How to Use Self-Explanation for Academic Success?

Self-explanation is one of the most powerful (and underrated) study hacks backed by cognitive science. It's basically explaining the material to yourself in your own words — as if you're teaching it — while actively making connections, filling gaps, and questioning "why" things work the way they do.

Research (including large meta-analyses of dozens of studies) shows it produces strong learning gains — often better than just re-reading, highlighting, or even receiving ready-made explanations from teachers/textbooks.

Why Is Self-Explanation So Effective (The Science in Simple Terms)?

When you self-explain, several great things happen at once:

• You do retrieval practice (pulling information from memory)
• You create connections between new & old knowledge
• You spot gaps & misconceptions very quickly
• You build deeper, more flexible understanding (great for transfer to new problems)

Effect size is typically moderate-to-large (~0.55 in meta-analyses), and it works across subjects: math, science, medicine, history, programming, law, etc. — both concepts and procedures.

How to Actually Use Self-Explanation (Practical Study Hacks)?

Here are the most effective ways people use it in real studying:

While reading / watching lectures (most powerful version)
Pause every few paragraphs/slides → close the book/screen → explain aloud or in writing:

• What does this actually mean?
• How does this step relate to the previous one?
• Why does this happen? What would happen if X changed?
• How is this similar/different from [something you already know]?

After finishing a section/chapter (the classic "post-reading" method)

• Put everything away → try to explain the main idea + key examples to an imaginary 12-year-old (or record yourself).
• When you get stuck → that's your signal to go back.

With worked examples / problem solutions (super useful for math, physics, coding, chemistry)

• After looking at a solved example, cover the solution and explain each step:
• Why did they choose this method?
• What principle is being used here?
• What would go wrong if I skipped this step?

Feynman Technique — basically self-explanation on steroids
The famous version is almost the same thing:

• Choose concept
• Explain it simply (like teaching a child)

Find gaps → go back to source

Simplify + use analogies → repeat

→ Many people call Feynman Technique a specific flavor of self-explanation (with extra emphasis on extreme simplification + analogies).

Here are some quick prompts you can copy-paste or say out loud:

"Okay, so basically this is saying that..."

"The reason this works is because..."

"This connects to what we learned last week because..."

"If this variable increased instead, then..."

"A real-world example of this would be..."

"I think the key principle here is..."

Quick Comparison Table of Popular Techniques

Technique	Strength Level	Best For	Time Cost	Reveals Gaps?
Just re-reading	Low	Very short-term memory	Low	Almost never
Highlighting	Very low	Feeling productive	Low	No
Summarizing (passive)	Medium	Quick overviews	Medium	Sometimes
Active Recall / Flashcards	Very high	Facts & definitions	Medium	Yes
Self-Explanation	Very high	Deep understanding & transfer	Medium-High	Extremely well
Feynman Technique	Very high	Complex concepts, teaching skills	High	Extremely well

Pro tip (2025–2026 edition):

Combine self-explanation with AI → explain the concept to ChatGPT/Grok/Claude and ask it to tell you where you're wrong, incomplete, or unclear. Many students report this combo dramatically increases accuracy and speed of finding holes.

Try it for just one topic today — explain it out loud for 5–10 minutes right after studying. You'll probably be shocked at how much more you actually understand (and where you were fooling yourself).

Happy (deep) learning!