Teaching Someone Else as a Study Technique – How Does it Work?

Most revision techniques are things you do on your own, but explaining a topic to someone else can be a useful way to check how well you understand it. It can help you think about the subject more clearly and spot anything you still need to work on. Read on to learn why teaching someone else can be such an effective study technique and how you can use it in your revision.

This article is correct as at 13 October 2026.

You may not have thought that teaching someone else could be a study tool in its own right, but the truth is that it can be a powerful one, with many students who use this technique tending to show better knowledge retention and deeper understanding than those who revise passively. Indeed, among psychologists, this solution is known as the protégé effect.

And, after all, ‘see one, do one, teach one’ is a frequently quoted adage in medical training. What’s more, this notion of learning by teaching dates back to at least the early 1980s, when Jean-Pol Martin, a French teacher in Germany, allowed pupils to research and present different parts of the curriculum.

Why does it work so well?

Teaching another person is highly effective for a number of reasons. These include:

• Spotting gaps: When you have to explain a topic out loud, it highlights clearly and quickly what you have mastered well and where your knowledge needs brushing up. Consequently, it’s an excellent way of cementing what you know and of developing a deeper understanding of your material.
• Active recall: We have written previously about the importance of this approach. When describing a subject to another person, you have to extract all the information from your brain and put it into a logical order rather than merely reading notes passively.
• Keeping it simple: When you teach a subject, you need to break it down into simple, bite-sized chunks that a beginner can follow, even if you are passing on fairly complex ideas. This can only enhance your own knowledge of the topic as you verbalise it for someone else.
• A fresh mindset: If you know you’re going to be teaching a particular theme, you prime your brain to focus and hold on to key information more effectively than you would if you were just revising alone for an exam.
• Keenness to get it right: If we know others are going to learn from us, we feel responsible for supplying accurate information, and to fill in any gaps in our knowledge before we do it. So even expecting to teach material can help your brain to process and retain information better than standard revision.
• Backed by science: Various studies have shown that learning by teaching is more effective than other methods including self-testing or mind mapping – not that these techniques don’t also have their place. The effect can even be seen in students’ brains, with more activity in those areas responsible for attention and working memory.

Practical tips for passing on your knowledge

1 – Find someone to teach

Team up with a friend, colleague or study buddy and tell them about the basic concept in your own words. It doesn’t have to be someone who knows anything about the subject in question. In fact, if you can make a ‘lay’ person understand something complicated, you have done doubly well. If you wanted to, you could also have an AI avatar to ‘teach’ – you don’t have to work with a real person, although a face-to-face encounter is likely to be better.

2 – Pretend you have an audience

If you can’t find a willing ‘student’, don’t be afraid to talk to an empty room or even a pet. Alternatively, film a video of yourself or write an explanatory blog. Another idea is the ‘rubber duck’ method, in which you explain your complex task line by line to an inanimate object, such as (you’ve guessed it …) a rubber duck.

Finally, you could make a slide deck, as though you were going to be teaching the material.

3 – Have teaching in mind from the outset when you’re revising

When you’re embarking on a topic, it can be extremely helpful to keep in mind from the get-go how you would convey what you’re studying to someone else. How would you explain it to them, point by point? Doing this will encourage you to simplify and sort the information in your own mind.

4 – Follow the five-minute rule

Set a timer for five minutes and explain out loud, to a real person if possible, something you’ve learned recently. Do this well and you can be pretty confident you’ve grasped the material.

From all the above, it’s not hard to see why the techniques of teaching as a method of study and peer-to-peer education have become so popular, not least with newer models such as online learning. This approach is definitely worth trying and using – in conjunction with other study methods and techniques, of course.