Two experiments were conducted to investigate why lecture notes aid expository writing after a 1-week delay between lecture acquisition and essay writing. Experiment 1 examines the context hypothesis that deactivation of lecture schema must occur before attempts to reinstantiate context can aid writing. Results with 74 undergraduate students did not support this hypothesis. Experiment 2 examined the spacing-effect hypothesis that full processing of lecture notes can occur only after a delay (i.e., distributed practice). Either immediately or 1 week after viewing a 19-minute videotaped lecture on creativity, 27 undergraduates reviewed one of three kinds of lecture notes entered on a Macintosh IIsi: conventional, matrix, or outline. Using secondary-reaction task methodology, delayed-review subjects responded significantly slower than immediate-review subjects. In addition, subjects reviewing conventional notes had significantly slower reaction times than those reviewing matrix and outline notes. (Contains 8 references.) (SLD)