Reading 3 — forgetting and the illusion of fluency
The third Academic Reading passage, and the one to do first if you are about to start revising anything: how forgetting was first measured, why spaced study and self-testing beat re-reading, and why almost everyone believes the opposite.
As a reading exercise it is here for a particular reason. Most passages state a finding and then support it. This one states a finding and then immediately says what it cost — the second paragraph exists to limit the first, and one question asks you to notice that. Limiting a claim is not the same as dismissing it, and the passage says so in as many words; telling those two apart is what the writer's-view questions on the real paper are usually testing.
The other reason is that the content is about the thing you are doing. The passage argues that the study session that produced more remembering is the one that felt worse, that ease of reading is a fact about the page rather than about the reader, and that whichever of two measures you choose decides which method appears to win. If any of that is new, the three sentences at the end of the passage are worth more than the marks.
Thirteen questions: headings, detail, purpose, the writer's view, an abstract phrase whose meaning is supplied by the clause beside it, and three on what the writer never says, contradicts, or actually says. The statement that is never made concerns when Ebbinghaus published — a perfectly sensible thing to wonder about, and not a word about it anywhere.
Written by Zestly. No IELTS material is reproduced.
- Tell a paragraph that limits a claim from one that dismisses it
- Follow a chain of cause and reason inside a single sentence
- Judge a writer's view when the answer is "partly", not yes or no
- Separate never-stated from contradicted on questions that sound alike
- Take away a study method that beats the one most candidates use
The name for that mistake is the illusion of fluency. A page that has been read four times is easy to read a fifth, and the ease is real; what is not real is the inference that the ease will still be there when the page is not.
Sample question
Reading Passage — The feeling of knowing, and why it misleads A Modern research on memory begins with a man testing himself. In the 1880s Hermann Ebbinghaus set out to measure forgetting as a physicist might measure cooling, and to do it he needed material that carried no meaning and no associations: lists of invented syllables, learned to the point where he could repeat them without error. Days or weeks later he relearned the same list and recorded how much less work it took the second time. That difference — the saving — was his measurement, and plotted against time it produced the curve that still bears his name: steep at first, then flattening, so that most of what is lost is lost early. B The method was ingenious and its cost was obvious. By stripping meaning out of the material Ebbinghaus removed everything that makes real learning possible, and the curve he drew describes the fate of information that connects to nothing a person already knows. A student learning a subject is doing almost the opposite, and forgets much more slowly. That the experiment says more about its own material than about studying is not a criticism of Ebbinghaus, who said as much himself; it is a reminder of what a controlled experiment buys and what it spends. C The finding that has survived best is also the one people find hardest to act on. If the same total amount of study is distributed over several days rather than concentrated into one, what is remembered weeks later is substantially greater. Nothing is added: the hours are the same, only their arrangement differs. The reason the finding is hard to act on is that concentrated study feels better while it is happening. The material is fresh from the last repetition, recall is quick, and the session ends with a strong sense that the topic is now known. D A second finding cuts in the same direction. Between re-reading a text and putting it away and trying to recall it, the second is far more effective, and the gap widens as the delay before the real test grows. When students are asked to predict which method will serve them better, they reliably choose re-reading, and they are reliably wrong. What they are judging is how the study session felt, and the session that produced more remembering was the one that felt worse. E The name for that mistake is the illusion of fluency. A page that has been read four times is easy to read a fifth, and the ease is real; what is not real is the inference that the ease will still be there when the page is not. Underlining makes a text feel mastered because the underlined sentences are now easy to find, which is a fact about the page rather than about the reader. Recall is unpleasant precisely because it offers no page to lean on — which is also why it measures something. F Robert Bjork gave this family of results a name: desirable difficulties. Conditions that make practice harder and slower — spacing it out, mixing the order of topics, testing rather than reviewing — depress performance during the learning and improve it afterwards. The practical consequence is that performance during practice is a poor guide to learning, and that whichever of the two you choose to measure decides which method appears to win. Most people, left alone, measure the wrong one, because it is the one they can feel. G How far any of this travels beyond the laboratory is a fair question, and the honest answer is: some of the way. The experiments use short material, fixed intervals and a single test, while a course lasts a year and is examined once on everything. What survives the journey is not a schedule but a principle, and it is a modest one. Study in shorter sessions further apart than feels comfortable; close the book and try to produce the answer before checking it; and treat the feeling that you already know something as the weakest evidence available. — Which heading best fits Paragraph B?
- What the method gained and what it gave up
- A name for the whole family of results
- Why concentrated study feels better than it works
- How far the laboratory findings travel
See the answer
What the method gained and what it gave up
Paragraph B is a balance sheet: the method was "ingenious" and "its cost was obvious", and the closing sentence puts it exactly — "what a controlled experiment buys and what it spends". The other three headings summarise Paragraphs F, C and G.