GMAT Prep Review: The Feynman Technique Reveals True Blind Spots
Today, I want to talk to everyone about the most important yet most easily overlooked aspect of GMAT preparation: how to conduct “effective” reviews.
Are you reviewing GMAT in an “ineffective” way?
The problems with this approach are:
- Repeating Mistakes: You don’t truly learn anything from it, and you’ll make the same errors when encountering similar concepts in the future.
- Wasting Resources: After exhausting all limited official problems, there will be no new high-quality problems left to practice.
GMAT Finisher’s Review SOP: From “Recording” to “Comparison”
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In the Finisher course, we use a brand new review method. For subjects where students have weaker foundations, I ask them to:
- Record while solving problems: The goal is to verbally record every step and every thought process. Of course, you can also type, but recording is faster and less disruptive to the flow of thought.
- Compare with expert videos: After recording your thoughts and processes, compare them with the detailed solution videos I’ve recorded for the problems. This allows you to precisely identify where your thought process deviated from the standard problem-solving procedure.
I often used to liken this learning method to: you’ve just joined a professional sports team, and you need to first observe the coach’s standard throwing posture, then record your own movements and compare them in slow motion with the professional posture. This kind of progress is the most solid.
The Scientific Principle Behind This: Coinciding with the “Feynman Learning Technique”
Recently, I came across a classic learning theory called the “Feynman Learning Technique”, and I realized it perfectly aligns with the “recording review method” I advocate.
The four core steps of the Feynman Learning Technique:
- Choose & Teach: Select a topic and try to explain it in simple language to someone without a relevant background.
- Identify Gaps: During the explanation, you’ll find parts that you struggle to articulate or connect coherently. These are the areas you need to strengthen.
- Go Back & Study: Address the identified shortcomings by returning to your study materials and relearning until you can explain the concept simply.
- Simplify: Attempt to explain again, using analogies or visuals to make it more concise and clear, ensuring you truly grasp it.
How to Implement? Integrating the Feynman Learning Technique into Your GMAT Review
Now, we can perfectly combine these two methods:
- Recording your explanation = Step One: Teach. When you meticulously explain your problem-solving thought process into a recorder, you are playing the role of a “teacher.”
- Listen back and find stutters, logical leaps = Step Two: Identify Gaps. When you listen back to your own problem-solving recording, you will immediately notice: (1) many parts of the explanation are hesitant or choppy, and (2) some explanations are vague, lack logic, or jump between ideas. These areas are evidence of your “pseudo-understanding.”
- Compare with expert videos = Step Three: Go Back & Study. Taking the “weaknesses” you identified in the previous step, compare them with professional solution videos to see how experts handle the areas where you got stuck.
- Re-record, simplify explanation = Step Four: Simplify. After you’ve truly learned, try re-recording your problem explanation. You’ll find that this time, your explanation will be fluent, confident, and you’ll be able to articulate it in a simpler way. This indicates that you have internalized this knowledge point.
I do the same when conducting reading comprehension training: I ask students to explain a complex long sentence to me in very simple terms. If the explanation is fragmented, much like a machine translation, it indicates an insufficient understanding of the text. Through this method, we have successfully helped many students improve their foundational reading skills, thereby boosting their Verbal and DI scores.
Starting Today, Learn by “Teaching”
You should try this method too:
Explain a problem as if you’re talking to a complete novice who knows nothing about the GMAT. Listen back and reflect: “Is this language an outsider can understand?” Then, force yourself to revise. When you find logical leaps or parts that are difficult to articulate, that’s where you need to compare with an expert’s explanation and delve deeper into learning.
Why not try it yourself and truly experience the depth and value of this learning method?
