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Most learners default to rereading because it feels productive — retrieval practice feels harder, and the difficulty is the mechanism that makes it work.
Roediger and Karpicke compared two study strategies: rereading a passage versus taking a practice test. After one week, the testing group remembered 50% more material. Karpicke, Butler, and Roediger then found that even students who had experienced the benefit of testing still preferred rereading when choosing a strategy. The illusion of fluency from rereading creates a false sense of competence that actively steers learners away from the method that works.