Practice Testing: What It Is and Why It Works

Practice Testing is one of the two techniques with the highest utility. This must be distinguished from high stakes testing: Practice Testing instead involves any activity where the student practices retrieval of to-be-learned information, reproduces that information in some form, and evaluates the correctness of that reproduction against an accepted ‘correct’ answer. Any discrepancy between the produced and “correct” information then forms a type of feedback that the learner uses to modify their understanding. Practice tests can include a range of activities that students can conduct on their own, such as completing questions from textbooks or previous exams, or even self-generated flashcards. According to Dunlosky et al. (2013a), such testing helps increase the likelihood that target information can be retrieved from long-term memory and it helps students mentally organize information that supports better retention and test performance. This effect is strong regardless of test form (multiple choice or essay), even when the format of the practice test does not match the format of the criterion test, and it is effective for all ages of student. Practice Testing works well even when it is massed, but is even more effective when it is spaced over time. It does not place high demand on time, is easy to learn to do (but some basic instruction on how to most effectively use practice tests helps), is so much better than unguided restudy, and so much more effective when there is feedback about the practice test outputs (which also enhances confidence in performance).