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Why the evidence rates the three most common study habits low, and how to keep each one with an attempt from memory built in.
Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.
You will turn highlights into margin questions, write summaries with the book shut and check them, and reread only what an attempt missed.
You met all three habits along the way: lesson 1 set rereading against the blank page, lesson 2 turned notes into questions, and lesson 7 set highlighting against asking why. This lesson looks at the three habits directly, because they are what most students actually do. It keeps each one and changes what it is for.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Low utility | Dunlosky and colleagues' (2013) rating for techniques whose benefits were small, narrow or poorly supported across the studies they reviewed. |
| Margin question | A question written beside a paragraph, answered later with the paragraph covered. |
| Summary from memory | A short account of a section written with the book shut, then checked against it in a second color. |
| Idea unit | One main point of a passage — what a summary is checked for, one at a time. |
| Targeted reread | Rereading only the parts an attempt from memory missed, after the attempt. |
Highlighting, summarizing and rereading all have the same weakness: each can be done with the page in front of you, so nothing has to come from memory. The fix is not to give them up but to put an attempt inside each one.
A highlight becomes a marker for a question. Keep at most one per paragraph — the sentence the paragraph is for. Write a question about it in the margin, with the answer left out. Later, cover the text and answer the margin questions.
A summary is written with the book shut. After a section, close the book and write the main ideas in a few sentences. Then open it and check in a second color: what is right, what is missing, what is wrong.
A reread comes after an attempt. Try first — the margin questions, the summary, the blank page — and then reread only what the attempt missed, and preferably on a later day than the first reading.
Another way: picture
Think of highlighter marks as sticky flags on a page. A flag is useful if you come back and do something at it. A page covered in flags tells you nothing, and a flag you only look at again does nothing.
Another way: steps
Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) reviewed ten common techniques. They rated highlighting, rereading and summarizing as low utility — not useless, but with benefits that were small, narrow or dependent on things most students do not have.
Highlighting marks a sentence and asks nothing of it. In most of the studies reviewed, students who highlighted did no better than students who simply read, and in some it may have hurt performance on questions that needed inference. Rereading does help a little, but less than retrieval, and a second reading straight after the first adds little; spaced rereading does better. Summarizing helped students who were already good at writing summaries. Many students need a good deal of teaching before it does, and a summary written with the book open can turn into copying in fewer words.
All three feel productive. Highlighting keeps your hands busy and leaves visible work behind. Rereading makes a page more familiar each time, and familiarity feels like knowing — the fluency lesson 13 took apart. Summarizing with the book open produces a tidy page. None of those feelings is a report on what you could write tomorrow with the book shut.
Before highlighting a paragraph, read all of it. Then ask which single sentence the paragraph is for — usually a definition, a cause, or a claim — and mark only that. Examples, details and asides stay plain. When you finish a section, turn every mark into a margin question. If a paragraph has no sentence worth a question, it gets no mark. Your highlighter now does one job: it tells you where the questions are.
Many new restaurant workers take a short food-safety course before or soon after starting. The FDA Food Code, which most states base their rules on, sets the key numbers: keep cold food at 41°F or below, hold hot food at 135°F or above, cook poultry to 165°F, and wash hands for at least 20 seconds.
A fictional cook, Tasha, reads the temperature section and, out of habit, reads it again. It feels solid. This time she shuts the booklet and writes a summary from memory: cold food at 45 or below, hot food at 135 or above, wash hands 20 seconds. She checks in red. The hot-holding and handwashing figures are right. Cold holding is wrong — 41, not 45. Poultry is missing entirely. Two readings had made all four feel covered; one summary from memory showed which two were not. She fixes 41°F first, restudies 165°F, and writes the summary again the next morning before her shift. All four come back.
"Highlighting is how I study." Highlighting is how you mark where to study. The studying is answering the question the mark points to.
"If I reread enough times, it will stick." Each pass feels better and adds less. An attempt, then a targeted reread, does more with the same time.
"My summary is good, so I know the section." A summary written with the book open shows you can shorten a text. Write it with the book shut.
"These habits are useless, so I should stop." They are low utility as usually done. With an attempt inside each, they become part of retrieval.
Read each paragraph, then keep one highlight.
Paragraph 3 of a psychology chapter: kept Classical conditioning pairs a neutral signal with something that already causes a response.
One mark per paragraph, on the sentence the paragraph is for.
Turn the kept highlight into a margin question.
Margin: What does classical conditioning pair, and what happens?
The question leaves the answer out, so answering it is retrieval.
Cover the text and answer.
Answer: a neutral signal with food; the signal starts to cause drooling ✓ (Pavlov's dogs)
Checked against the paragraph, it counts as known for today.
Keep the margin question for the spaced review.
Question list, review 2 days later: 1 new question from paragraph 3
The highlight's whole job was to produce this question.
Finish the section and shut the book.
Section: The causes of the Great Depression, 4 main ideas
Shutting the book is what turns the summary into retrieval.
Write the summary in a few sentences.
The 1929 stock market crash wiped out savings; banks failed; spending fell.
Three sentences, written without looking.
Open the book and check in a second color.
Red: missing high tariffs cut trade. Right: crash, bank failures, falling spending.
The check sorts each idea into right, missing or wrong.
Reread only the missing idea, then try again tomorrow.
Targeted reread: the tariff paragraph. Tomorrow: 4 of 4 ✓
The reread went to one paragraph, not the whole section.
Try before you reread.
Heading only: The water cycle. Written from memory: evaporation, precipitation, runoff.
The attempt comes first, so the reread has a target.
Check and mark what the attempt missed.
Missing: condensation
The mark tells you exactly what to reread.
Reread only the missed part, on a later day if you can.
A fictional student's economics chapter is already highlighted in yellow, most of every page. The quiz is in three days. Which use of the highlighted chapter is the better version of the habit?
A fictional chapter has 7 pages with 3 paragraphs on each. The student had highlighted about 9 sentences on every page. She keeps at most one highlight per paragraph and turns each kept one into a margin question. Complete the worked count.
Count the paragraphs.
7 pages × 3 paragraphs = a paragraphs
One question per paragraph is the most she will write; each paragraph usually carries one main idea.
Count the highlights she had.
7 pages × 9 highlights = b highlights
Most of the yellow marked supporting detail, not the idea the paragraph is for.
Count the highlights she lets go.
b − a = c left as plain text
Fewer, better markers: every kept highlight now becomes a question she answers with the text covered.
Four sentences a fictional student highlighted in an economics chapter. Decide what each highlight becomes.
| The highlight becomes | |
|---|---|
| Inflation is a general rise in prices | |
| Higher interest rates tend to slow spending | |
| The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 | |
| Bread that cost 2 dollars might cost 2.10 now |
Four study habits of a fictional student. Choose the better version of each — the same habit, with an attempt from memory built in.
| Better version | |
|---|---|
| Rereading the chapter twice | |
| Highlighting most of each page | |
| Summarizing with the book open | |
| Recopying lecture notes neatly |
A fictional student shuts her book after a section with 11 main ideas and writes a summary from memory. Checking it in a second color, she finds 6 ideas written correctly and 2 written wrongly. How many ideas did the summary leave out, and how many does she restudy?
Ideas left out: a
Ideas to restudy: b
A fictional new cook is studying for a food handler's test. After reading the section on safe temperatures, she shuts the booklet and writes a summary from memory, then checks it against the FDA Food Code figures. Choose her next move for each idea.
| In her summary | Next move | |
|---|---|---|
| Cold holding: 41°F or below | wrong | |
| Hot holding: 135°F or above | included | |
| Poultry cooked to 165°F | missing | |
| Hand washing: at least 20 seconds | included |
Lesson test: one question per skill, one attempt each, no hints. Your answers are checked when you submit.
Four sentences a fictional student highlighted in a biology chapter. For each, decide what the highlight becomes and choose the question she writes in the margin.
| The highlight becomes | Margin question | |
|---|---|---|
| Photosynthesis takes place in the chloroplasts | ||
| Enzymes lower the energy needed to start a reaction | ||
| Osmosis is the movement of water across a membrane | ||
| A raisin left in water swells |
You can put an attempt inside your usual habits. Take the next section you highlight, keep one mark per paragraph, and turn each into a margin question. Next: a mnemonic for vocabulary in a new language. You can stop in the middle of any of this. Closing the page is the whole of stopping — your place and anything you had typed are already saved, and the lesson opens again where you left it.
12. Your turn: rereading, done better, step 3
Tomorrow: reread the condensation paragraph, then write all four again
A targeted, spaced reread instead of another pass over everything.