Draw your notes: the memory boost A-level students overlook
Quick sketches beat neat paragraphs for recall — backed by the ‘drawing effect’ studies
You don’t need to be ‘good at art’. Experiments show that drawing simple representations of ideas — even in tens of seconds — can more than double how much you remember later compared with writing the same words. For A-level revision, that means diagrams next to definitions, not decoration.
Evidence
Wammes, Meade & Fernandes (2016) ran seven experiments on free recall: drawing consistently beat writing and several other encoding strategies; benefits held with limited time and longer lists. Artistic quality did not predict the benefit. Evidence: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/17470218.2015.1094494 — summary: https://uwaterloo.ca/psychology/news/need-remember-something-better-draw-it-study-finds
A-level-friendly drawing habit
- After each subtopic, draw a 30-second ‘memory sketch’ — cycles, flows, axes, brain areas, whatever fits
- Label only after you’ve tried from memory on a later day
- Use the same visual layout each time so the page becomes a retrieval cue
Combine with dual coding: say the idea aloud while you draw once, then draw again in silence next session.