What Is Rereading?
Rereading is the passive act of going back over material you have already studied — flipping through notes, rereading chapters of a textbook, or reviewing highlighted passages over and over. It is a familiar and comfortable way to study, in large part because it requires relatively little mental effort compared to actively testing yourself.
What Is Active Recall?
Active recall is the process of actively stimulating your memory while learning. It is the process of actively stimulating your memory during the learning process. This might mean answering practice questions, explaining a concept out loud without glancing at your notes, or jotting down everything you can remember about a topic before cross-checking its accuracy against your source materials.
Why Rereading Feels Productive but Usually Isn’t
Rereading creates a sense of familiarity with the material, which can easily be mistaken for genuine mastery. Reading a passage multiple times can make it feel familiar and comfortable, but recognizing information when it is right in front of you is a very different skill than being able to pull up that same information independently when asked a question on an actual exam.
That space between "feeling familiar" and "actually knowing" is precisely why students who rely heavily on rereading can sometimes feel blindsided when practice questions uncover gaps they didn't even know existed.
Why Active Recall Is More Powerful Than Rereading
Active recall works because it simulates the actual retrieval process you need in an exam. You are not just finding an answer—you are practicing the skill you will need on test day: being able to pull a particular piece of information out of your memory without any visual cues or prompts.
- It reveals actual gaps in your knowledge, because you cannot fake your way through active recall like the one you can when you are passively reviewing and tricking yourself into thinking you “know” something.
- It encourages long-term retention, because the process of retrieval reinforces the neural pathways involved in that information.
- It mimics the real testing environment and develops the same retrieval skills you will need when answering HESI questions without your notes.
- It makes wasteful study time more apparent. If you are actively practicing something and you cannot remember it, it is obvious that you need to review that more.
Using Active Recall for HESI Prep
Use practice questions as your primary review tool, not as an afterthought to reread notes first. Try to verbally explain a concept , hide your notes , then compare your explanation with your source material and see how accurate it was .Make your own flashcards and actively quiz yourself rather than passively flipping through a pre-made set.
Use the “blank page method” – write out everything you can remember about a topic from memory, and then compare it to your notes to see what you are missing. Instead of trying to squeeze your entire active recall into one session, spread your practice of recall over several days.
When Rereading Still Matters
However, rereading is not useless – it can be useful in some limited circumstances. Initial exposure to new material, when you encounter a concept for the first time and require a basic understanding before you try active recall. Quick clarification when active recall highlights a specific gap and you need to briefly refer back to your notes to correct a misunderstanding.
Creating context. Especially for complicated topics where it helps to get the big picture before you break things down into bite-sized chunks that you can remember. The key difference is that rereading is best when used as a supplement, not as your primary method of studying.
Creating a Study Schedule with Active Recall
- Read the new material once for a general idea, then go straight into active recall practice rather than re-reading it multiple times.
- Practice questions after each study session. Test your retention of what you just studied. Do not move on without self-checking.
- Actively review your mistakes. Do not just note the correct answer and move on, but work through why the correct answer is correct.
- Do not just review the material once. Periodically review previously tested material. Spaced repetition will help you retain the material long term.
Last Thoughts
Rereading is comfortable and familiar, but active recall is always more effective for true retention (the kind you need on test day) — and doubly so for a content-heavy, application-based exam like the HESI. So if you focus your studying on practice questions, self-testing, and active retrieval, rather than passive review, you will be able to develop a more accurate picture of what you actually know, and increase your ability to recall that information precisely when it counts most: during the exam itself.
