A method
Learning a word is cheap. Keeping it is the whole job.
Almost nobody fails at vocabulary because a word was too hard to understand the first time. They fail because they met it once, wrote it somewhere, and never saw it again at the right moment. This is a method for the second part, and it works with any tool.
Six habits
In the order they matter
- 1
Take the words from what you are already doing
A word list built from a book you are reading, a show you watch or a conversation you had sticks better than a frequency list, because you have already met each word once with context attached. Frequency lists are useful as a supplement and terrible as a source of motivation.
- 2
Capture immediately, curate later
The moment of meeting a word is the only moment you are guaranteed to have it. Write it down then, badly, and fix the card later — a mediocre card that exists beats a perfect one you did not make.
- 3
Keep one meaning per card
If a word has two distinct senses that matter to you, that is two cards. A card whose answer is "one of these three things" cannot be graded honestly, and an honest grade is what the scheduler runs on.
- 4
Add fewer than you think
Every new card is a commitment to review it for months. A daily intake you can sustain through a bad week is worth more than a burst that leaves you with a backlog you avoid.
- 5
Answer honestly, especially when it is close
A word you got after four seconds of hunting is a word you did not know. Marking it as known pushes it months away and you will lose it. The scheduler can only be as good as the answers it is given.
- 6
Meet the words outside the app
Reading, listening, and using them. A word that only exists on its own card has been learned in one context and will not survive a second one — which is the whole reason Rayaad has a browser extension and an audio mode.
The part you cannot do by hand
Everything above is a habit. The timing is not — it is arithmetic over hundreds of items, each with its own history, and it is the reason people who are perfectly disciplined still lose vocabulary. Reviewing on a fixed cycle means most of your reviews land on words you still know, and the ones you are about to lose are treated identically to the ones you have known for a year.
A scheduler fixes exactly that and nothing else. FSRS estimates, per card, how durable the memory is and how much trouble that particular word gives you, and it puts the card in front of you as your chance of recalling it approaches the target. The practical effect is that a mature deck takes a few minutes a day regardless of its size.
What a year looks like
A word you keep getting right comes back tomorrow, then 3 days, then 8 days, then 19 days, and by the eighth correct answer it is 11 months away. Eight answers, a couple of minutes in total, spread over a year.
And when you get one wrong
It comes back inside the same session, after a few other cards have gone past — so you are recalling it rather than reading it off the screen you just saw — and its interval is reduced rather than reset. Getting things wrong is how the scheduler learns; it is not a penalty and it is not worth avoiding by grading yourself generously.
Next: what a tool has to do to support this, orget your existing list in.
Common questions
How many new words a day is sensible?
Fewer than you want to. Every new word adds reviews for months, so a rate you can sustain beats a burst you abandon — ten a day is a hundred and fifty a fortnight, which is more than most people keep up with. The number that matters is the one you are still doing in eight weeks.
Should I learn a word in both directions?
Recognition first, production later, and only for words you actually need to produce. Both directions double the reviews for every word, which is a real cost — it is worth paying for the few hundred words you will actively use and not for the long tail you only need to understand.
What should go on the back of a card?
The smallest thing that makes the front unambiguous. One meaning rather than three, and a short example if the word has more than one sense. A back with three translations is three different recalls sharing one answer.
How long until a word is actually learned?
In Rayaad's scheduling, a word answered correctly each time is 1 month away after five answers and 11 months away after eight — so roughly a year of very occasional contact. The total time you have spent on it is a couple of minutes.
Is it better to learn words in context or in isolation?
Isolated retrieval builds the recall; context makes the word usable. Doing both is why a card with a short example works better than either a bare word pair or a whole sentence on the front.
Twenty words tonight.
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