One of my favourite students that I tutored back in 2019 was the hardest working child I had ever met. She seemed to study smart. She had colour coded notes for every subject, piles of assessment books and the ability to sit at her desk for hours, focused on her work. Books open, highlighter in hand, notes being copied out line by line. Her mom would bring us healthy snacks while we worked and you could sense her quiet pride – that of having a disciplined child who put in the work, and didn’t have excuses. Surely this would show up in her results.
Then her papers came back, and the grades didn’t match the effort.
This is one of the most frustrating experiences in a Singapore household and one of the most common. The problem isn’t that your child is lazy or incapable. The problem is that they’re using the wrong tools for the job. Studying harder and studying smarter are not the same thing, and research is unambiguous about which one actually works.
The Busyness Trap
There is a particular kind of studying that feels productive without actually being productive. Re-reading notes. Copying out definitions. Highlighting passages in three colours. Making beautiful mind maps that are never looked at again.
These strategies share something important: they are passive. The brain receives information, but it doesn’t have to do anything with it. When the brain doesn’t have to work, it doesn’t build the neural pathways that make information stick.
In one widely cited study published in ‘Psychological Science’, psychologists Jeffrey Karpicke and Henry Roediger found that students who repeatedly re-read material performed dramatically worse on delayed recall tests than students who used retrieval practice. Retrieval practice is the act of actively pulling information from memory. Same time investment. Radically different results.
The Experiment: Students studied prose passages and were divided into two groups. One group repeatedly studied the material (restudying), while the other group actively practiced recalling the information from memory (testing).
The Findings: While restudying yielded better results in the short term, students who engaged in repeated testing remembered significantly more information when tested a week later.
The Flaw in Student Perception: The researchers also found that students consistently predicted that restudying would yield better long-term results, highlighting a common misconception in how people evaluate their own learning
This matters because re-reading is the default study strategy for many students in Singapore. It feels safe and familiar. It produces a false sense of familiarity with the material that students (and parents watching from the doorway) mistake for actual learning.
What the Research Actually Says
On re-reading vs retrieval practice: Repeated testing produces far larger gains on delayed recall than repeated studying. The advantage compounds over time. A week after studying, the gap between the two groups is even wider than it was a day later. One method is closing a textbook and trying to recall what you just read. Another is answering practice questions without looking at the answer first. Yet another is explaining a concept aloud without notes. These are uncomfortable. That discomfort is the learning happening.
On spaced repetition: A landmark review by Cepeda and colleagues published in ‘Psychological Bulletin’ examined 254 studies involving over 14,000 observations. They found a consistent pattern: distributing practice across multiple sessions always outperforms cramming the same material into a single sitting. This is even when total study time is identical. Studying a topic for 30 minutes on Monday, revisiting it briefly on Wednesday, and reviewing again on Friday produces better retention than studying it for 90 minutes on Sunday night.
On Singapore students specifically: An international study polling around 540,000 students across 72 countries found that young Singaporeans experience the highest levels of test and grade anxiety globally. Separately, 89% of Singapore students cite study and work commitments as their primary source of stress. These are students who are clearly putting in hours, but anxiety and long study sessions do not translate into learning. They translate into exhaustion.
Study Smart
The science of learning has identified a small number of strategies with strong evidence behind them.
Retrieval practice. After reading or watching something, put it away and try to recall it from memory. Write down everything you remember. Answer questions without looking at your notes first.
Spaced repetition. Spread study sessions out over time rather than blocking all revision into one sitting. Revisit material at increasing intervals: after one day, then three days, then a week, then a month. Apps like Anki are built on this principle and are particularly useful for fact-heavy subjects like biology or history.
Interleaving. Instead of practising one type of problem until mastery, then moving to the next, mix different types within a single session. Interleaving consistently produces better long-term retention and the ability to apply knowledge flexibly, which is what exams actually test.
Elaborative interrogation. Ask why and how, not just what. “Why does this happen?” “How does this connect to what I learned last week?” Students who ask these questions during study sessions retain information significantly better than those who simply read and accept.
How to get YOUR Child to Study Smart
If your child is spending four hours a day on revision and still not seeing results, the first question isn’t “are they working hard enough?” It’s “what are they doing with those four hours?”
If my student had spent 90 focused minutes using retrieval practice, spaced repetition, and active problem-solving she would almost always have outperformed the student who spends four hours highlighting and re-reading passively. She would also have been less anxious, less burned out, and more confident, because she would have had real evidence that she knew the material.
I did end up working on her psychological barriers a lot more than I thought I would have. My student had developed a set way of studying ever since primary school, and it became my job to undo some of that learning. Colour coding, highlighting and so on gave her great joy so I did let her keep those. I introduced spaced repetition, followed by retrieval practice and eventually, learning how to ask ‘why’. She actually began to enjoy studying a little bit more.
The shift doesn’t require more time. It requires different habits, and parents who understand what effective studying actually looks like are better placed to help their children build them.
At Curio, many of our tutors are trained not just in subject content but in how learning actually works. If your child is putting in the hours without seeing the results, we can help them work out why, and what to change.
Register at curio.sg
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