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In my quest to learn Spanish in South America, I looked into every memorization and learning method published on the web.  If I could find a method to quickly internalize lots of Spanish vocabulary, then I would be able to learn the language very rapidly, I reasoned to myself.  The learning systems I found, unfortunately, didn’t prove to be of much use.

I did end up reading a brief blurb somewhere, though, about a method called “space repetition learning”.  Interestingly, this phrase ended up giving me two very different memorization methods that both work astonishingly well, and that I use in unison to retain my vocabulary.

The “Spaced Learning” System

Spaced learning is a simple system developed by memory researcher R. Douglas Fields, and is in use at Monkseaton High School in England.  It’s a relatively little-known system, but has worked very well for me.  It involves three eight-to-ten-minute sessions learning lots of information with ten minute breaks of unrelated material inbetween.

The “Spaced Repetition” System

A more well-known system, spaced repetition requires a computer program that uses an algorithm that calculates approximately when you’re going to forget a memorized item.  It presents the item to you right before you forget, which has been shown to be the best time to reinforce a learned item.

Here’s how I use the two systems on my computer to learn Spanish vocabulary.

1. I use a flash card program in conjunction with the Spaced Learning system to internalize 25 words. I’ll fill the program with 25 new words and their definitions, and have it test me on both directions of the translation.  I do one 8 minute session, then watch a movie or do something unrelated for 10 minutes, then repeat two more times, for three 8 minute sessions in total.
2. I enter all 25 words, afterward, into a program designed for Spaced Repetition, and then review my previous days’ vocabulary. I spend about 10 to 20 minutes every night with my Spaced Repetition program.  The way the system works is that you’ll only see a limited set of vocabulary any given day — the words that your mind is just about ready to discard.  Therefore, even if you’ve filled the program with thousands of words, you’ll likely only be presented with a few on any given day.

Internalizing the words with the flash card program requires about an hour of work (ten minutes to fill in the words and their definitions, and then 50 minutes to do the actual studying) and is actually extremely effective by itself to learn new items.  For vocabulary, I’ve found 25 words to be the sweet spot, although I’ve had success going up to 40 words at a time (although my retention wasn’t as good).  If you have the time, the system also works if you do 25 words in two 50-minute sessions, spread throughout the day.

The Spaced Repetition software needs to be used every night to be truly effective.  It is timed to present words right before the moment your mind forgets them, so if you skip a day or more, you ruin the effect of the program.  This method helps you to remember the new vocabulary long-term.

Using this system, I was able to internalize about 700 new Spanish words in the course of 5 weeks of study.  At the end of the 5 weeks, my retention was tested and sat right around 90% of the words studied.

The programs I used, both for Mac OS X, were:

• Genius for flash card/Spaced Learning
• Anki for Spaced Repetition

Anki is available for Windows and Linux.

If you have any other suggestions for effective learning methods, please leave them in the comments.  I would like to update this article in the future to include more resources.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 1:35 am and is filed under How-to.