Use 'Elaborative Interrogation' to Challenge Yourself While Studying

When you’re studying, you can try to simply memorize phrases and facts, but you should really be trying to retain concepts for the long term. One way you can do that is by using “elaborative interrogation,” a technique that helps you learn more effectively by challenging the facts you’re going over.

What is elaborative interrogation?

Inquiry is an important part of learning, which is why it’s fundamental to some of the best study methods, not only do you have to memorize what’s presented to you, but you have to dig in and understand it by asking questions. Usually, when employing SQ3R or KWL, you ask questions before you start reading, so you can find the answers. When you try elaborative interrogation, you ask questions as you go.

Asking questions helps you find answers and establish connections that aren’t immediately apparent in the text, letting you really understand what you’re going over.

How to study with elaborative interrogation:

To make this work for you, you need to assess the facts of your material. Say you’re studying accounting. One fact you’ll learn is that you journalize debits before credits. You can get by and do well enough on tests just by knowing that fact without thinking any deeper about it—but if you really want to understand the material, it would be helpful to figure out why you journalize debits before credits. When doing elaborative interrogation, you ask yourself these kinds of questions after looking at your facts, so you really grasp the meaning of it all. Here, your elaborative interrogation is, “Why do we journalize debits before we journalize credits?” Your next question can be, “Why do we record debits as a positive number?” The reason it’s done this way is to reflect incoming money more easily on the credit side.