so in this post a few days ago, one of the study tips I mentioned was ‘practise recall not recognition’, and I’ve since discovered that quite a few people don’t know what that means and why it helps, so I figured I’d explain!
WHAT IS RECOGNITION AND WHY ISN’T IT HELPFUL?
Recognition means teaching yourself to identify and acknowledge information that you’ve seen before. This means that, if you’re shown a piece of information in class, you’re able to recognise it and think, ‘hey - I know that!’.
The issue with this is that you don’t actually know and understand that piece of information; you simply know that you’ve seen or heard it before. In an exam context, unprompted, you won’t be able to rewrite that information - let alone expand on it - because it’s not in your head.
Examples of recognition-based study methods include:
Highlighting or simply rewriting notes
Flashcards which just show the information
All of these are passive studying techniques, meaning that they’re not difficult and, in turn, that they’re not engaging your brain with the information that you’re trying to learn.
WHAT IS RECALL AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Recall means training yourself to remember information unprompted; if somebody were to ask you (outside of your class) what x means, you should be able to tell them without checking your notes or textbook.
The importance of this is that it’s exactly how most exams work. Unless your education institute uses open-book format, you’re never going to have the information in front of you to ‘just check through’ when answering a question. In an exam situation, you have to be able to pull that information straight from your brain in order to write an answer and that is exactly why recall-based studying is so key to learning.
Examples of recall-based study methods include:
Practising past papers/exam questions
Question/answer style flashcards
Flashcard-based activities on sites such as Quizlet
Setting yourself mini-tests
Writing out everything you can remember, and then adding in the missing information using a different colour
Getting other people to test you
Some of these things do ultimately sound a little basic, but it’s something that I’ve been taught about a few times, and it’s honestly one of the biggest mistakes that students make when studying for exams! I really hope this post does a decent job at explaining the concept to anybody who hasn’t heard of it before, but if anybody has any questions or add-ons, feel free to message me or send an ask!
