Pretesting
Pretesting is when you test yourself on material before you have studied it. You guess the answers, get most of them wrong, and that guessing primes your brain so the real answers stick better once you actually learn them.
The trick is that the wrong guesses are not wasted. When you try to answer a question you cannot answer yet, your brain pays more attention and gets curious about the gap. So when you meet the correct answer in the lecture or reading, it lands harder and sticks longer.
It feels backwards because you fail a lot at first. That is fine. Studies keep finding that people who guess before learning remember more than people who just read the same material, even on a test weeks later.
You do not need to know anything to start. Bad guesses are the point. The questions just need to match what you are about to study.
Marco has a biology lecture on the heart next week. Before he reads a single page, he tries to answer 10 questions about how blood moves through it. He gets 7 wrong. When he reads the chapter, the answers to those 7 jump out at him, and they stick.
- 1Pick the topic you are about to study, before you read anything.
- 2Make or grab a short set of questions on it, even if you have no idea.
- 3Try to answer each one. Guess when you are stuck, do not skip.
- 4Now read or watch the material and check what you got wrong.
- 5Pay extra attention to the answers you missed, those are the ones that will stick.