Why might you remember a little more where you learned it?

In a famous 1975 study, divers who learned word lists underwater recalled them best back underwater - though a careful 2021 redo couldn't reproduce it.

Your brain quietly records bits of the setting along with what you are learning - the room, the sounds, even the smell. Later that setting can work as a cue, so recalling in the same place you learned can come a little easier. This is context-dependent memory. Pooling 93 experiments, researchers found the effect is real but modest, strongest for free recall and close to zero on multiple-choice tests where the answer is already in front of you. The diving study made it famous, but that exact result didn't hold up on re-testing.

You revise at your usual desk with the fan humming and a cup of tra da beside you. In a silent exam hall none of that is there, so an open-ended answer might feel a touch harder to reach. On a multiple-choice paper, though, seeing the options usually wipes out the difference.

Matching your study setting to the test setting gives you a small free boost for open-ended recall, but it barely helps on multiple-choice tests.

Since the boost is modest and you can rarely study in the real room, the robust move is to vary where you revise (desk, bus, cafe) and to briefly picture the test setting - mentally returning works almost as well as physically going back.

Same place, same cues - your surroundings are a faint key, handy for blank-page recall, useless once the answer is on the page.

Learn the idea and practice English at the same time.