Which Study Method Should You Try?

Eight quick questions about how you actually study. At the end you get one study method to try this week, with a guide to get started.

Most learning style quizzes sort you into a type, usually visual, auditory or kinesthetic, and promise you will learn faster once your studying matches it. This one doesn't, because that promise hasn't held up when researchers tested it. It asks about what you're studying instead: where the material comes from, what you'll have to do with it, and what keeps going wrong. Then it points you to the method built for that problem.

What to Expect from the Quiz

You answer eight multiple-choice questions. There is no sign-up and no email form, and your result appears as soon as you answer the last one. You can go back and change an answer at any point.

Each answer points to one method. Two questions count double, because they say the most about what you need: what usually goes wrong, and what would help you most right now. The question about your deadline doesn't score at all. It changes the advice on spacing out your reviews. If two methods come out almost level, the result shows you both.

The quiz recommends one of four methods, each with a full guide on the blog:

• SQ3R for getting more out of what you read
• Cornell Notes for turning lectures into notes you can review
• Mind mapping for seeing how ideas connect
• Spaced repetition for remembering material until the exam and after it

Are Learning Styles Real?

People do have preferences. Plenty of students would rather watch a video than read a chapter. What the evidence doesn't support is the next step: that you learn more when teaching is matched to your preferred style. Researchers call this the meshing hypothesis.

In 2008, Harold Pashler and colleagues reviewed the learning styles literature for Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Very few studies had used a design that could actually test the meshing idea, and several of those that did contradicted it. The authors concluded there was no adequate evidence base for building learning styles assessments into general education.

Later work points the same way. In a 2019 study of undergraduate anatomy students, Polly Husmann and Valerie Dean O'Loughlin found that most students didn't study in line with their VARK learning style, and the ones who did got no better grades.

So treat your quiz result as a method that fits what you're studying right now, not a label for how your brain works. Take the quiz again when your course or your deadline changes, and the answer may change with it.

Which Study Methods Work Best?

Two techniques have the strongest evidence behind them. When John Dunlosky and colleagues rated ten common study techniques in a 2013 review, only two earned their "high utility" rating: practice testing and distributed practice. Rereading and highlighting were rated low.

In practice that means two things: quiz yourself instead of rereading (that's active recall), and spread those sessions out over days and weeks. Whatever method the quiz gives you, add both. Our spaced repetition calculator turns your exam date into a review schedule you can put in your calendar.