The Best Study Trick You're Not Using: Teaching Someone Else

You have probably had the experience of thinking you understood a topic, then realising as soon as someone asks you a question about it that you understood it less than you thought. This is one of the most important insights in education: there is a difference between recognising information (passive understanding) and being able to explain it clearly (genuine understanding).

Teaching what you have learned — to a friend, a younger sibling, a parent, or even an imaginary student — is one of the most effective ways to bridge this gap.

The Science Behind It

This technique is related to what physicists call the Feynman Technique, named after Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, who was famous for his ability to explain complex physics to anyone. The principle: if you cannot explain something simply, you do not understand it well enough.

When you try to explain a concept, your brain must:

1. Retrieve the information from memory (active recall — one of the strongest encoding activities)
2. Organise it into a coherent sequence
3. Translate it from technical jargon into plain language
4. Identify the logical relationships between parts of the concept

Each of these steps deepens your understanding and memory of the material far more than re-reading or re-listening does.

How to Use It Practically

Step 1: Choose a topic you think you know. Pick something you have studied recently — not something brand new.

Step 2: Explain it out loud as if teaching a Grade 9 student. No notes. Use plain language. If you find yourself saying "it's just kind of like..." without being able to finish the sentence, that is a gap.

Step 3: Note where you got stuck or vague. These are your learning gaps. You thought you knew this; now you know exactly what you do not know.

Step 4: Go back to your notes and fill the gaps. Study only what you could not explain.

Step 5: Explain it again. This second attempt should be significantly smoother.

Real Subjects, Real Applications

This works brilliantly for content-heavy subjects:

• Life Sciences: Explain the steps of protein synthesis, or describe how the nervous system works, as if to someone who has never studied biology
• History: Narrate the causes of the Cold War as if explaining to a friend who was not in your class
• Business Studies: Describe what a SWOT analysis is and how to conduct one
• Accounting: Walk through the double-entry principle and explain why every transaction has two sides

It also works for Mathematics — but differently. In Maths, "teaching" means working through a problem step by step and explaining why each step is done, not just what to do. "I substitute zero for y because I am looking for the x-intercepts, where the graph crosses the x-axis."

The Study Partner Version

If you can find a study partner, alternate teaching sessions are extremely valuable. You teach one topic; they ask questions. Then they teach another topic; you ask questions. The questions are essential — they expose gaps that a monologue can hide.

If no study partner is available, teaching to a parent or sibling still works even if they know nothing about the subject. Their questions ("why does that happen?" "what does that word mean?") will often hit your exact points of shallow understanding.

The Mirror Version

Talk through a topic in front of a mirror or, even better, record a voice note explaining the concept. Play it back and listen critically. Is the explanation actually clear and complete? Would a person who did not already know the topic understand it?

Most students find the first time they do this exercise revealing — and humbling. The gaps surface fast. But that is exactly the point. You have turned passive reviewing into active diagnostic testing, and you know exactly what to study next.