wish I could have done it better like OP suggested.
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u/sacmagick Feb 17 '26
Most effective for me was to go to a room with a chalkboard and do practice problems over and over. If I messed up, figure out why, then do it again the right way
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u/Pymatuning Feb 17 '26
My favorite way to study is quizlet. I practiced and studied my note cards and did every type of quiz style they had until I felt ready for whatever I was preparing for. I used this for physics exams, calculus, memorizing lines for theater, etc. It saved me many times!
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u/desert_dame Feb 17 '26
The best way to learn is the lazy man method. I was on the honor roll for this.
Go to class. Take handwritten notes. Lots of them.
For the test night before. Reread your notes twice.Look at the book. Don’t read it all. Read the headings. Bullet points. Memorize any tables graphs.
At end of each chapter. Take the quizzes. Read the study guide. Whatever questions you miss. Go back through the book to find the right answer. Write it down.
Boom 2/3 hours per midterms/finals done.
The best way to learn and retain is to write it down on paper. The act of writing is the best. No computer. Highlighters. Your mind just glides past the info by following the pen.
You want to remember something. Write it down.
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u/AbbreviationsNext484 Feb 17 '26
Okay but the post totally skips the part where you explain how to study.
You mention that quizzing is more effective than highlighting (suggesting that they can't exist together), but then jump to 'after studying a section', essentially skipping over the part that should replace the highlighting and re-reading.
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u/Affectionate_Owl_619 Feb 17 '26
I think "studying" in that context just means reading. You have a test over chapter 45, so read a section of it, then start writing everything you can remember, reread it, go back and write what you forgot. Move on to the next section.
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u/fridaychild3 Feb 17 '26
This must be the reason many teachers encourage one-sheet handwritten note examinations. Written notes are study tools rather than cheat tools because you must identify your current knowledge (summarization?), assess your understanding of that knowledge (quizzing?), seek weaknesses in your knowledge (rereading?), and copy those weaknesses (highlighting and underline?) which, on the whole, strengthens not only your recall as you check the accuracy of your notes (interleaved practice?), but your general comprehension as well (elaborative interrogation?). This is an awesome study! Thank you for sharing.
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u/lastdarknight Feb 17 '26
Being able to sit in the back of class in highschool reading/drawing and maintain a C average ,while barely paying attention, is a 100% responsible for my struggles in college
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u/HilariousMax Feb 17 '26
I just put the book under my pillow when I go to sleep. It's called learning by narcosis. Helped me get through college.
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u/shroomiedoo Feb 17 '26
Hopping on this to say that even if you love your tablet and you make beautiful notes, nothing beats pen and paper for learning and retention. Just look at the research!
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u/ForgotmyusernameXXXX Feb 17 '26
This is gonna sound weird, but I think highlighting helps from an effort ratio standpoint. It doesn’t burn that much cognitive energy, and its output is obviously poor. However, skimming reading and highlighting an article or your notes or a textbook in my opinion is a great first step, prior to doing all the other things.
Of course, I also do practice tests, and flashcards, and summarizing, and all those other good things. But I start out with highlighting. Is it useful… Maybe not. But for me I think it’s a good first step.
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u/MasterVule Feb 17 '26
I feel like education system massively dropped the ball on metalearning. This is something that once taught and applied properly should boost your preformance for the rest of your life
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u/dog-shades Feb 17 '26
Metalearning?
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u/MasterVule Feb 18 '26
Learning about learning. Basically different learning techniques you can apply to get much better results than whatever you pick up from your parents.
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u/SCUMDOG_MILLIONAIRE Feb 17 '26
The only method that worked for me:
Skim read the textbook chapter quickly. Don’t read it, skim it.
Go back through it with a highlighter and skim slower, highlight any facts/info and ignore everything else. Textbooks are lean but there’s still a lot of filler.
Critical step: Read the highlights then WRITE THEM DOWN in your own way in a notebook. Bullet points, charts, sentences, whatever you like. The physical act of writing is the hack. No, you can’t type it. Study and refer back to your written notes
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u/RedShirtDecoy Feb 17 '26
Cries in adhd.
Id literally rather pull a health tooth with rusty pliers than do what you described here.
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u/DigitalAxel Feb 17 '26
AuDHD... Nothing seems to work for me. I've exhausted so many methods. In my particular case it was languages. Been trying on my own to learn a second language and I can't form a conversation after 3 years. Most study methods burn me out so fast.
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u/peteroh9 Feb 17 '26
Download an app where you can message natives. If you don't want to do that, prompt an LLM to do conversations like a native. I don't use Gemini much, but its learning mode seems perfect for learning languages.
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u/DigitalAxel Feb 17 '26
Heres the depressing bit: I've been living IN my target language country for a year. Not much change because I lack a good support system here. (Plus, no job lead to lack of motivation, stopped studying back in October. Its... mostly my fault at this point.)
But I can read!! And kinda listen despite my APD.
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u/poonstar1 Feb 17 '26
The amount of anxiety and complete life shutdowns kids have over studying for finals makes me realize most kids don't know how to study
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u/Remarkable_Letter272 Feb 18 '26
"After studying a section, flip over your notes and write down everything you can remember."
Cries in ADHD.
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u/say592 Feb 18 '26
The irony is that the most effective methods feel harder and less pleasant.
What is ironic about that? Maybe you need to flip the sheet over, write down everything you remember about irony, then study the gaps.
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u/No-Channel3917 Feb 17 '26
Wouldn't flash cards do this method faster and require less time consumption?
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u/StumbleOn Feb 17 '26
This is a great tip.
As a working person in a very cerebral, thinking type of job, the biggest difference between someone who is very good at it, and someone who is barely adequate, can usually be seen in their notes.
People who obsessively write everything down are usually the worst at their jobs.
People who write brief things down, talk about that thing, come up with questions and answers to those things, then maybe note down only very small amounts of things tend to be the best.
As an aside, this also tracks with how the increasing use of LLMs (falsely called AI) has been making people dumber. When you outsource your thinking and recall to a machine, you are not going to be making crucial connections to actually learn things.
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u/LovesGettingRandomPm Feb 19 '26
I think the most effective way is to write down and explain a subject in your own words instead of copying or writing down quotes, you can then create a small quiz to learn all the buzzwords
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u/sluttypidge Feb 17 '26
Where were you when I was in nursing school ten years ago begging for anyone to help me with studying because what I was doing was not working?
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u/fierce_fibro_faerie Feb 17 '26
My whole life I was told I was just naturally smarter, in the gifted program and shit.
I have been telling everyone since I was a child that I don't think I am particularly smart. I just have a few innate traits mixed with a love of learning. Near photographic memory, love puzzles, love to read, love to create and learn new things.
But what OP said is soooo interesting. Looking back, I actually used a very wide variety of study methods. I highlighted and re-read, sure. But I also re-wrote all of my notes before every test. I made myself flash cards. I created study guides. I would quiz myself or ask others to quiz me.
Lol too bad the burn out got to me eventually! Just because you can learn and do it all, doesn't mean you should 😅
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u/Sunlit53 Feb 17 '26
I rewrote all my class notes into a good copy with bright colored inks for emphasis on section headings then reread those 5 minutes before the test. Rewrite/rephrase/resummarize works better than just reading. That said, reading things is far more likely to make them stick in my head than just listening. Listening is frequently in one ear and out the other in my case. Unless I’m writing it all down for later.
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u/cae37 Feb 17 '26
Yeah people who highlight should focus on annotating anything they highlight. Either with symbols, single words, or, preferably, phrases or sentences.
Annotating adds another layer of thought and, when you revisit a text, the annotations should allow you to re-connect with your previous thoughts when you first read the text.
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u/Heavyspire Feb 17 '26
Teaching what you learned helps retain the information too. My Psychology professor told us to pull a small chair into the middle of the room and teach/lecture it about the new found information you just learned. This activates a different part of the brain and helps cement the knowledge.
For test taking like finals he suggested you study the material using a specific shirt too. And switch shirts based on different classes and then wear that shirt to the test and it helps with retrieving the information needed in the test. Not as great at retaining the info long term but it helps with finals.
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u/grzeslaw90 Feb 17 '26
For me it was writing the cheat sheets that I wouldn't use on exams after lol
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u/LikelyDumpingCloseby Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26
I recommend "Learning How to Learn", a course on Coursera, by Barbara Oakley.
I even bought her book, Uncommon sense Teaching. It's a fun subject.
For writing on top of learning, Bob Doto's Zettelkasten Primer is also amazing.
It takes time to learn, build, and implement different workflows which take time to materialize effectiveness, but they stack and enhance your learning.
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u/badass4102 Feb 17 '26
I prepared for tests like I would with sports growing up. I made my own quizzes and questions from my notes. That way when I took the test I've already answered the questions during my prep.
I'd fold my paper in half, right side would be my notes. When I was done with notes, I'd use the left side to make questions from the notes on the right. To study, I'd fold the paper in half hiding my notes and trying to answer the questions.
I carried this over to typing on my laptop. I'd make a 2 column table. 1 side for my notes, other side for my questions.
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u/The_Moustache Feb 18 '26
Best studying i ever did was make cheat sheets like I was going to cheat on the test.
I never did personally, but I for sure sold them fuckers to kids that did.
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u/unicorn8dragon Feb 18 '26
Highlighting can be a useful tool, but it depends what your goal is. If you’re reading with the intent of going back to reference material, it’s very helpful to highlight potentially relevant or interesting portions.
If you’re highlighting to learn, I personally find it better to outline and put it into your own words.
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u/Material-Dream-4976 Feb 19 '26
Writing and flash cards have always worked best for my memory retention.
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u/SunnyGods Feb 17 '26
Isn't this literally different for every person because different people prefer different learning styles?
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u/CloudyTheDucky Feb 17 '26
Learning styles are actually generally considered a myth by people who study the brain and the process of learning
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u/NaniFarRoad Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26
You're getting downvoted because people think you're talking about Learning Styles TM. While that system of categorising students has been debunked, it is absolutely true that what works for one student doesn't apply equally to another. If the people downvoting you taught for a living, they would know this.
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u/Berufius Feb 17 '26
For anyone that really wants to learn how to learn, I can highly recommend the Coursera course 'Learning how to learn' by Barbara Oakley. It includes the info from this post all well.
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u/McCaffeteria Feb 17 '26
As someone who never really needed to study, people telling me to do this always pissed me off because I could literally feel it not doing anything.
If I read something once and didn’t understand something then it was obvious I needed to go back and reread the part I missed, and if not then reading it again wasn’t going to provide any new information.
It’s more obvious to me now (now that I have more experience with the skills of the average person) that the highlighting part is a trick to force people to read in the first place, because if you don’t read it then you won’t know which parts are “correct” to highlight or not. Without the pass/fail condition of it being obvious that you didn’t highlight or highlighted random things, lots of people will simply not read or not internalize the text.
If you are actually reading, then you can skip that part. That “studying advice” is not for you. It is for simpletons, but no one tells anyone that because most people are some level of simpleton, including a fair fraction of educators (horrifyingly enough).
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u/Monostry Feb 17 '26
How would this apply in mathematic based subject? Should I apply this to them or use another way of learning?
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u/shoobawatermelon Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26
It doesn’t skip it, they just don’t flat out say that highlighting and re-reading by itself are the least effective. After highlighting and re-reading, you should test your knowledge of what was retained. Active Recall is scientifically proven to be the best study method. Highlighting and rereading are just passive recall, which alone is not the most useful way to study.
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u/delimitedjest Feb 17 '26
Doesn’t studying the gaps and comparing to the original entail re-reading…?
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u/Tinawebmom Feb 17 '26
And now I know why I succeeded in nursing school.
We would quiz each other. After every class we would discuss and challenge each other.
I graduated high school with a 2.83 GPA. (1988)
I graduated college with a 3.83 simply because quizzing each other worked really well for my brain! (1998)
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u/Fbolanos Feb 17 '26
I did none of these things but I never understood what people were highlighting.
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u/rocketplex Feb 17 '26
Maybe it’s just me, but I was raised being told that re-reading was the laziest, most waste of time way to study. If you re-read 500 times then maybe but then you may as well have done 2-3 sets of summaries and self testing.
I found the summaries the most helpful. Doing them slowly and regularly over the course of the term. Along with steadily increasing self test.
I think it’s really the only thing that properly works
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u/Paevatar Feb 17 '26
What worked for me in college was studying with classmates and teaching each other. Teaching the material is one of the best ways to learn it. If you don't have a study partner, try teaching the material to a sibling or even a pet.
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u/Bananurin Feb 17 '26
I had a system reading scientific papers in college. First time, read it once, no notes. Just read. Second time, read it and highlight key points. Third time, take the highlights and rewrite them into your own words and organize them as your notes. It was tedious, but it helped me personally.
Good graphs can say paragraphs worth of information, too.
Maybe it was the combination of all 3 reads that helped.
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u/Aimsira Feb 17 '26
This! Another banger tip I've started using over the years for more effective reading is to actually translate each sentence/paragraph I read back into my native language/into English. This basically forces to to paraphrase and checks if you're actually understanding the material, or if you're just scanning the words. Worked great for preparing for seminars or reading for papers and such.
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u/AlienTux Feb 18 '26
Check out the book "Make it stick" and the programming called Anki.
There's also plenty of research on active recall and spaced repetition (both proven effective techniques for actually learning). Quizzing yourself is a storm of active recall btw.
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u/tjbelleville Feb 19 '26
Odd, I was a wiz in school and remember learning early on that the average person remembers something after repeating it 14x. So if I had to remember something for school like the preamble, presidents, state capitals, etc... I would recite it to myself 14x and it never failed me. I imagine re-reading works similarly. Have you ever re-read your assignment 14x? You definitely get an A if you do!
The reason highlighting might be bad is we've all seen textbooks or Bibles with 90% of the page highlighted. The point of highlighting is to draw attention to the main points. So if the page in your book is like a modern recipe, highlight the ingredients and time to cook. No need to highlight the intro story, examples, or various alternatives to ingredients. The same goes for a school page, no need to highlight all the fluff!
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u/RigobertaMenchu Feb 17 '26
My professor taught me this trick to grasp a chapter quickly.
Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph. That’s where all the important information is.
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u/Whole-Judgment-3586 Feb 17 '26
That was my method and I graduated magma cum laude from a high ranking research university
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u/lilmul123 Feb 17 '26
In elementary school, I remember they pushed highlighting hard, and even at the time, I recall thinking how much of a waste of time it was. If the knowledge was worth knowing, it was learned regardless of what was highlighted. I ended up with textbooks full of highlights, and those highlights were no more understood than the non-highlighted parts.
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u/drop_panda Feb 17 '26
Have you read anything about the effectiveness of learning styles vs language proficiency? A LOT of people around the world have to do most of their higher education in a second or even third language.
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u/TheAmishMan Feb 17 '26
I find highlighting with different colors helps. To be fair, I never highlighted in school, but I use it for DnD prep, which obviously I know is different. But using different colors for different bits or types of information is helpful to quickly categorize everything. Makes rereading second go a lot faster.
If I was still in school, I'd probably take my old method - I did all my notes in a bulleted outline format or charts, and then throw them into Chatgpt and have it quiz me, similar to what you said. I also found using old exams, going through each question, and writing why certain answers were wrong and why the others were right, was the most effective study technique, but extremely time consuming
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u/freebird7557 Feb 17 '26
this is super nice of you to share! the part of the world where I am from, we actually did have this colloquial saying, “likhe likhe por” which loosely translates to “we must write to read more effectively” and i do remember this being the ONLY way I needed to learn things fast!
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u/CaptainZippi Feb 17 '26
Also, reviewing your studying after a short period - 15 to 30 minutes - is far more effective than a later review of more materiel.
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u/LordDiplocaulus Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26
Highlighting is super useful for me. Re-reading in lieu of recall, not so much. You highlight the key points, then you force yourself to remember them. Highlighting helps me a lot because I read many books at the same time, and highlights help me keep track of what I read before. It is also extremely useful for referencing afterwards, when you do your own writing, since I highlight bearing in mind my research goals.
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u/Weak_Airline2346 Feb 17 '26
Plug for the learning scientist. Org site. Amazing resource for both students and educator to learn evidence based practices for learning.
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u/grayjelly212 Feb 17 '26
Highlighting and rereading worked perfectly fine for me. I'm sure it also depends on the person.
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u/The-Sonne Feb 17 '26
I have zero interest in scientific studies that do not include me personally. I've seen too many done for political reasons and I've seen too much s*** applied prescriptively when people are individuals with individual needs. Stop following the stupid herds
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u/Mad_Maddin Feb 17 '26
My favorite way to study is: Write down your notes based on topics on card or alternatively on some note taking apps.
Then form questions out of those notes and ask an unsuspecting victim study partner.
Then switch around, give them your notes, because they sure af didn't make their own notes and have them ask you questions.
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u/Timeless710 Feb 17 '26
Re-reading includes quizzing yourself for things you knew.
Are you serious?
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u/CelesticRose Feb 17 '26
If it was a formula or something similar, i would just write it down over and over again, like legit 50+ times
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u/BrokenPickle7 Feb 17 '26
I took a bunch of certs awhile back and instead of taking the 2 to 3 month course for each one I just used flash cards and self made quizes. Id study each one for 2 to 3 hours a day for a week then I'd take the practice test and if I passed that I took the real one.
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u/Ab47203 Feb 17 '26
"rereading is terrible" "just take notes on what you remember then reread the parts you don't"
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u/PmMeUrTinyAsianTits Feb 17 '26
Do... do people thing highlighting itself is studying? Highlighting is something you do while studying to make the actual studying easier later, to find the important bits.
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u/DayTripper01 Feb 17 '26
You're just comparing highlighting to taking notes. Taking notes and looking at them helps with performance obviously
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u/BogdanPradatu Feb 17 '26
This just sounds like learning things like poetry, which applies for things like medical school, law school, history etc.
I guess it works, but I'm not sure how long it will stick. Me, for example, I could learn a subject for the exam, but I wouldn't hold that information long term and I don't have a better technique either.
I switched career after 5 years of doing something (+ university) and now I have a hard time remembering things from my first job.
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u/Rogueaudrea Feb 17 '26
Oo thank you for sharing the article!! I'm working on my dissertation at the moment and tying various learning theories into my anatomy classes. Planning to take a look at this one now too!
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u/Friendly_Hivemind Feb 17 '26
I think I will make some other posts that go more in detail. Didn't expect this to blow up. Have found the articles during my research too lol
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u/scotaf Feb 17 '26
That's interesting but I believe the trick your using to remember the material is the writing part. Reading and highlighting are both just reading techniques. Writing out the key information is the trick that commits it to memory.
In HS I did the read/highlight technique and graduated middle of my class.
In college I used the read/highlight, and then write technique and graduated in the top 2% of 10,000 students. Aced a test the professor said no ever aced. Got A's in a senior course (three classes) on compiler design that the department chair taught that had no A's the year before. I don't think I was the smartest student in some of my classes...but I knew how to study.
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u/The-Great-Wolf Feb 17 '26
I always rewrote the material in as short and concise notes I could, often organizing them in tiers and such
I would have a peer ask me what do they mean and ask one another questions before the exam
I finished with 10/10 final exam and 9.89/10 overall grade for my courses.
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u/Mr-Klaus Feb 17 '26
I also find writing works wonders. When I'm in a class/training, I write down notes in my own words and it works out way better than just listening and studying (reading) later.
Do I read the notes? rarely, but I always seem to remember what was taught if I was actively writing during the lesson.
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u/rolltied Feb 17 '26
Looked into this but never really found a good method. I did really well in a school environment, but when getting professional certifications I completely break down and fail miserably even if I feel I know the material really well.
I haven't found a good method yet that works for me, and I've supposedly learned "how to take a test".
Idk guess I have to find a new way to learn as an adult. The old ways don't seem to work anymore.
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u/The_Celtic_Chemist Feb 17 '26
My tip for tests: study the thing you struggle with right up until the last moment. Then drill it in your head, repeating it over and over. When you receive your test, immediately write it on the back. You can now proceed to the rest of the test without having to worry about remembering that one thing when the question comes up. Will you retain this information? Probably not. But you also probably won't be in a situation where you need to know the capital of Taiwan without having a phone you could easily search this on.
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u/Effective_Pie1312 Feb 17 '26
I never ever thought that highlighting and reading were a form of study. That was the starting point. I highlight the important information. Then I write a concise summary in my own words on flash cards. Then I do as you say memorize then turn it over and recall what was on the card. I am also a perfectionist so my card had to be in perfect script, not errors with a beautiful diagram. So I probably spent an hour creating the perfect card.
My biggest challenge was not the materials but reading and comprehending what the test questions were asking. I find it incredibly irritating when tests are written in a way to trick the reader.
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u/Netloc91 Feb 17 '26
I use smells. Very strong unique smells while reading can cause easier recall when needed, I used chapstick or markers that smell like fruit but that shows my age.
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u/steveatari Feb 17 '26
I always found outlining helpful. I would put the chapter, bullet point the subchapter, add any notes, important standout phrases, bold key words, definitions and then next section.
When reviewing later... or 15 minutes before the test, it would give the overall summary and jog my memory or implant last second spellings or relevancy.
I also bombed a lot of things because it wasn't enough time but the method felt sound and very helpful. It was simply my procrastinating and adhd that was the issue.
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u/theoddhedgehog Feb 17 '26
My best method is a combo of rewriting my notes and teaching it to someone. I say a combo because sometimes it was making study guides for students I was TAing, sometimes it was drawing diagrams for my classmates to make sure we all got the same information, and sometimes it was rambling to a captive audience (boyfriend, friends) who know nothing about the subject but will ask me questions when they don’t understand which forces me to connect it to topics I’ve already explained to them. 10/10 recommend
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u/Demonweed Feb 17 '26
I haven't done it in decades, but I learned to get good at shoplifting because I hated the used books I had at university my freshman year. Not only did they feature extensive highlighting, but its seemed like the previous owners were just marking up the texts at random rather than doing so with any appreciation for especially meaningful passages. I was distracted by the foolishness of these previous owners.
In my second year, a housemate's girlfriend taught me her trick for stealing large books. She would visit the bookstore while munching on cereal from a mostly empty box. The box was big enough even for something like a calculus or physics text. Yet if you could slip a book inside unnoticed, then you could walk right out with no suspicion. I refined her method by purchasing a beverage or a cheap paperback on my way out, thinking that made my visits even less suspicious.
Long story short, I never used a highlighter myself, and I always suspected what this study has confirmed with data.
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u/Any_Possibility_1984 Feb 17 '26
Since you're writing your thesis on this topic, can I ask why this happens to be the case? Is it because self-quizzing practices recall at the same time as you're learning new information?
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u/Marcozy14 Feb 17 '26
I feel like reading something, and then immediately teaching it to someone else is the absolute best way I retain information.
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u/tylawdaboss Feb 17 '26
I was just putting a learning plan together last night where I researched active vs passive reading and learned about 10 different studying methods. I've learned the SQ3R method works best for me along with Mind Mapping for note taking.
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u/mannie3moon Feb 17 '26
Ten years of expensive private K-12 education and I learn how to study on Reddit. Fml, fmpl (and also thank you, OP!)
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u/Ok_Two_2604 Feb 17 '26
Flash cards are garbage. Put questions and answers on a piece of paper, one line each so there’s a bunch per page, and slide another piece of paper down. As you start getting answers right, slide the paper faster until you can just shoot out answers fast.
I went from a C student to mostly As and it got me through law school and the bar exam. Being able to answer the questions you know quickly so you have more time to noodle on the hard ones is a huge help, if you don’t have untimed tests.
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u/aciakatura Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26
What I also found useful was rewriting the info into more organized notes. It would force me to engage with it in a different way - how different concepts connected together instead of just trying to remember it - and also I now have more useful notes for revising.
Edit: to add to this, another thing you should be doing is applying it soon after you learn it. For stuff like maths formulas, you do practice problems. For less practical and more theoretical stuff, you apply it to something in real life and think about how it works.