Test yourself using questions based on how you’ll use the material later; don’t just recite it verbatim

There’s no expense involved, nor does it require extra time. The only change is the practice method: replace “reciting it verbatim” with “creating questions based on future usage.” The real challenge is figuring out exactly how you’ll apply this material later on.

A meta-analysis pooling more than 40 years of research, with 67 published and unpublished papers, 122 experiments, 192 transfer effect sizes, and 10382 people in total. Compared with a control that looked again but was not tested, practice testing transferred learning to other situations, effect size d=0.40 (95% CI 0.31 to 0.50). Transfer was strongest when the test used a different question type, application and reasoning problems, medical-diagnosis-style questions, or near-meaning cue words. Transfer was weakest when stimulus and response were swapped, when material had been seen in first learning but never tested, and on example-style problems. Three moderators strongly affect whether positive transfer appears: whether response format matched between practice and test, whether retrieval practice with detailed feedback was done, and whether the first test was answered correctly. The authors also corrected for publication bias two ways. Moderator effect sizes changed little, but the intercept estimate was clearly pushed down: when none of the conditions above hold, positive transfer often does not appear

Pan SC, Rickard TC (2018). Transfer of test-enhanced learning: meta-analytic review and synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 144(7), 710-756. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000151

The term “memorization” usually bundles two distinct activities: repeatedly reading or highlighting material, and actively recalling it after closing the book. The former receives the lowest rating in a review that ranked ten learning strategies; for those ratings themselves, see item 16 (avoid relying on highlighting, repeated reading, or summarization as primary methods). What matters here is the latter: actively recalling information without looking at the source, as described in item 14 (self‑testing after closing the book). This practice should also be spread across several days, as noted in item 15 (distributed practice). Begin by determining how you’ll ultimately use the material—whether you’ll need to select answers on a test or make judgments in a real‑world setting—and then create questions that mirror those situations. It’s also valuable to reverse the question–answer order during practice, because the meta‑analysis showed that transfer is weakest in that direction; both orientations should be practiced.