How to Make a Practice Quiz to Study (Free Template)

To make a practice quiz, list the ideas your exam will test, write one question per idea in the format the exam uses, add the answer with a one-line explanation, and take the quiz from memory a day or more later. Mix question types: short answer when you need to produce a fact, multiple choice when you need to tell similar ideas apart, and scenario questions when you need to apply what you know.

Writing the quiz is half the benefit. Turning notes into questions forces you to decide what matters, and answering them later is retrieval practice, one of the best-supported study methods there is.

This guide covers which question types to use, how to write multiple-choice questions that actually teach you something, good and bad examples from five subjects, how to write answer explanations, and a template you can copy.

Why a practice quiz works better than rereading

Answering a question from memory strengthens that memory in a way that reading doesn't. In Roediger and Karpicke's 2006 study, students who read a passage once and then took a recall test remembered 56% of it a week later, while students who spent that time rereading remembered 42%. A 2013 review by Dunlosky and colleagues rated practice testing as one of only two "high utility" study techniques out of ten.

A quiz also gives you honest feedback. Notes you've read three times feel familiar, and familiar feels like knowing. A question you can't answer shows you exactly what to study next. For the research in more depth, see retrieval practice and the testing effect.

Which question types should a practice quiz use?

Use the types your exam uses, then add whichever forces the kind of thinking the exam rewards.

Is multiple choice too easy to help? Not if it's built well. In four experiments with 372 students, Smith and Karpicke found that every question format beat study-only on a test a week later, including on inference questions, and short-answer practice had little or no edge over multiple choice in three of the four. Little and colleagues found that when the wrong options were plausible, multiple-choice practice also improved later recall of facts about those wrong options, which short-answer practice didn't.

To aim questions above plain recall, use the levels in Bloom's taxonomy: ask yourself to explain, compare, apply, and judge, not just define. Law exams lean almost entirely on scenario questions, and how law students practice with hypotheticals is a good model for writing your own.

How to write good multiple-choice questions

Most of the value of a multiple-choice question is in its wrong options. These rules are adapted from the item-writing guidance teachers use, filtered for what helps learning.

1. Write a stem you could answer with the options covered. "Which of the following is true about osmosis?" fails; "What moves during osmosis?" works.
2. Have one clearly best answer. If you can argue for two, rewrite.
3. Use three or four plausible options. Andrew Butler, who studies multiple-choice testing, suggests three or four plausible choices as a rule of thumb for moderate difficulty.
4. Build wrong options from real mistakes: the look-alike term, the reversed cause and effect, the answer to a different step.
5. Skip "all of the above" and "none of the above." Butler recommends avoiding both; "none of the above" can hurt learning when it's the correct answer.
6. Keep options parallel. The correct answer shouldn't be the longest, most qualified, or only grammatical one.
7. Aim for questions you usually get right, but not always. A quiz that's too easy or too hard teaches little. Butler notes that assessment guidance often targets an average of around 80% correct.

Good and bad practice quiz questions

The better versions all make you do something: apply, compare, explain. That's the work the exam will ask for.

How to write answer explanations

An answer key with only letters tells you that you were wrong, not why. Write explanations as you write the questions, while the reasoning is fresh.

• One sentence on why the right answer is right, naming the rule or principle.
• One sentence on the most tempting wrong option, naming the confusion it represents.
• Where to look: page, slide, or lecture date.
• Short: under 40 words. You'll read hundreds of these.

Example, for the biology question above:

Active transport. The ions move against their concentration gradient, which requires energy. Tempting wrong answer: diffusion, but diffusion only moves substances down a gradient. (Lecture 6, slide 12)

Explanations matter most for multiple choice. In Marsh and colleagues' research, students sometimes later recalled wrong options from a multiple-choice test as facts, though testing still helped overall. Butler and Roediger found that feedback after a multiple-choice test, given right away or after a delay, raised correct answers on a later test and reduced how often students repeated the wrong options.

A free practice quiz template

Copy this into a document, a spreadsheet, or a Google Form (turn on "Make this a quiz" in its settings to store answers and feedback).

QUIZ: [Course] - [Topic] - [Date written]
Source: [chapter / lecture / pages]
Targets: [list the 10-20 ideas this quiz covers]

Q1. [Question]
    Type: [short answer / MC / scenario / problem]
    A) ...  B) ...  C) ...  D) ...   (MC only)
    Answer: [answer]
    Why: [one sentence]
    Trap: [the tempting wrong answer and why it's wrong]
    Source: [page / slide]

ATTEMPT LOG
Date | Score | Missed Qs | Cause (didn't know / confused / misread / bad question)

How to run it:

1. Wait at least a day after writing the quiz.
2. Take it closed-book. For multiple choice, try to answer before reading the options.
3. Mark it, then read every explanation, including for questions you got right.
4. Log each miss and its cause. A "bad question" goes back for rewriting.
5. Re-quiz only the misses two or three days later, then fold them into a mixed quiz.

Making practice quizzes faster with AI

AI quiz generators can draft questions from your notes or a PDF in seconds. They're good at volume and weaker at exactly the things above: plausible wrong options, one best answer, and correct answer keys. Use them for a first draft, then edit with the rules in this guide. Our walkthrough on making a quiz from a PDF shows how to check and repair generated questions, and AI practice test generators covers full mock exams.

Active Recalling generates four-option multiple-choice quizzes from notes, PDFs, Word files, or photos you add to a chapter, and you can edit every question. It doesn't write explanations or trap notes, so keep those for your missed questions in your attempt log. See the AI quiz generator for details.

A weekly practice quiz routine

Guessing before you learn helps more than it sounds; see pre-testing. Mixing topics in the weekly quiz trains you to recognize which idea a question needs, the core of interleaving. And spreading quizzes out, rather than taking them all at once, is what spaced repetition is built on.