Benjamin Franklin writing technique

This article is about a review technique or category/paradigm of review techniques. Review techniques involve doing some form of recall or retrieval for material previously learned. The testing effect is a key observed effect that can be used to understand the effectiveness of review techniques.
View list of review techniques | View summary table of methods of recall

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/148/148-h/148-h.htm start at "Three or four letters of a side had passed, when my father happened to find my papers and read them."

for a summary, see e.g. https://excellence-in-literature.com/copywork-how-benjamin-franklin-taught-himself-to-write-well/ (there are at least several articles online discussing this)

Franklin's technique takes advantage of several learning-related effects:

• Generation/testing effect: without looking at the actual example piece of writing, he attempts to produce an imitation, i.e., he attempts to generate the piece of writing himself.
• Spacing effect: before trying to produce the imitation, he leaves aside the example piece of writing for some time so that he forgets it to some extent.

See also

• List of terms related to generation
• Feynman technique

External links

• Duncan Sabien discusses this technique in the context of inventing rationality techniques in this EA Global talk
• "The Benjamin Franklin Method of Reading Programming Books" by James Koppel discusses the general method and gives a short description of how to use it when learning from programming books