Remember vocabulary for longer: the science of spaced repetition and retrieval practice
Why re-reading word lists doesn't make words stick, while testing yourself keeps 80% after a week. How to apply a 1, 3, 7, 14, 30-day review schedule to speaking practice.
You learn 20 new words today, remember 10 tomorrow and 3 next week. Your memory isn't bad: that is simply how the brain works. The good news is that two well-researched techniques help you remember much longer, without studying for more hours.
Retrieval practice: try to recall before you check
In 2008, Jeffrey Karpicke and Henry Roediger published an experiment in Science in which students learned Swahili–English word pairs. Once a word had been learned, one group kept being tested on it in later rounds, while another group dropped it from later tests.
A week later, the group that kept testing themselves remembered about 80% of the words. The group that dropped them remembered only 33–36%. The act of pulling information out of memory is what strengthens it, not looking at the information again.
Applied to speaking: don't just re-read the correct sentence. Cover it, say it yourself, and only then compare.
Spaced repetition: review just before you forget
If you review a sentence 5 times in one session, you remember it very well… until next week. If you review it 5 times spread over several days, each time further apart, you remember it far longer. A review by Cepeda and colleagues (2006) covering hundreds of studies found that distributed practice beats massed practice, and that the best gap grows with how long you need to remember.
A simple schedule that is easy to follow:
| Review | After the previous one |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 day |
| 2 | 3 days |
| 3 | 7 days |
| 4 | 14 days |
| 5 | 30 days |
If you get a sentence wrong during a review, it goes back to the start and comes up again tomorrow.
What is most worth reviewing?
Not the word lists in your textbook, but the sentences you actually got wrong when speaking. Mistakes you have made are the ones you are most likely to repeat. Every time you are corrected, save the pair: what you said, and the correct sentence.
How MOMIC applies this
- Every sentence corrected by a tutor or character, and every new word on the board, goes into your notebook automatically.
- Your notebook brings items back on a 1, 3, 7, 14, 30-day schedule.
- During review the correct sentence is hidden; you have to say it again, and it only counts when you get every previously wrong part right. If you look at the answer before speaking, the sentence stays at its current level.
- Every now and then your tutor asks you about a word you learned right where you learned it in the town, a kind of retrieval practice tied to place.
Ten minutes of the right kind of review every day is worth more than a three-hour cramming session at the weekend.
Sources
- Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science, 319. Summary by Purdue University.
- Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3).
