How to Write Good Prompts

Retrieval practice prompts should be focused. A question or answer involving too much detail will dull your concentration and stimulate incomplete retrievals, leaving some bulbs unlit. Unfocused questions also make it harder to check whether you remembered all parts of the answer and to note places where you differed. It’s usually best to focus on ... See more

Cues and elaborative encoding

If you find yourself struggling with these prompts, it can be helpful to add a cue, like this:

Q. Typical chicken stock aromatics:

• onion


• carrots


• celery


• garlic


• ??? (herb)

A. Parsley

But make sure the cue doesn’t render the prompt trivial: it’s important that you exert some effort to retrieve the answer from memory. Consider th... See more

We could write a prompt which simply asks: “What do you need to make chicken stock?” But this isn’t precise enough: should we recall the quantities or just the names of the ingredients? How much chicken stock are we making? This isn’t focused enough: because it’s asking for so many details simultaneously, it’s unlikely to sharply activate all the m... See more

In some sense, procedures are lists. So we can start by using the cloze-deletion method we used for the ingredient list:

Q:

1. ???


2. Bring to a simmer on low heat (this will take about an hour). We use low heat to produce a bright, clean flavor: at higher temperatures, the stock will both taste and look duller.


3. Lower heat to maintain a bare simmer for an h

... See more