I Learned 4676 New Words in 10 Months
How to effectively use the spaced repetition method
My memory is bad. Unbelievably bad. Yet, I know at least 30,000 total words in 4 different languages. This is not an easy goal to achieve, especially for anyone like me who struggles hard to remember new terms and expressions. But learning new languages is one of my favorite hobbies. Consequently, I have never even thought about giving up.
This is why I have always seen language learning as a never-ending experiment. In particular, I tried dozens of different methods to learn new words until I found the right one for me. Yes, “for me.” This is because language learning is tricky, and the method I am about to present might end up being completely useless for you.
That said, let’s delve into how I was able to learn 4676 new words, expressions, or idioms in my target language in the past 10 months.
Spaced Repetition Method
Spaced repetition is a learning method based on the idea that you should revisit notions at increasing incremental time intervals until knowledge is fully embedded in your long-term memory.
This technique is usually performed with flashcards. In this case, newly introduced or more difficult flashcards are shown more frequently, while older or less difficult flashcards are shown less frequently. Doing so allows your brain to take advantage of what in psychology is known as the spacing effect.
This effect suggests that learning would be more effective when study sessions are spaced out. In other words, more knowledge can be encoded into long-term memory by spaced study sessions than by massed presentation. Although I cannot consider myself an expert on this subject, I have found this approach extremely effective when it comes to learning new words.
Instead of using physical flashcards, I recommend using one of the many apps that have digitalized this method. In my experience, Anki is by far the best one.
Anki App
Anki is a free, open-source flashcard application based on the spaced repetition method. The word “Anki” means “memorization” in Japanese and was chosen as the name of the app because it helps people embed notions in their long-term memory. The priority with which flashcards are shown depends on a customized version of the SM-2 algorithm.
Anki supports Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and it is available in more than 14 different languages. Based on my experience, this is a tool that would always be better to have at hand. So, I recommend downloading the official app from Google Play or the Apple Store.
How I Use Anki to Learn New Words
I have been using Anki for over two years now and I can consider myself an expert. Since the application and its algorithm are highly customizable, finding the best setup for you might take time. If you do not want to waste too much time on this, you can simply adopt mine.
The following settings come from AnkiDroid Version 2.15.6.
General settings
Note: I use the following settings not to get distracted by numbers and to avoid the pressure to answer as soon as possible.
- Hide remaining time
- Hide remaining card count
- Hide button time
Decks settings
Note: I use the same settings for all my decks.
New Cards
- Steps: 1 10
- Order: new cards in order added
- New cards/day: 20
- Graduating interval: 1 day
- Starting ease: 250%
- Bury related new cards: false
Reviews
- Maximum reviews/day: 200
- Easy bonus: 130%
- Interval modifier: 100%
- Maximum interval: 36500 days
- Bury related reviews: false
Lapses
- Steps: 10
- New interval: 0%
- Minimum interval: 1 day
- Leech threshold: 8 lapses
- Leech action: tag only
General
- Show answer time: false
- Automatically play audio: true
- Replay question: true
My deck management
When I want to learn a new language from scratch, the approach I take is fairly simple. First, I download one of the great community decks containing at least more than 3000 words in my target language. Second, I create a blank deck.
In the last 10 months, I have been studying Spanish. So, let’s see what my setup looks like:
In this case, the “Essential Spanish Vocabulary Top 5000” deck is the community one, while the “Nuevas palabras” (literally, “New words”) deck is the one I created. Similarly, I had created the “New words” deck to study English.
Then, what I do is open the community deck and start using it to study. Specifically, whenever I stumble across a new word I copy it into my personal deck. Next, I go back to my study session and continue to review the words proposed by Anki. So, the community deck is nothing more than a source of new words to add to the deck I created. This is why I mark every single flashcard coming from the community deck as “Easy”. In fact, I do not want to avoid wasting time reviewing words I have already added to my other deck.
By following this technique, your deck will gradually fill up with new words, expressions, and idioms. The strength of this approach is that you are clearly separating your sources from your final container deck. In other words, having a deck storing all the words you have added allows you to avoid the noise coming with community decks that contain terms you already know or may not be interested in learning.
My approach to words I do not know
As I just explained, the first source of words is represented by a reliable deck curated by the community. The second and most important one comes from your surroundings. As I explained in my previous article, you must be greedy when it comes to learning a new language.
Particularly, changing the language of your devices and streaming services will give you the opportunity to frequently stumbling across new words. My recommendation is to keep the addition process as simple and automatic as possible. Anki will prevent you from adding duplicates, so each time you are in doubt about a word, try adding it you your deck. If not present, do so.
Plus, I suggest entering mainly nouns and verbs by bringing the new word back to one of these two forms. But this may change depending on your target language. For example, in Spanish, Italian, or English, not all adverbs are built the same way and there are plenty of exceptions. In this case, I would also add irregular adverbs to the deck. Common expressions and idioms are also important and should be taken into account as well.
Also, I try to make this process the least invasive as possible. If I am watching a movie or listening to a song I do not want to pause it to add a new word. In this case, what I do is write it down in a notebook and do it later or just ignore it, except for extremely rare terms.
By following this approach, at the beginning of your learning process, your deck would fill up terribly quickly. Therefore, you might find yourself investing too much time in it. This is why I recommend adding words sparingly, in particular no more than 20 words per day. Just to give you some figures: based on my Anki stats, I have added 9.4 cards per day over the past 30 days.
How much time I spend on it
The statistics on my app say that I have spent 7 minutes and 43 seconds a day reviewing flashcards in the last 30 days. This information may be misleading, though. This is because I have been busier than usual and had to speed up the review process. At the same time, you are not going to spend more than 12/13 minutes of your life per day on Anki.
So, you do not have to invest much time to expect Anki to be effective. A handful of minutes a day is enough!
Conclusion
Learning new words is one of the most exciting tasks when it comes to studying a new language, but it can be very time-consuming. Plus, for people with a poor memory like me, it can easily become a painful process. This is why I invested time to experiment with different approaches until I found one that really works. The spaced repetition method and particularly its implementation in the Anki app is great. However, you may need time to make it effective and find the right setup, and in this article, I explained how I was able to engineer this.
Thanks for reading! I hope that you found this article helpful. Feel free to leave down below any questions, comments, or suggestions.
Disclaimer: This article is not sponsored by Anki.
