Reading: Matching Headings: Question 8

A Ask a group of students how they prepare for an exam, and the overwhelming majority will describe some version of the same routine: rereading a textbook chapter, copying out notes, or highlighting key passages in a different colour each time they review the material. These strategies share a common appeal (they feel productive, and the material grows steadily more familiar with each pass) yet decades of research in cognitive psychology suggest that this growing sense of familiarity is a poor predictor of how well the information will be remembered weeks later.

B A far more effective strategy, according to that same body of research, is what psychologists term the testing effect: the finding that the act of retrieving information from memory, such as answering a practice question without looking at one's notes, produces stronger and more durable learning than an equivalent amount of time spent simply rereading the same material. Crucially, the benefit appears even when no feedback is given after the retrieval attempt, and even when the attempt is unsuccessful.

C The effect has been demonstrated repeatedly under controlled conditions. In one influential design, researchers divided students into two groups after they had studied a passage: one group restudied the same passage a second time, while the other group instead took a short recall test on it without seeing the passage again. When both groups were tested on the material a week later, the group that had originally taken the practice test substantially outperformed the group that had simply reread the passage, despite having spent no additional time with the original text.

D One explanation offered for this pattern is that retrieval is a "desirable difficulty": because reconstructing a memory from cues is more mentally effortful than recognising familiar words on a page, it forces the brain to rebuild and reinforce the pathways associated with that memory, in a way that passive rereading, which requires comparatively little effort, does not.

E Increasingly, teachers are being encouraged to build brief, low-stakes retrieval opportunities directly into lessons (a short quiz at the start of class on the previous week's material, for instance, or flashcards revisited at increasing intervals) rather than reserving testing for graded assessments alone. Interestingly, students asked to rate which method helped them learn best often rank rereading above self-testing, apparently because the fluency of recognising familiar text is mistaken for genuine mastery of it.

The passage has five paragraphs, A–E.

List of Headings i. Study methods that feel effective but often are not ii. Actively recalling information strengthens memory more than reviewing it again iii. Experimental evidence comparing two revision strategies over time iv. A possible explanation for why effortful recall strengthens memory v. Bringing self-testing into everyday classroom teaching vi. The role of sleep in consolidating new information vii. Why learners often misjudge which methods are helping them viii. The financial cost of standardised testing in schools

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

Paragraph A Paragraph B Paragraph C Paragraph D Paragraph E