Started Practicing Active Recall

A few days ago, I read a book titled “科学的根拠に基づく最高の勉強法” (Maximizing Learning: The Best Evidence-Based Techniques), authored by the Japanese doctor Kosuke Yasukawa, who currently practices medicine in the United States.

I decided to read this book after learning about it on a book-review channel on YouTube. The reviewer introduced the book as a very insightful read that challenges conventional wisdom about efficient learning methods, greatly piquing my interest. The next day, I purchased the e-book version on Kindle, and read it in just one sitting.

As expected, it was an eye-opener of a book to say the least, upending my long-held views about how to efficiently retain the knowledge you acquire from textbooks and dictionaries, with a direct bearing on foreign language acquisition, my primary area of interest.

Yasukawa, who was born and raised in Japan, graduated from the prestigious Medical Department of Keio University in Tokyo. What’s remarkable about him is that he not only passed the Japanese National Medical Practitioner Examination, but also passed the equivalent exam in the U.S. within the top one-percent scoreband of all candidates. Soon after, he was accredited to practice medicine in America, a remarkable feat for someone who studied medicine entirely in a non-English speaking environment.

Based on voluminous scientific literature, Yasukawa puts forward in this book a few salient points regarding how one can acquire and retain new knowledge in the most efficient manner.

 

The point that stood out to me the most is that, while repetition is necessary for successful assimilation of knowledge, merely reading the same passage in a textbook multiple times is actually a very inefficient way to master the learning points.

When you read the same passage the second or third time, you might feel that the reading has gotten smoother and easier compared to the first time—a phenomenon known as the fluency illusion, where you mistake familiarity with the text for actual acquisition of knowledge. You might think that you’ve gotten smarter, but the learning points won’t stick in your head in the long term.

According to Yasukawa, the key to successful acquisition of knowledge lies in the practice of active recall, a process in which you proactively try to recall the learning points covered in the segment you have just read, instead of passively waiting for them to sink into your head by sheer repetition.

The method is remarkably simple. After you have studied a certain passage, close the book, take out a blank piece of paper, and try to write down as much as possible what you have just learned in that segment. By racking your brain in this way, your mind will try to capture and consolidate the fresh information in your head, leading to long-term retention of newly acquired knowledge.

Since reading this book, I’ve started to practice active recall in my daily study of French vocabulary. Although it’s too soon for me to definitively conclude that this method works, I can already feel that the words I learn are more securely retained in my memory compared to before. I’m curious to see how much impact it can have on my future learning trajectory towards conversational fluency.