You may have heard of the term Active Recall before, but not know what it means. In fact, it’s one of the most effective ways to revise for your exams. This blog post will outline what active recall is, some examples of it in action, and how Study Dog can help you use Active Recall to supercharge your A Level revision.
What is active recall?
Active Recall refers to methods that involve actively remembering information from memory, rather than passively reviewing or reading notes. This can help to strengthen long-term retention of the information, and reorganise your brain so it can work more effectively.
A 2006 study found that students who used active recall methods retain 80% of the material after one week, compared to only 34% for students who only reread notes. This shows the power of these revision methods and why they are so important for your A Level revision.
How can I use Active Recall in my A-Level revision?
There is a range of active recall methods that are suitable for A-level study. Luckily, Study Dog covers those that are most accessible, meaning a membership to Study Dog lets you take advantage of this highly effective revision strategy.
Flashcards
Flashcards are an excellent opportunity to put active recall into practice. Study Dog’s Flashcards are available at the end of each lesson in our courses, and ask you to identify a key term or concept within the content you have just covered. You can mark them as correct or incorrect, and repeat rounds of terminology revision until you are comfortable with all of them.
Using flashcards helps you to remember definitions of key terminology and build up a context of the content you have covered. With this, you can build confidence in answering exam questions and demonstrate factual knowledge. This is very important to unlock AO1 marks for knowledge and understanding.
Quizzes
Quizzes are also a fantastic way to utilise active recall in order to further your understanding of your A-level subjects. Study Dog’s Quizzes are set to a time-limit, ensuring that you take the appropriate time to complete the questions.
Multiple choice, open-ended and true/false questions are a great way to ensure that you know the content you need to cover, and allow you to recall the factual evidence you have covered. By utilising quizzes, you give your brain the opportunity to weigh up the facts you already know and see which areas of the course you need to look back over.
Practice Papers
Practice Papers are one of the best methods to revise for your A-level exams, and utilise the active recall strategy in a great way. We provide practice papers for our Economics, Politics and Sociology members, which help you to get used to the style, structure and timing of your actual A-level exams.
By completing practice papers, not only do you get a feel of how the exam is structured, but they also encourage your brain to recall the information that you already know in a formal essay or short-answer response. By completing practice essays in timed conditions, you will force your brain to think about the information you know on a particular topic. This will increase your confidence in remembering evidence and putting it into a formal exam scenario.
How can Study Dog help?
Study Dog is a learning platform built for 21st-century A Level students. This blog post has demonstrated the different active recall methods that we have available to students. These are just some of the great features that you can take advantage of as a Study Dog member.
With exams fast-approaching, make sure to join Study Dog now to make the most of your revision time, and grow confident in your active recall of factual knowledge.
