Make It Stick quiz
Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel · 2014
Ten questions on the science of learning in Make It Stick, each with a short explanation. Take the quiz before you read the summary: the book's own advice is that trying to recall something is what keeps it.
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Question 1 of 10
You've read a chapter three times, and by the third pass it feels easy. Why does the book say you shouldn't trust that feeling?
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B. Familiar words read smoothly, and that ease passes for mastery Each pass makes the words more familiar, so reading gets easier. The authors call the result an illusion of knowing: fluency with the text gets mistaken for command of the ideas. Try explaining the chapter with the book closed and the gaps show up quickly.
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Question 2 of 10
Michael Young was close to failing his first semester of medical school. What change does the book credit with turning his grades around?
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D. Quizzing himself from memory instead of rereading his notes Young had been rereading his notes for hours a day and still doing badly. After coming across research on retrieval practice, he started stopping after each section to recall it and test himself. It felt slower and harder, but he went from near the bottom of his class to near the top.
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Question 3 of 10
Surgical residents learned a microsurgery technique either in one intensive day or in short lessons spread over several weeks. What does the book report?
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A. The spaced group performed the surgery better afterward A month later, the residents who had their lessons spread out did better than the one-day group, and some of the one-day group damaged a vessel too badly to finish the operation. Time between lessons lets some forgetting set in, and pulling the skill back up each time makes it stronger.
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Question 4 of 10
In a study the book describes, children practiced tossing beanbags into a bucket and were later tested from 3 feet away. Which group did best?
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C. Those who had practiced from 2 and 4 feet, never 3 The kids who practiced at 2 and 4 feet beat the kids who had practiced the exact test distance. Varying the target made them keep adjusting their throw, which built a more flexible skill. The authors use the study to show why mixed, varied practice beats repeating one thing over and over.
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Question 5 of 10
In one study, students learned to recognize painters' styles from examples either grouped by artist or mixed together. What happened?
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A. Mixing worked better, yet most students thought grouping had Seeing the artists side by side helped students notice what set each style apart, so they were better at classifying paintings they hadn't seen. Yet most of them insisted they had learned more from the grouped set. Interleaving feels slower and messier, which is exactly why learners underrate it.
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Question 6 of 10
Before a lesson, your teacher asks you to solve a problem you haven't been taught yet, and you get it wrong. What does the book say about that attempt?
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D. Struggling first helps the solution stick once it's taught The book calls this generation: trying to produce an answer before you're shown it. Even a failed attempt primes you to take in the solution. Errors that get corrected with feedback don't harm learning, despite the old belief that learners should be kept from making mistakes.
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Question 7 of 10
You're learning how heat moves from one object to another. Which study habit is an example of elaboration?
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B. Linking it to how a hot mug warms your cold hands Elaboration means giving new material more meaning: putting it in your own words and tying it to things you already know. Each connection gives you another route back to the memory later. Copying and highlighting keep you on the surface of the text.
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Question 8 of 10
You feel ready for tomorrow's exam. According to the book, what's the most reliable way to check?
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C. Answer practice questions and check them against the key Feelings of knowing are often wrong, and the people who know least tend to be the most overconfident. The book's fix is calibration: measure what you know against something objective, like a quiz or a classmate's question. Your wrong answers show you where to spend your effort.
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Question 9 of 10
A friend says she's a visual learner, so she only studies from diagrams and videos. What does the book say about this?
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B. Matching study to a style hasn't been shown to help learning Reviewers found few proper experiments testing whether teaching to a preferred style helps, and those few found no benefit. People do differ, the authors say, in things like prior knowledge and how well they organize new material. It works better to fit the method to the subject, like diagrams for geometry.
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Question 10 of 10
A student fails a math test and decides, "I'm just not a math person." Which response fits the book's argument?
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D. Effortful practice changes the brain, so ability can grow The authors argue that intellectual ability isn't fixed: effortful learning builds new connections in the brain. They draw on Carol Dweck's finding that people who believe ability can grow take on harder challenges and persist. Results from working-memory training, by contrast, have been inconsistent.
Make It Stick in one paragraph
Make It Stick argues that most people study in ways that feel productive but don't last: rereading, highlighting and cramming. Writer Peter C. Brown teamed up with cognitive psychologists Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel to turn decades of memory research into practical advice, told through stories of pilots, surgeons, coaches and students. The central claim is that learning that takes effort lasts longer. Test yourself, space out your practice, mix up topics, and don't trust how easy something feels.
The 9 key ideas of Make It Stick
Easy study fools you
Rereading, highlighting and cramming are the most popular ways to study, and they feel productive because the material becomes familiar. But recognizing a page is not the same as being able to recall or use what's on it, and gains from massed practice fade fast. The authors call this an illusion of knowing: the smoother the material feels, the more likely you are to overrate how well you know it.
Recall beats review
Recalling something from memory strengthens it far more than looking at it again, which makes a quiz a way to learn, not just a way to measure. In the authors' classroom research at a middle school in Columbia, Illinois, students did better on exam material they had been quizzed on than on material they had only reviewed. Flashcards and explaining from memory count too, and feedback makes them work better.
Space it out
Practice spread over days or weeks lasts longer than the same practice crammed into one session. When a little forgetting sets in between sessions, each review takes more effort to recall, and that effort is what makes the memory stronger. The gaps also give new memories time to consolidate. Cramming can get you through tomorrow's exam, but most of it is gone soon after.
Mix up what you practice
Working through one type of problem at a time feels efficient, but mixing types (interleaving) and varying the conditions build more durable skill. Mixed practice makes you work out which approach each problem needs, which is what real tests and real situations demand. In one study the book describes, skilled baseball players who practiced hitting a random mix of pitches later hit better than those who practiced one type of pitch at a time.
Struggle that pays off
Robert and Elizabeth Bjork's term desirable difficulties covers obstacles that slow learning down but make it last: spacing, interleaving, recalling instead of rereading, and trying to solve a problem before you've been shown how, which the book calls generation. Mistakes are part of the process as long as they get corrected. The difficulty has to be one you can overcome; a task that's simply beyond you doesn't help.
Connect it and reflect on it
Elaboration means giving new material more meaning: explaining it in your own words, linking it to what you already know, finding examples from your own life. Every connection is another route back to the memory later. Reflection combines several of these habits. After a lecture, a game or an operation, ask what happened, what worked and what you would do differently next time.
Check your sense of knowing
Everyone misjudges what they know. Familiar text feels mastered, memories get distorted, and people with the least skill often rate themselves highest. The book's remedy is calibration: test your judgment against something objective. Practice questions, quizzes and explaining an idea to someone else show you what you actually know, so you can spend your study time on the gaps instead of what you've already got.
Learning styles are the wrong question
The popular idea that you learn best when teaching matches your style, visual or auditory for example, lacks good evidence. People do differ in ways that matter, the authors argue: in prior knowledge, in determination, and in structure building, the knack of pulling the key ideas out of new material and organizing them into a mental framework. Learners who look for the rule underneath the examples also apply what they learn to new problems more easily.
Your abilities can grow
The authors push back on the idea that intelligence is fixed at birth. The brain keeps changing with effortful learning, and average IQ scores rose across the twentieth century. Drawing on Carol Dweck's research, they argue that people who see ability as something they can build take on harder challenges and keep going after failure. Memory techniques such as the memory palace help too, by giving you an organized way to retrieve what you know.
Has it held up?
The book's two central techniques have held up well. In a 2013 review of ten popular study methods, John Dunlosky and colleagues rated only two as high utility: practice testing and spreading practice out over time. Rereading and highlighting were rated low. A 2014 meta-analysis by Christopher Rowland found a reliable, medium-sized advantage for testing yourself over restudying the same material.
Interleaving turns out to depend more on what you're learning. A 2019 meta-analysis of 59 studies found a moderate benefit overall, largest for telling apart visual categories such as painters' styles and smaller for math problems. For lists of words, studying one category at a time actually worked better.
The case against learning styles still stands; the 2008 review the chapter draws on was co-written by McDaniel. The growth mindset research the book cites looks weaker than it did in 2014: two 2018 meta-analyses found weak overall effects on academic achievement, with some benefit for students from low-income backgrounds or at academic risk.
Sources
- Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58.
- Rowland, C. A. (2014). The effect of testing versus restudy on retention: A meta-analytic review of the testing effect. Psychological Bulletin, 140(6), 1432–1463.
- Brunmair, M., & Richter, T. (2019). Similarity matters: A meta-analysis of interleaved learning and its moderators. Psychological Bulletin, 145(11), 1029–1052.
- Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105–119.
- Sisk, V. F., Burgoyne, A. P., Sun, J., Butler, J. L., & Macnamara, B. N. (2018). To what extent and under which circumstances are growth mind-sets important to academic achievement? Two meta-analyses. Psychological Science, 29(4), 549–571.
Make It Stick book club questions
10 questions for a book club or a class, from first reactions to where the book can be argued with. They work best once everyone has finished it. For questions that work with any nonfiction book and a plan for the evening, see our book club questions guide.
- Which of your own study habits, from school or from what you are learning now, did the book call into question, and how did it feel to read that?
- The authors describe an illusion of knowing that comes from rereading and highlighting. When have you felt well prepared and then found out you weren't, and what gave it away?
- The book treats a quiz as a way to learn, not just a way to measure. Why do schools and workplaces still mostly use tests only to grade, and what would change if they didn't?
- Spacing and mixing up practice feel slower and less productive, even when they work better. Why is our sense of what is working so unreliable, and how could you learn to trust the effort?
- The authors argue that attempting a problem before you are taught it helps, even when you get it wrong. How does that fit the way you were taught, and how do you feel about mistakes?
- Many people feel certain they are visual or auditory learners. Why do you think the learning-styles idea is so appealing, and how did you react to the book's case against it?
- Later research found interleaving helps most for telling similar categories apart, like painters' styles, and less for other material. Which things you learn would benefit from mixing, and which might not?
- One chapter draws on growth mindset research that now looks weaker than it did in 2014. How much should a shaky section affect your trust in the rest of a science book?
- Pick something you are learning now, such as a language, an instrument or a skill for work. How would you redesign one week of practice using retrieval, spacing and mixing?
- If you teach, train or manage people, what would change if you added low-stakes quizzes and reflection after each project? What resistance would you expect, and how would you handle it?
How to remember Make It Stick
Taking the quiz above was already the most useful thing you can do with a book you've read. Pulling an idea out of memory strengthens it far more than reading a summary again; psychologists call it active recall. The questions you got wrong are the ideas that were slipping away.
What keeps them is timing. Memory fades on a curve, quickly at first, so the next review works best in about three days, then a week later, then a few weeks after that. Our review schedule calculator gives you the exact dates, and how to remember what you read covers the whole method.
