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What makes a good practice question?

A good practice question forces you to produce an answer rather than recognize one. Its wording must not contain the terms from its answer, it should have an unambiguous finish condition, and it should sit at the cognitive level the exam actually uses. If you can answer it by glancing at the note you wrote it from, it is testing your eyes rather than your memory.

Written and reviewed by the Studyism editorial teamLast reviewed August 24, 2026

Four properties to check

  1. The wording gives nothing away'What is the role of the sodium-potassium pump in maintaining resting potential?' names the mechanism and the outcome. 'How does a neuron maintain its resting potential?' does not.
  2. It cannot be guessedYes-or-no questions have a fifty percent guess rate and teach almost nothing. Ask for two things, or for an explanation.
  3. It tests the concept, not the lecture'What were the three points in the market failure lecture?' tests whether you remember a slide. 'Give an example of a market failure and say which efficiency condition it violates' tests the idea.
  4. It matches the exam's levelDefinitions are cheap to write and the least useful to drill. Explanation, comparison, and application questions predict exam performance far better.

A concrete example

A weak question reads 'Is inflation measured by CPI?' It is answerable by guessing and teaches nothing. Rewritten as 'Name two ways inflation is measured and explain what each one misses', it now requires retrieval of two items plus a judgement about their limitations, and it has a clear finish condition: you are done when you have named two and critiqued both.

Exceptions

  • Definitional questions are still necessary as a base layer, particularly early in a course. They are just not where the time should go afterward.
  • Self-written questions inherit your blind spots. If you misunderstood the lecture, the question and the answer will agree with each other and both be wrong, so check answers against source material.
  • For courses examined on speed of retrieval, such as language vocabulary, short paired questions are appropriate and the guidance above is less relevant.

Start from a draft set

Studyism generates questions from your own notes and slides, which you edit before studying rather than writing from scratch.
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