Most teachers are trained to assess students after teaching. We introduce a concept, model it, let students practice, and then check what they learned. That sequence feels sensible because assessment is usually treated as evidence of learning.

But a growing body of research points to a more surprising possibility: sometimes students learn more when we ask them questions before we teach the material—even when they are almost certain to answer incorrectly.

This is known as the pretesting effect, or sometimes the prequestioning effect. The idea sounds backwards. Why would asking students to fail at questions they have not yet been taught help them learn? Yet reviews of the research suggest that pre-instruction questions can improve memory for later instruction and, under the right conditions, support transfer as well.

For teachers, the implication is not that every lesson should begin with a formal test. The better idea is much simpler: give students a small, low-stakes reason to notice what they do not yet know before the teaching begins.

What Is the Pretesting Effect?

The pretesting effect occurs when learners attempt to answer questions before they study the material and later remember more than learners who simply study the material without answering the prequestions.

A 2023 review in Educational Psychology Review examined research on prequestioning and pretesting across text, video, lectures, classroom settings, and laboratory studies. The researchers concluded that pre-instruction testing can often improve later learning, although the size of the benefit depends on how the questions are designed, what happens immediately afterward, and how learning is measured.

The key point is that students do not need to answer the prequestions correctly for the strategy to work. In fact, many of the studies intentionally asked learners questions they could not yet answer. The act of trying appears to change how learners process the instruction that follows.

This does not mean wrong answers are inherently useful. The learning benefit comes from the combination of attempt, instruction, correction, and later retrieval.

Why Might Pretesting Work?

Researchers have proposed several explanations, and no single mechanism explains every result. Still, a few ideas are particularly useful for classroom teachers.

1. Prequestions create a search target

Imagine walking into a grocery store with no list. You may pass dozens of items without noticing them. Now imagine walking in specifically looking for coriander. Suddenly, coriander-related labels become much easier to spot.

Prequestions may create something similar in learning. If students first attempt a question such as, “Why does a metal spoon feel colder than a wooden spoon in the same room?” they become more likely to notice explanations about heat transfer when the lesson begins.

The question gives attention a destination.

2. An unsuccessful attempt can reveal a knowledge gap

Students often do not know what they do not know. A short prequestion can make that gap visible without turning it into a high-stakes failure.

A student who is asked to predict the meaning of an unfamiliar metaphor, explain why a historical alliance mattered, or estimate the solution to a math problem may suddenly realize, “I am not sure.” That moment of uncertainty can increase curiosity and attention—especially when the answer arrives soon afterward.

3. Wrong guesses can make the correct answer more distinctive

If students generate a plausible response and then encounter the correct explanation, the contrast can make the correct answer easier to remember. The important condition is that the correction must be clear. Teachers should not leave misconceptions hanging.

That means a good pretest is not a “gotcha.” It is the opening move in a short learning cycle.

Pretesting Is Not the Same as a Diagnostic Test

Teachers already use diagnostic assessments to identify what students know at the beginning of a unit. That is useful, but the purpose is usually instructional planning.

Pretesting for learning has a different purpose. The teacher may already know that students cannot answer the questions. The questions are being used to prepare attention, activate prior knowledge, and make the coming instruction more memorable.

In other words, a diagnostic asks, “What do students know?” A prelearning question asks, “What do I want students to be looking for?”

A Simple Classroom Routine: Predict, Teach, Return, Reflect

A practical way to use the research is a four-step routine that can fit into almost any subject.

Step 1: Predict

Before instruction, give students two to four questions. Keep them brief. Tell students that the questions are intentionally difficult and that incorrect answers will not count against them.

For example, in English, a teacher beginning a lesson on irony might ask:

• Can a character be correct while the audience knows the character is wrong?
• What is one situation where the outcome is the opposite of what a person reasonably expects?

In science, before a lesson on density:

• Which is denser: a kilogram of steel or a kilogram of feathers?
• Why can a huge steel ship float while a small steel nail sinks?

In history:

• What conditions make people more likely to support a political revolution?
• Which matters more in starting a revolution: ideas, economics, or leadership?

The questions do not need to be answered perfectly. They need to point students toward the important ideas in the lesson.

Step 2: Teach

Teach the lesson normally. The crucial difference is that students now have unresolved questions in mind.

Teachers can make the connection explicit by saying, “One of our opening questions asked why the ship floats. Listen for the part of today’s explanation that helps solve that puzzle.”

This small reminder turns the prequestion into an attentional cue.

Step 3: Return

At the end of instruction, return to the original questions. Ask students to answer them again without looking at their first attempts.

This matters because the prequestion should not disappear after the opening minutes. Returning to it closes the loop and adds retrieval practice, another learning strategy with strong classroom evidence.

Students can then compare their before-and-after answers. That visible change is often more motivating than a score because students can literally see what they learned.

Step 4: Reflect

Ask one metacognitive question: “What did you believe at first, and what changed your thinking?”

This encourages students to see learning as revision rather than as the performance of already knowing.

Why This Could Be Especially Useful in Secondary Classrooms

Secondary teachers often face a familiar problem: students enter a lesson passively. They are physically present, but they have no intellectual reason to care about the next explanation.

Prequestions create a small amount of productive tension. They turn the opening of the lesson into a puzzle.

This may be particularly useful for content that students think they already understand. A carefully chosen prequestion can expose the limits of a superficial explanation. For example, many students think they understand concepts such as theme, probability, force, bias, democracy, or supply and demand until they must apply the concept to a new case.

A prequestion can reveal that gap without the emotional weight of a graded quiz.

How Many Questions Should You Use?

Probably fewer than you think.

A pretest does not need to cover the entire lesson. Two or three carefully chosen questions are often enough to focus attention. If the opening activity takes fifteen minutes, the strategy can easily become another assessment burden rather than a learning tool.

For a typical secondary lesson, a useful target is three to five minutes.

The best questions tend to have three qualities:

• They connect directly to the most important ideas in the lesson.
• They require thought rather than simple guessing.
• Students will encounter a clear answer during the lesson.

Questions that are trivial, obscure, or unrelated to the core learning goal are unlikely to help much.

What About Students Who Hate Being Wrong?

This is where classroom culture matters.

If students believe every wrong answer is evidence that they are weak, pretesting can feel threatening. Teachers should explicitly frame the activity as a learning strategy rather than a test of ability.

A useful script is: “These questions are here before I teach you on purpose. I expect some of your answers to be wrong. Your job is to make your best prediction, then see what changes after the lesson.”

That sentence changes the meaning of the activity. Students are not being judged for lacking information that has not yet been taught.

Teachers can also allow anonymous responses, pair discussion, quick whiteboard predictions, or private notebook answers if students are reluctant to commit publicly.

Where Pretesting Can Go Wrong

The research is promising, but pretesting is not magic. There are several ways teachers can weaken the strategy.

Too many questions

If students face a long pretest, frustration can overwhelm curiosity. The goal is to create a few useful knowledge gaps, not to prove that students do not know the unit yet.

No correction

Students need clear access to the correct answer after attempting the question. If misconceptions remain unresolved, the strategy loses its purpose.

Questions disconnected from instruction

The prequestions should point toward material students are about to learn. If the lesson never resolves the question, attention is being directed to the wrong place.

Grading the activity

Grading a pretest for correctness changes the incentive. Students may become cautious, anxious, or unwilling to take an intellectual risk. If the purpose is learning, keep it low stakes.

Confusing pretesting with discovery-only teaching

Pretesting does not mean teachers should withhold explicit instruction and make students independently discover everything. The research generally depends on students receiving the correct material afterward.

That distinction is important. The student attempt prepares the mind; the instruction still teaches.

Pretesting and Retrieval Practice Work Well Together

One reason this approach is attractive is that it can connect naturally with retrieval practice. A teacher can use the same core question at three points:

• before instruction, as a prequestion;
• after instruction, as a check for understanding;
• several days later, as spaced retrieval.

One good question can therefore serve several purposes without creating a large amount of extra teacher work.

Research on retrieval practice in real classrooms has repeatedly found benefits across subjects and age groups. A systematic review of 50 classroom experiments found that retrieval practice improved learning in a wide range of settings, with many of the studies showing medium or large benefits.

The broader principle is useful: students benefit when important ideas are not encountered only once. Learning becomes stronger when students attempt, receive feedback, retrieve, and revisit.

An Example in an English Classroom

Imagine a Grade 9 class beginning a lesson on symbolism.

Before the lesson, students see an image of a locked door and answer two questions:

1. What could a locked door represent beyond its literal meaning?
2. How would a writer make readers understand that meaning without directly explaining it?

Students may suggest privacy, secrets, danger, opportunity, restriction, or fear.

The teacher then teaches symbolism, explains how repeated details gain significance, and models analysis using a short text.

At the end, students return to the locked-door image and answer again—this time using the language of symbol, context, connotation, and theme.

The important learning is not whether their first prediction was “right.” It is the difference between the first and second explanation.

An Example in Mathematics

Before teaching a new problem type, show students one problem and ask them to choose which of three solution approaches seems most likely to work.

Students do not need to solve it. They simply commit to a prediction and explain why.

Then teach the correct method through a worked example. Afterward, return to the original problem and ask students to identify why one approach is more efficient or accurate than the others.

This uses pretesting to focus attention on strategy selection rather than merely on the final answer.

An Example in Science

Before teaching heat transfer, ask students why tile feels colder than carpet when both have been in the same room overnight.

Many students will predict that the tile is actually colder.

The lesson can then introduce thermal conductivity. At the end, students revise the explanation: the materials may be at nearly the same temperature, but tile conducts heat away from the body more quickly, making it feel colder.

That before-and-after contrast is memorable because the student has a prior prediction to revise.

The Bigger Idea: Learning Can Begin Before the Explanation

Pretesting challenges one of the quiet assumptions of classroom instruction: that students must first receive information before they can meaningfully engage with it.

In reality, a carefully designed unsuccessful attempt can prepare students to learn from the explanation that follows.

This does not mean teachers should celebrate confusion for its own sake. It means that uncertainty can be useful when it is brief, purposeful, safe, and followed by strong instruction.

Instead of beginning every lesson with “Today we are going to learn…,” teachers might sometimes begin with a question students cannot yet answer.

Then the lesson becomes the answer.

Research Sources

• Pan, S. C., Sana, F., Schmitt, A. G., & Bjork, E. L. (2023). Prequestioning and Pretesting Effects: A Review of Empirical Research, Theoretical Perspectives, and Implications for Educational Practice. Educational Psychology Review.
• Agarwal, P. K., Nunes, L. D., & Blunt, J. R. (2021). Retrieval Practice Consistently Benefits Student Learning: A Systematic Review of Applied Research in Schools and Classrooms. Educational Psychology Review.

A Practical Takeaway for Teachers

Try this once this week: choose one important idea from an upcoming lesson and write a question students cannot fully answer yet. Give them two minutes to predict. Teach the lesson. Then ask the same question again.

You may find that the most useful wrong answer in the room is the one students gave before they knew better.