A man makes five hundred handwritten flashcards, forgets almost all of them, and discovers spaced repetition.
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Look at this! Five hundred flashcards! I made every single one by hand. Wow, I was so proud of myself. Every night, I went through the whole pile. Ugh, front, back, front, back, for hours! I really thought I was learning so much. Then, a month later, my friend tested me. She picked twenty cards and said, 'Ready?' And I remembered... four. Just four! Oh man. Where did all those words go? So, I did some reading about how memory works. And guess what? I was doing it all wrong! Our brains forget new words really quickly, unless we review them at the right moment. It's called spaced repetition. Here's the idea, and it's super simple! Difficult words, you review almost every day. Words you know well, you review less often. After three days, then a week, then a month. So you spend your time on the words you forget. Now I use a flashcard app on my phone. It decides when each card comes back. Oh, and I add a full sentence to every card, not just one word and its translation. Words are much easier to remember in context. And the result? Way better than before! Last week, my friend tested me again, and I got eighteen! So, my advice? Fewer cards, more often. Twenty minutes a day beats three hours on Sunday. Oh, and please, don't make five hundred cards at once!
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