Pre-testing: quiz yourself before you open the textbook
Wrong answers before you study can still boost A-level memory — here’s the evidence
The pretesting effect is counter-intuitive: you attempt questions on material you haven’t learned yet, get most of them wrong, then study the answers — and you remember more than if you’d only read. For A-levels, that means a quick blind attempt at end-of-chapter questions or a past paper extract before your notes can prime your brain to encode what matters.
Research support
Richland, Kornell & Kao (2009) showed that unsuccessful retrieval attempts can enhance subsequent learning. Recent work shows interpolated pretesting helps memory for related and distinct text. A 2023 review in Educational Psychology Review synthesises prequestioning and pretesting effects across materials including text and video. Evidence: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19751074/ — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11557671/ — https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-023-09814-5
How to use pre-testing ethically
- Spend 3–5 minutes guessing at key terms or past questions before reading a new section
- Don’t worry about wrong answers — note them and read specifically to fix those gaps
- Follow immediately with self-testing again after study (retrieval + feedback)
- Combine with your specification: target objectives you haven’t covered yet
This is not the same as guessing in the real exam. It’s a deliberate study sequence: attempt → feedback → re-test.