Originally written in Traditional Chinese: 滿分不是讀出來的，是考出來的
Next Saturday, October 17, is the first sitting this year of Taiwan's university entrance English listening test, run by the College Entrance Examination Center. A second sitting follows on December 12.
This week, many high school seniors are spending their evenings flipping through English handouts once more, from page one.
I have worked through about 140 full sets of real TOEIC test questions. Overseas editions, old editions from libraries, anything I could find. Eventually I earned perfect TOEIC scores in listening, reading, speaking and writing.
But my point is not the score. It is that across those 140 tests, I almost never reread.
I tested myself. Take a test. Check the answers. For each mistake, skip the explanation. Cover it and explain again why it was wrong. What I could not explain, I had not learned.
Later I learned this had been measured. In 2006, Roediger and Karpicke at Washington University in St. Louis had 120 college students read short passages. One group reread them. The other covered the text and tested themselves.
After five minutes, rereading won slightly: 81% to 75%. It really does feel more effective.
Two days later, it flipped: 68% for self-testing, 54% for rereading. After one week, the gap grew: 56% to 42%.
Rereading makes you feel you know it. Testing yourself makes you actually know it.
AI makes understanding almost too easy. A confusing grammar point gets explained in three seconds, until you nod. That nod is the feeling of rereading, not of testing yourself. Understanding is not learning. Being able to explain it is.
Rereading is not useless. It builds familiarity. But familiarity can fool you, right up until the test lands on your desk.
Preparing for any exam, or supporting someone who is? Before bed tonight, ask three questions:
- What did I learn yesterday?
- What did I learn three days ago?
- What is still fuzzy?
Say it aloud or write it down, without opening the book. What you cannot explain is what you study tomorrow.
AI can help: paste in today's material and ask for five questions. Cover it, answer first, then check.
Someone once asked me how I studied my way to a perfect score. I said I did not study my way there. I tested my way there.
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