W hen you prepare for an exam, what do you do? If you are like many students, you probably start revising in earnest a few days before the exam, re-reading relevant sections of your notes and textbooks, highlighting or underlining the relevant sections, and repeating this process until you believe you have learned all the necessary information.
If so, then you are probably not revising in the most effective way. Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) reviewed ten strategies that students adopt while studying. Based on the available scientific evidence, they rated re-reading and highlighting/underlining as ‘low utility’, meaning that they were not very effective. In short, re-reading and highlighting/underlining do not commit the information to memory over the long term. But if these strategies are not effective, then how should you study?
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