Flashcards: Why I Forgot Five Hundred Words

Look at this! Five hundred flashcards!

快看！五百張單字卡！

I made every single one by hand.

每一張都是我親手做的。

Wow, I was so proud of myself.

哇，我當時超級為自己感到驕傲。

Every night, I went through the whole pile.

每天晚上，我都把整疊卡片從頭看過一遍。

Ugh, front, back, front, back, for hours!

唉，正面，背面，正面，背面，一連好幾個小時！

I really thought I was learning so much.

我真的以為自己學到了很多東西。

Then, a month later, my friend tested me.

然後，一個月後，我的朋友考了考我。

She picked twenty cards and said, 'Ready?'

她抽出二十張卡片，說：「準備好了嗎？」

And I remembered... four. Just four!

而我只記得……四個。就只有四個！

Oh man. Where did all those words go?

天啊。那些單字都跑去哪了？

So, I did some reading about how memory works.

於是，我讀了一些關於記憶如何運作的資料。

And guess what? I was doing it all wrong!

你猜怎麼著？我的方法全都錯了！

Our brains forget new words really quickly,

我們的大腦會很快忘掉新單字，

unless we review them at the right moment.

除非在恰當的時機複習它們。

It's called spaced repetition.

這叫做間隔重複。

Here's the idea, and it's super simple!

概念是這樣的，而且超級簡單！

Difficult words, you review almost every day.

困難的單字，你幾乎每天都複習。

Words you know well, you review less often.

熟悉的單字，複習的頻率就低一些。

After three days, then a week, then a month.

三天後，然後一週後，然後一個月後。

So you spend your time on the words you forget.

這樣你就能把時間花在會忘記的單字上。

Now I use a flashcard app on my phone.

現在我在手機上用一個單字卡App。

It decides when each card comes back.

它會決定每張卡片什麼時候再出現。

Oh, and I add a full sentence to every card,

喔，我還會在每張卡片上加一個完整的句子，

not just one word and its translation.

而不只是一個單字和它的翻譯。

Words are much easier to remember in context.

單字放在語境中好記得多。

And the result? Way better than before!

結果呢？比以前好太多了！

Last week, my friend tested me again, and I got eighteen!

上週，我的朋友又考了我一次，我答對了十八個！

So, my advice? Fewer cards, more often.

所以，我的建議是什麼？卡片少做一點，複習多幾次。

Twenty minutes a day beats three hours on Sunday.

每天二十分鐘，勝過週日讀三個小時。

Oh, and please, don't make five hundred cards at once!

喔，還有，千萬別一次做五百張卡片！