Active Recall | Study Method, Tips & Examples

The active recall study method involves trying to retrieve information from your memory instead of simply rereading notes, outlines, or textbooks. Students can use flashcards, quizzes, brain dumps, and other methods to practice active recall.

What is the active recall study method?

Active recall is a study method in which you test yourself to pull information directly from your memory as opposed to rereading study materials, watching lecture recordings, or memorizing notes. As its name suggests, the active recall study method requires you to actively recall—or remember—information as opposed to passively consuming it.

During active recall, you don’t look at materials that could provide the answer, as you do when practicing some other study techniques. Instead, active recall relies on the information you are able to remember on your own.

How does active recall work?

Active recall works by requiring your brain to retrieve information instead of simply recognizing it. Research shows that practicing active recall can improve long-term retention, an effect often called the “testing effect.”

Your brain, when studying, relies on two processes: storage and retrieval. Many students regularly practice storage (e.g., during reading, rereading, and highlighting), which makes the brain good at recognizing information on a page. Fewer people practice retrieval, which requires you to produce information from memory without rereading it. Your brain gets better at the tasks you practice, so repeatedly recalling what you’ve learned makes it easier to access that information when you need it.

Think of active recall like learning to cook a new dish. The first time you make something new, you’ll need to follow the recipe closely. The second and third times you make it, you might remember some key ingredients or steps, but you’ll probably still need to refer back to the recipe. But after making the recipe many times, you’ll be able to confidently cook without a written guide.

How to do active recall in five steps

You can practice active recall by following these five steps:

• Review information: Study a section of your textbook, notes, or lecture slides enough so that you absorb the core concepts. You don’t need to memorize every detail, but you should have a basic understanding of what you’re trying to learn.
• Close your materials: Close or put away your books, notebooks, computer, and anything else that could act as a safety net when you test yourself.
• Recall information from memory: Try to recall what you just learned. You can do this by answering questions, writing down everything you remember, explaining a concept aloud, or drawing a diagram from memory.
• Check and target gaps: Open your materials again and check how accurately you recalled the information. If you missed things or got some things wrong, don’t worry. Learning from your mistakes is actually a useful part of the process. Identify any gaps in knowledge, mistakes, missing details, or misunderstandings. These gaps and errors show you what needs additional review. You could create flashcards, quiz questions, or extra notes to help you better recall what you missed this time.
• Try again after some time: Return to the material later and test yourself again. Practicing active recall at intervals instead of trying to learn everything at once helps you better retain information. Choose review intervals that suit your needs and take deadlines, such as exams, into account.

It’s generally best to apply active recall to one segment of information at a time. For instance, if you’re studying a unit from a history book about the French Revolution, you could start by reading the section on its causes. Then, close your book and try to recall the main factors that led to the revolution, such as social inequality, financial problems, and Enlightenment ideas. Check your notes to see what you missed, then move on to the next section. Once you’ve covered the whole unit, test yourself on how the different events and causes connect.

The best active recall techniques

There are many ways to test yourself using active recall. A few of the best techniques include:

• Flashcards: Write a question or prompt on one side of a flashcard and the answer or details on the other. Look at the question or prompt and test yourself on what you can remember before flipping over the flashcard. To do this, you can use physical cards or a flashcard app (e.g., Active Recall or Quizlet).
• Exam or quiz questions: If you have access to past exams or quizzes, try answering questions from them. Just make sure that you’re using questions from the right papers and that using these materials to study doesn’t violate your educational institution’s code of conduct.
• Questions generated from notes: Create questions based on your notes. Look for core concepts or key details and create questions that elicit them as answers. You can use AI to help you do this; for example, Quillbot’s AI Chat can create a list of active recall questions based on content you paste into it.
• Feynman technique: Teach someone about your topic by explaining it in simple, easy-to-understand language. If you don’t have anyone to teach, pretend you’re teaching a pet or imaginary children. Named after Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, the Feynman technique involves explaining a concept in simple language to help identify gaps in your understanding. The modern study method draws on the value Feynman placed on being able to explain complex ideas clearly. The same general technique  is sometimes referred to as “rubber ducking,” for when you explain the information to an inanimate object, like a rubber duck.
• Summarizing: Explain the information in a short text or list of bullet points using only your memory. This helps you check how well you’ve understood the core concepts. To check your active recall when using summarizing, you could compare your answer to a summary created by an AI-powered tool, like Quillbot’s Summarizer, but always check AI-generated summaries against reliable sources.
• Blurting: Speak or write down everything you can remember about a specific topic. Don’t worry about structuring your response or organizing information. The goal is to do a quick brain dump of whatever you remember. Although speaking may be easier and faster, writing everything down will help you check more easily what you got right and wrong.
• Drawing from memory: For topics that are more visual, process-based, or which involve spatial relationships or interconnected parts, try creating a diagram, mind map, or a drawing from memory. For example, a biology student may try to draw a cell and label its parts. Or a student learning a new language may map out a sentence and label the grammatical relationships between elements.

Active recall and spaced repetition

Spaced repetition refers to reviewing information at set intervals that increase in distance from each other over time. Experts recommend using spaced repetition to more effectively build long-term memory because the human brain forgets a large part of new information within the first 24 hours of learning it.

Simply speaking, by reviewing information just before your brain is set to forget it, you “reset” this forgetting process and retain information for longer. That said, there is no clear-cut interval that works for all people across all contexts. The best intervals depend on how familiar you are with the material and how long you need to practice to remember it. And you don’t need to wait until you’re about to forget something; instead, revisit it regularly to check what you can still remember.

Combining spaced repetition with active recall offers you a way to study that research has shown to help students better retain information. The two techniques address different aspects of learning. Active recall focuses on retrieving information, and spaced repetition focuses on distributing practice over time.

How to build an active recall study schedule

You can build your own active recall study schedule that integrates spaced repetition to maximize the learning effect.

1. Define your goal and timeline

Identify what you are studying for, like an exam or other important deadline. How much time is left until that milestone? Get or print a calendar or planner where you can map out your schedule.

2. Break your material into manageable topics

Divide the subject you’re studying into smaller sections, such as chapters, concepts, or groups of vocabulary. This makes it easier to test yourself on specific information and track your progress.

3. Schedule structured study sessions

Before you can apply active recall, you have to store the relevant material in your brain, so plan a structured study session for each topic or segment. Start by reading the material and making sure you understand the main ideas. You can also supplement this with making notes or outlines or reviewing slides from a class or lecture.

4. Test yourself immediately after reading

After studying one of your topics or a short section of material, close your books or other materials and try to recall the main ideas. Try writing a summary, explaining the concept aloud, or drawing a diagram. You could also use flashcards or convert your notes into questions to test yourself.

Then check your answers against your books and notes. Correct mistakes and identify gaps in your understanding. Doing this immediately after learning gives you an opportunity to practice retrieving information as soon as possible.

5. Schedule review sessions

Once you’ve completed your initial study session for each topic (and practiced active recall immediately after), schedule additional sessions to review this material over time. This incorporates spaced repetition and helps you move the information to your long-term memory.

One approach to planning sessions is the 1-3-7 schedule. To apply this, add review sessions to your calendar for each topic one day after you first study the topic, three days after that, and seven days after that. This is a practical starting point rather than a universally optimal schedule, and you should adjust the intervals based on how well you recall the material and when you need to know it.

When you review, you should dedicate at least half of your study time to active recall. It’s also a good idea to mix up the types of recall techniques you choose.

6. Track your progress and adjust your schedule accordingly

As you study, track how well you recall each topic. This makes it easier to see which topics need additional review and which ones you’ve already mastered. You can track your progress using a calendar, planner, flashcard app, or even just pen and paper. Create a log of study sessions, topics, and how well you recalled the relevant information.

Then, adjust your schedule based on your progress. Schedule additional review sessions for topics you find difficult. And for topics you recall well, you can space out your sessions so you review them less frequently.

Active recall examples by subject

Active recall works across different subjects, but the best technique depends on what you’re learning. Here are some ways to use active recall in different subjects.

Common active recall mistakes

Active recall is a powerful study method, but only if you practice it correctly. These are some common active recall mistakes to avoid to make sure you get the most out of your study sessions:

• Looking at your materials too soon: Don’t expect yourself to be able to recall information in just a few seconds. Peeking at your notes too quickly defeats the purpose of active recall. Give yourself at least 10–30 seconds to struggle for the answer before checking your materials, although depending on your existing knowledge and the material at hand, you may need to give yourself more time.
• Not checking your answers: Always check what you’ve recalled against your materials. If you don’t check your answers, you may end up teaching yourself incorrect information.
• Ignoring knowledge gaps: When you realize that you can’t recall certain details or recall them incorrectly, that knowledge gap is an opportunity to improve. Build additional resources and schedule additional study sessions to practice this material further.
• Memorizing without understanding: Memorizing isolated facts doesn’t equate to understanding core concepts. Mix factual questions with prompts that ask you to explain a concept in your own words, compare ideas, or apply what you’ve learned to a new problem.
• Only practicing with a friend: Studying with people can be motivating, and competitions can gamify your review sessions. But it’s also important to practice active recall on your own. If you study with someone who supplies the answer for you, you’re not giving your own brain the time it needs to practice retrieving the information.
• Relying only on flashcards: Flashcards are great for learning definitions, vocabulary, and key facts. But they might not be the best fit for every subject and learning goal. Use different active recall techniques depending on the material. And even when you do use flashcards, try combining them with another technique to test your ability to respond to different recall tasks.
• Using questions or prompts that are too vague: The questions or prompts you use during active recall should be specific to the material you’re studying. A prompt like “Explain the main idea” is too broad to guide effective recall. Instead, ask a focused question, such as “What is the role of the direct object in a sentence in Spanish?”
• Being too vague with your answers: Likewise, make sure your answers contain enough detail to demonstrate that you understand what you’ve recalled. For example, instead of answering “A direct object receives the action,” explain that the direct object is the person or thing directly affected by the verb’s action.
• Cramming instead of spacing: Stuffing the day before an exam with self-testing leaves little time to revisit forgotten material or target gaps in your understanding. Start well before your deadline and spread your review sessions over time to give yourself more time to identify and address weaknesses.

Frequently asked questions about active recall

Are flashcards active recall?

Yes, flashcards can help you practice active recall, as long as you use them correctly.

As its name suggests, active recall relies on actively retrieving information from your memory instead of passively reviewing it. So flashcards are only an active recall technique when you give yourself time to answer the prompt or question from memory without flipping them over. If you’re simply reviewing flashcards without testing yourself, you’re not practicing active recall.

Quillbot’s AI Chat can help you create a list of flashcard questions and answers based on the study material you feed it.

Other interesting articles