You will find blurting recommended by students on every revision forum and by most university study-skills services. It costs nothing, needs only a blank page, and shows you within ten minutes what you actually know about a topic. Done badly, though, it turns into copying out the parts you already knew. This guide covers how to do it well.
What blurting is
- Pick one topic or one lecture.
- Close everything. Set a timer for five to ten minutes.
- Write down everything you can remember: key terms, definitions, arguments, examples, diagrams, how it links to other topics.
- Open your notes and check. Add what you missed in a different colour.
- The different-colour parts are your revision list for next time.
Why it works
Blurting is a form of free recall, which is retrieval practice: pulling information out of memory rather than looking at it. Retrieval is one of the two study techniques rated high utility in a large review of the research (Dunlosky et al., 2013). It also does more than help with facts. In one study, students who practised recalling a text did better on questions that needed inference than students who spent the same time building a concept map with the text open (Karpicke and Blunt, 2011).
It also fixes a problem with rereading. When you read your notes, everything looks familiar, so you feel ready. A blank page gives you no such comfort. It shows exactly what is missing.
A blurt page is also meant to look messy. NoteMate's founder, Ben, who graduated with a first, puts his approach the same way: focus on interacting with your lectures rather than on making good-looking notes.
How to blurt at university level
A-level blurting often produces a list of key words. University exams want more, so push the page further:
- Write explanations, not labels. "Chunking" is a label. "Chunking groups items so several count as one, which is how people get round the working-memory limit" is an explanation.
- Include the evidence. Which study, researcher or case supports each point? Exams reward knowing why you believe something.
- Draw the links. How does this lecture connect to the one before it, or to another module? Arrows between ideas are worth more than a longer list.
- Add the critique. What are the limitations, the counter-arguments, the debates? That is usually where the higher marks are.
A worked example
Say you are blurting a first-year economics lecture on price elasticity of demand. After eight minutes your page has: the formula (percentage change in quantity demanded divided by percentage change in price); elastic means above 1, inelastic below 1; necessities tend to be inelastic, luxuries elastic; an arrow to the previous week's lecture on demand curves.
Checking against the notes, you add in a different colour: the other determinants the lecturer listed (how many substitutes there are, the share of income the good takes, and how much time buyers have to adjust); and the link to revenue, that cutting the price of an elastic good raises total revenue while cutting the price of an inelastic one lowers it. That revenue point is exactly the kind of application an exam question asks for, so it becomes the focus of your next session, along with a flashcard for each determinant you missed.
Common mistakes
- Peeking. Glancing at your notes halfway through turns recall into copying. Let the page be incomplete.
- Skipping the check. The writing shows you what you know; the checking shows you what you do not. Without it you only practise what you already had.
- Blurting too much at once. A whole module on one page is too broad. One lecture or one topic at a time.
- Doing it once. The second and third blurts, days apart, are where it pays off. Spacing reviews out beats one long session (Cepeda et al., 2006).
Blurting alongside other techniques
Blurting is good at finding gaps. Flashcards are good at drilling the specific facts you keep missing, so turn each different-colour addition into a card. Past paper questions are good at practising the answer the exam wants, so finish a topic by planning one. Our guide to revising for university exams puts these together into a six-week plan, and how to revise lecture slides covers a version of blurting that uses slide titles as prompts.
If you want the flashcards without writing them, NoteMate makes a deck from the lecture recording itself, and the free lecture-to-flashcards tool does it from text you paste in.
Sources
- Dunlosky, J. et al. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266
- Karpicke, J. D. and Blunt, J. R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1199327
- Cepeda, N. J. et al. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks. Psychological Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354