When it comes to mastering new concepts, one of the most effective techniques is active recall—actively trying to retrieve information from memory. While flashcards and quizzes are popular tools for this, there’s an even more powerful method: creating your own practice questions. Not only does it test what you know, but it also deepens your understanding by forcing you to engage more critically with the material.
Here’s how and why you should start creating your own practice questions to supercharge your learning.
Why Create Your Own Practice Questions?
Before diving into the “how,” let’s talk about the “why.” Creating practice questions taps into several cognitive science-backed benefits:
Active Engagement: Formulating questions requires you to engage deeply with the material.
Higher-Order Thinking: Writing questions pushes you beyond basic recall, into analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Identifying Gaps: When you struggle to write a question about a topic, it’s a clue that you don’t understand it well yet.
Ownership of Learning: Generating your own questions fosters a sense of control and involvement, increasing motivation and retention.
Understand the Learning Objective
Before you start crafting questions, clarify what you’re trying to learn. Are you memorizing facts, understanding concepts, or applying knowledge?
For example:
If you’re learning biology, your goal might be to understand how the circulatory system works.
If you’re studying programming, the objective might be to understand how recursion functions in code.
Knowing the end goal helps you design more targeted and useful questions.
Use Bloom’s Taxonomy as a Guide
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a framework that outlines different levels of cognitive learning. Use it to create a variety of question types:
Remembering: What are the main arteries in the human body?
Understanding: Explain how blood circulates through the heart.
Applying: Given a patient with clogged arteries, what might be the symptoms?
Analyzing: How does the circulatory system interact with the respiratory system?
Evaluating: Why might a bypass be better than angioplasty in certain cases?
Creating: Design a basic health plan for someone with a heart condition.
Start with easier questions and gradually move to higher levels to build a comprehensive understanding.
Turn Headings and Notes into Questions
When reviewing study materials, don’t just read passively. Convert chapter headings, subheadings, or bolded terms into questions.
For instance, if your textbook section is titled “The Water Cycle”, create questions like:
What are the stages of the water cycle?
What causes evaporation to occur?
How does human activity impact the water cycle?
This habit encourages deeper engagement with your study materials and makes your review sessions more productive.
Create Real-Life Scenarios
Application-based questions are especially useful for deeper learning. Try to create scenarios that require you to use the information in context.
For example:
Business: If a company’s profit margin drops but sales increase, what might be the cause?
Medicine: A patient presents with symptoms X, Y, and Z. What might be the diagnosis?
Math: A store offers a 25% discount on a $60 item. What’s the final price?
These types of questions test your understanding in practical, real-world situations.
Quiz Yourself Regularly
Once you’ve created a bank of practice questions, use them! Set up a quiz schedule to regularly test yourself. This reinforces knowledge and helps move information from short-term to long-term memory.
You can:
Use flashcard apps like Anki or Quizlet to input your questions.
Group questions by topic for targeted review.
Challenge a study partner with your custom questions.
Reflect and Improve
After answering your questions, go back and evaluate:
Which questions were too easy or too difficult?
Did some questions feel vague or confusing?
Were there topics you couldn’t create questions for?
Use these reflections to revise both your questions and your study approach. Over time, your questions will become sharper and your understanding more refined.
Final Thoughts
Creating your own practice questions is one of the most underrated but powerful study strategies out there. It transforms passive learning into an active, engaging, and personalized process. By doing so, you not only prepare yourself for exams more effectively but also gain a deeper, more lasting understanding of the material.
So next time you’re studying, put down the highlighter and pick up a pen. Start writing your own questions—and take charge of your learning journey.