Feynman Technique Template

How to Use the Feynman Technique Template

1. 1. Choose one concept. Pick something narrow enough to explain in a paragraph: osmosis, not cell biology. Note where you are learning it from.
2. 2. Explain it from memory. Close the book and write the explanation as if for a curious 12-year-old: short sentences, everyday words, no copying. The counters show your word count and reading grade.
3. 3. Find the gaps. List the terms from your source that you find hard to replace, and the check marks every one of them in your text, along with plain-language alternatives and long words. Then write down where you got stuck, hand-waved or guessed, and re-read the source to fill them in.
4. 4. Refine. Rewrite the explanation shorter, using only words you have checked, ideally with an analogy or an example. Read it aloud; if you stumble, that is another gap.

What the Feynman Technique Is, and Is Not

The Feynman technique is named after the physicist Richard Feynman, who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics and was famous as a teacher. It is a modern label for a way of studying that is attributed to his approach, not a method Feynman published himself, and the four steps vary a little from one write-up to the next. What they share is the core idea: if you cannot explain something simply, you probably do not understand it yet.

A well-documented example of the spirit is his 1964 lecture to Caltech's first-year students on why planets move in ellipses, in which he chose to argue with plane geometry instead of calculus so that the audience could follow every step.

Why Explaining Shows What You Do Not Know

Recognising an idea as you read it feels like understanding, and the two come apart when you have to produce an explanation. In experiments by Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil (2002, Cognitive Science), people rated how well they understood everyday devices such as zippers and flush toilets, then tried to write out how they work; their ratings dropped afterwards. They called this the illusion of explanatory depth. The Feynman technique turns that moment of discovery into a routine, so that you meet the illusion while you can still fix it, not in the exam.

The related idea of self-explanation, studied by Michelene Chi and colleagues (1989, Cognitive Science), found that the students who did best on later problems had produced more explanations of worked examples while they studied, though that early study was small and cannot show cause and effect. In Dunlosky and colleagues' 2013 review of study techniques, self-explanation was rated as moderately useful, and practice testing as more useful still. Treat the Feynman technique as one good way to practise retrieving and explaining, not as proven to beat every alternative.

What the Jargon Check Does

• Terms from your source are the words you typed into the terms box. They are marked wherever they appear, solid underline. If you lean on one to carry the idea, try saying the idea without it.
• Plainer word available marks entries from a plain-language list, such as utilize, with a simpler alternative. The list was written for government documents, so use your judgement for academic writing.
• Long words are words of three (or four) syllables or more, counted by rule. Many are fine — equilibrium may be exactly the right word — so mark them as fine once you have decided.
• The reading grade uses the Flesch–Kincaid formula, which looks only at sentence length and syllables per word. It is built for English and cannot tell you whether the explanation is correct.

Example: the same idea, twice

The second draft is easier to read, but it also has gaps the first hid. Why does the water move toward the saltier side? What counts as a thin wall? Those questions go in the gaps box, and the source answers them. Your notes are saved in your browser's local storage and are never uploaded, so use Copy notes or Download .txt to keep a record.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the steps of the Feynman technique?

Most write-ups give four: choose a concept; explain it in plain language as if to a beginner; identify the gaps where you stumble, then go back to the source; and simplify, often with an analogy. The template follows those four steps and adds a jargon check to the third.

Did Richard Feynman invent the Feynman technique?

Not as a published method. The name is a modern label for a study approach attributed to his way of explaining and understanding physics. Feynman was a renowned teacher, but the four-step recipe comes from later writers.

Who should I imagine explaining it to?

Someone smart and curious with no background in the subject, such as a 12-year-old or a friend from a different course. The aim is not to talk down, but to remove the shared vocabulary that lets you skip over the reasoning.

Is every flagged word a problem?

No. A word being long or on the plain-language list is only a prompt to check. If it is the exact term and you have explained it, mark it as fine. The check is a heuristic for English text, so it will flag some good words and miss some jargon.

Can I use it for subjects that are not science?

Yes. It works for any idea with reasoning behind it, such as a legal doctrine, an economic model, a historical cause or a grammar rule. It works less well for facts that have no reasoning to explain, such as dates or vocabulary, where flashcards are better.

How is it different from the SQ3R method?

SQ3R is a way of reading a chapter, ending in reciting each answer from memory. The Feynman technique starts after you have read something and asks for a longer, plainer explanation of one concept. They fit together: use SQ3R to read, and the Feynman technique on the concepts you cannot yet explain.