TL;DR: Most of the study habits people trust most – rereading and highlighting – are near the bottom of the evidence pile. The two techniques with the strongest and most consistent research support are retrieval practice (testing yourself) and spaced practice (spreading study over time). This is not opinion. In 2013 a team of cognitive psychologists reviewed hundreds of studies and rated ten common techniques by utility; later meta-analyses reinforced the same order. Below, we take that record and rank 12 techniques from strongest to weakest evidence, explain what each one actually does, and tell you where it belongs in a real study week. Learn like a student who reads the research, not the marketing.
“What is the best way to study?” is one of the most searched learning questions every year, and most of the answers are folklore passed down from people who never checked whether their method worked. The good news: this is one of the few areas of self-improvement where the science is unusually settled. A large body of controlled experiments has tested the same techniques again and again, and the results are remarkably consistent. The problem is that the techniques students use most are not the ones the evidence supports.
This piece does one thing: it ranks 12 study techniques by the strength of the research behind them, so you can spend your limited hours on the methods that pay off.
How we ranked them
The anchor is the most rigorous public review of the field: Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan and Willingham, “Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques,” published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest in 2013. That team evaluated ten widely used techniques and assigned each a utility rating of high, moderate or low, based on how well the technique worked across different materials, learner ages, and testing conditions. We then layered in two techniques that the later “science of learning” literature (Weinstein, Madan and Sumeracki, 2018) treats as well supported but that sat outside the original ten: dual coding and concrete examples.
Our ranking combines three signals: the Dunlosky utility rating where one exists, the consistency of the effect in follow-up meta-analyses, and how easy the technique is to use correctly without training. The result is a CEOtudent editorial synthesis – a single ordered list built on published ratings, not a new experiment. Where the underlying rating is public, we show it, so you can see exactly what is evidence and what is our ordering judgment.
The ranking
CEOtudent Evidence-Strength Ranking of 12 Study Techniques (editorial framework, built on published utility ratings)
| Rank | Technique | Dunlosky (2013) utility rating | What the research consistently shows | Where it belongs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Retrieval practice (self-testing) | High | Recalling material from memory produces far more durable learning than re-studying it. One of the most replicated effects in the field. | Your default. Close the book and reproduce it. |
| 2 | Spaced (distributed) practice | High | The same total study time spread across days beats one long session. The gaps are where consolidation happens. | Schedule review sessions, do not cram. |
| 3 | Interleaving | Moderate | Mixing related problem types in one session improves the ability to choose the right method later, though it feels harder. | Mixed practice sets, not blocked drills. |
| 4 | Elaborative interrogation | Moderate | Asking “why is this true?” and answering forces connections to prior knowledge and improves retention of facts. | When learning factual material you can reason about. |
| 5 | Self-explanation | Moderate | Explaining each step to yourself while solving or reading deepens understanding and transfer. | Problem-solving and dense text. |
| 6 | Dual coding | Not in original 10 (well supported later) | Combining words with a matching visual (diagram, timeline) creates two retrieval routes to the same idea. | Anything with structure or process. |
| 7 | Concrete examples | Not in original 10 (well supported later) | Abstract ideas stick better when paired with specific, varied examples. | Concepts, definitions, principles. |
| 8 | Summarization | Low | Helps only when the learner is trained to write good summaries; otherwise weak and inconsistent. | Advanced learners, done actively. |
| 9 | Keyword mnemonics | Low | Useful for a narrow set of tasks (vocabulary, names) but fragile and slow to build. | Foreign vocabulary, targeted lists. |
| 10 | Imagery for text | Low | Forming mental pictures while reading gives small, unreliable gains. | Marginal support at best. |
| 11 | Highlighting / underlining | Low | Almost no benefit on its own; can even hurt by creating a false sense of mastery. | Only as a first pass before real study. |
| 12 | Rereading | Low | The most common technique and one of the least effective. Feels productive because of familiarity, not learning. | Replace it with retrieval practice. |
The single most useful takeaway from this table is the distance between rank 1 and rank 12. Rereading is the technique students report using most, and it sits at the bottom. Retrieval practice – the deliberate act of testing yourself – sits at the top and is barely used because it feels harder. That difficulty is the point. The cognitive scientists Robert and Elizabeth Bjork call effortful methods that feel worse but work better “desirable difficulties.” Comfort and learning are often inversely related.
The research record behind the top techniques
Rankings are only as good as the studies under them. Here is the verified evidence trail for the methods that matter most, in plain-text citation form.
Key studies supporting the top-ranked techniques
| Technique | Representative study | What it established |
|---|---|---|
| Retrieval practice | Roediger and Karpicke, “Test-Enhanced Learning,” Psychological Science, 2006 | Students who were tested on material retained far more a week later than students who restudied it, even though restudiers felt more confident. |
| Spaced practice | Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted and Rohrer, meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin, 2006 | Across hundreds of comparisons, spacing study sessions reliably improved long-term retention over massed study. |
| Interleaving | Rohrer and Taylor, study on mixed mathematics practice, 2007 | Learners who interleaved problem types outperformed those who practiced in blocks when tested later, despite worse performance during practice. |
| Overall framework | Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan and Willingham, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2013 | Rated ten techniques by utility and identified practice testing and distributed practice as the two with high, broad support. |
| Modern synthesis | Weinstein, Madan and Sumeracki, Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 2018 | Consolidated the applied evidence into six teachable strategies, adding dual coding and concrete examples to the practical toolkit. |
Notice what these have in common. The strongest techniques all share a mechanism: they force the brain to do effortful work at the moment of learning – to generate, retrieve, or reconstruct rather than passively review. The weakest techniques all let you stay comfortable. If you remember one principle instead of twelve techniques, remember that one.
Turning the ranking into a study week
A ranking is useless until it changes what you do on a Tuesday night. Here is how the top techniques combine into a simple system, using the CEO-and-student lens: decide your priorities like a CEO, then do the hard reps like a student.
- Replace rereading with retrieval. After reading a section, close it and write down everything you remember. Check, then repeat what you missed. This single swap moves you from rank 12 to rank 1.
- Space it. Instead of one three-hour block, do three one-hour sessions across the week. Put the sessions in your calendar as commitments, not intentions.
- Interleave your practice. When you drill problems, mix the types rather than doing 20 of the same kind in a row. It will feel messier and work better.
- Explain as you go. Ask “why” and answer out loud or on paper. Elaborative interrogation and self-explanation cost almost nothing and add real retention.
- Draw the structure. For anything with a process or hierarchy, pair the words with a quick diagram. That is dual coding, and it gives you a second way back to the idea.
If you want to go deeper on the mechanics of fast skill acquisition, our guide on how to learn anything in 20 hours with an AI tutor applies these same principles to a focused sprint, and our overview of meta-skills that help you learn every skill faster puts them in a broader career context. Because skills now expire faster than ever – see our data on the half-life of skills in 2026 – learning efficiently is no longer a student concern. It is a working adult’s core advantage.
FAQ
Why does rereading feel so effective if it is not?
Because familiarity feels like knowledge. When you reread, the text gets easier to process, and your brain misreads that fluency as mastery. Retrieval practice removes the illusion: when you try to recall without the page in front of you, you find out what you actually know.
Is retrieval practice just flashcards?
Flashcards are one form of it, and a good one if you actually try to recall the answer before flipping. But retrieval practice is broader: any method that makes you produce the material from memory – free recall, practice questions, teaching it to someone – counts. The act of retrieval is what matters, not the tool.
Does this apply to adults learning on the job, not just students?
Yes. The mechanisms are about how human memory consolidates, not about age or setting. Spacing, retrieval and interleaving work for a professional learning a new tool exactly as they work for a student learning biology.
What about learning styles – should I match my method to whether I am a visual or auditory learner?
The “learning styles” idea – that matching instruction to a preferred style improves learning – has repeatedly failed to hold up in controlled tests. Dual coding works for almost everyone because combining verbal and visual information helps memory in general, not because some people are “visual learners.”
If I only change one thing, what should it be?
Stop rereading and start testing yourself. That is the largest, most reliable improvement available, and it costs nothing but a moment of discomfort.
Sources and further reading
- Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., and Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58.
- Roediger, H. L., and Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention. Psychological Science, 17(3).
- Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., and Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed Practice in Verbal Recall Tasks: A Review and Quantitative Synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3).
- Rohrer, D., and Taylor, K. (2007). The Shuffling of Mathematics Problems Improves Learning. Instructional Science, 35.
- Weinstein, Y., Madan, C. R., and Sumeracki, M. A. (2018). Teaching the Science of Learning. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 3(2).
- Bjork, R. A., and Bjork, E. L. Research on desirable difficulties, University of California cognitive psychology program.
This content was compiled with the support of AI following in-depth research, then written and prepared for publication by the CEOtudent editorial team.
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