Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

by Peter C. Brown

rereading is largely ineffective, why do students favor it? One reason may be that they’re getting bad study advice. But there’s another, subtler way they’re pushed toward this method of review, the phenomenon mentioned earlier: rising familiarity with a text and fluency in reading it can create an illusion of mastery.

One of the best habits a learner can instill in herself is regular self-quizzing to recalibrate her understanding of what she does and does not know.

Students who have been quizzed have a double advantage over those who have not: a more accurate sense of what they know and don’t know, and the strengthening of learning that accrues from retrieval practice.