Explain it back: find gaps in your understanding
Prompt for an exercise where you explain a topic in your own words and get targeted follow-up questions on your gaps. Paste it into an AI tool of your choice, which then does the exercise with you.
- Topic
- Practice & quizzes
- Type
- Prompt
- Level
- Beginner
- Time
- about 10 min
Results depend on the tool, the model and what you enter.
Result preview
Example: written by our editors, not real AI output.
Good: you correctly said that plants use light as an energy source and that oxygen is released. Gap 1: Where does the carbon come from that the plant uses to build sugar? Think about what the plant takes in from the air. Gap 2: You say the plant "eats" light. What exactly happens to the energy – does it become matter, or is it stored? Go ahead and explain it again.
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- photosynthesis
- compound interest
- how a bill becomes law
- Pythagoras' theorem
- the difference between a virus and a bacterium
- year 7
- exam preparation
- first semester
- job training
- curious, no background
- a curious twelve-year-old
- a classmate who missed the lesson
- my grandmother
- a new colleague
- someone from a completely different field
Your prompt
You have edited the prompt. Changes in the fields above no longer overwrite it.
This is an instruction for an AI, not the result itself.
Where this prompt works
These AI tools are a good fit for this prompt:
How to use it
- Fill in the fields or tap a suggestion. Leave out names, addresses and other personal data.
- Copy the finished prompt into an AI tool of your choice.
- Keep explaining the topic again until no follow-up question is left open.
Why does this work?
Having to explain something shows quickly where you only memorised. Questions instead of answers let you close the gap yourself, and that sticks longer.
Tips
- Rather explain too simply than too technically. Jargon often hides exactly the parts you haven't understood yet.