Does Spaced Repetition Work?

CC subtitles available in multiple languages.

⏳ Some people swear by "spaced repetition systems" (SRS). Others think they are waste of time.

What's my take? I've learned 20 languages so far in my life, but have only relied on spaced repetition for a few specific needs in language learning.

Watch on to see what those use cases are and what approach I think is generally more effective than using an SRS app.

📺 WATCH NEXT:

Don't Study Language Rules!

🧐 STUDIES & CORPORA:

Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)

⏲️ TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - What is "Spaced Repetition"?
0:59 - How I Learned Chinese Characters
2:09 - What Does the Research Say About Spaced Repetition?
2:41 - Applying Spaced Repetition in Language Learning
3:20 - Input, Comprehension & Production
3:43 - Event-Related Potential (ERP)
4:26 - Contexts Matters More than Lexical Frequency
5:28 - Spitzer's 3 Ingredients of Successful Learning
6:49 - Language Production
8:00 - Attitude, Time & Focus
8:48 - The Rapid Decline of Word Frequency
10:22 - The SRS Dilemma
10:51 - How I Study Languages
12:38 - The Key Takeaway

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[Thelinguist]

❓ Have you used an SRS in language learning? Was it helpful?👇🏼

[keithkannenberg]

Steve's key takeaway here is the best advice that I know of for language learning. Do what you enjoy and that which you will keep doing. I personally hate flash cards because I find the process boring, uninteresting and without context not very helpful for me. So I don't use them. But I know people who swear by them. I like to do lots of extensive reading. I find studying texts intensively to be a chore. But I know people who love the detailed study. A corollary to Steve's takeaway might be, try a lot of different methods and find the ones that work for you.

[EFoxVN]

I have used Anki self-made flashcards with great success to break me into Spanish. After the 1st 3000 or so words learned, I switched to LingQ to further my vocabulary. Great mixture. Where it is also very good is with specific things you struggle with. For example, with numbers and with difficult prepositions. One typically does not get enough exposure to numbers naturally, and yet they are super important. There is really no rule that says one should use only one approach. Multiple angles of attack are good.

[coolbrotherf]

We learn languages through repetition and patterns, SRS does a good job especially in the beginning of giving learners a steady flow of repeated words to build up their comprehension.

Once a learner knows about 1000 common words, they have the basic tools needed to understand communication. At that point immersion and comprehensible input start to be more effective to learn the rest of the language through context instead of isolated word exposure which is a bit unnatural.

Like he mentioned in the video though, it can be a good tool later on to practice specific terms, rare words, or even dialectal words and slang you might find useful to know later.

Personally, I like finding words I didn't understand in songs or TV shows along with the phrases those words were in to add to my Anki deck so I can understand it better the next time I rewatch or relisten. It's really fun with music as the songs are short and easy to listen to many times until I can understand the lyrics.

[dkennell]

I think the point of the gradually expanding intervals in SRS is not that it helps you learn those particular words better, but that increasing the intervals frees up time to add in new words. If the intervals never get larger, you'd never able to add new cards in.

[Mistcurve]

For me, I do a thing called "Sentence Mining" Which is basically making flashcards from the things I'm reading for SRS. The SRS review in anki is more to remind me of the instance that I encountered the word and less about learning the word itself, as that's what I do when I make the card. I find it beneficial if for nothing else it gives me a library of words that is trackable that I know, similar to the way Linq tracks words, in a way. It helps me with reading consistantly which is nice.

[douglasmendes]

The main reason to use SRS system is because, in my experience, when you use that in correct manner ( I + 1 ) the number one means a word you don’t know, after few reviews these words you don’t know, some special things happen in your brain, when you see a unknown word in your immersion (tv show, YouTube, etc ) which you saw it in SRS it’s like something locked becomes unlocked at that exact moment in your mind. So, after that, you start seeing these words many times. Then that process is when you acquire a word.

[nissevelli]

For learning Finnish, I've found SRS to be a cornerstone of my learning process. Unfortunately there's not a lot of interesting and comprehensible input materials when compared to other languages such as Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, ect.

My SRS system (Speakly App) helps my brain at least see and hear the word. 8 or even 9 times out of 10, I'm unable to retrieve the word and use it in a conversation after "learning" it.

However, after seeing that word and getting a definition and audio clip of it, I know that it is hiding somewhere in my brain, ready to be brought out. Through the process of watching TV, listening to podcasts, reading books and newspaper articles, and having conversations, that word becomes more and more familiar until it finally becomes tacit knowledge.

[HunterNuttall]

Spaced repetition is kind of a silly term, because all repetition is spaced. What they mean is more like intelligently spaced repetition. I think the point is to save time by skipping words you already know. Which is wonderful in theory, but I don't know if that happens in practice.

[screumeuleu]

Cher Monsieur, je trouve votre chaîne est un encouragement permanent pour apprendre une nouvelle langue, vos conseils sont comme de l'or en barre. Et ils sont si simples qu'ils en sont révolutionnaires. Merci infiniment.

[StillAliveAndKicking_]

It is always interesting to hear your views on language learning. Interestingly the great Kató Lomb liked to learn phrases in her target language. I have adopted a similar approach. I am working through your German short stories, and I put key phrases into Anki. That allows me to review the sentences at regular intervals. Having to review them forces me to focus on the structure, and highlights parts that I missed before. It is helping me to gradually learn the basics of the German case system. I don’t find it useful for verbs on their own, many if not most verbs require context to be meaningful. It is very useful for nouns especially the gender. I will check out the paper you reference.

[theswedishpolyglot]

I would add that SRS does not necessitate learning out-of-context. I have 45 000 unique phrases in Chinese (all unique phrases from 80 books that I will read-listen through) in a deck, where each unique phrase is placed in its original sentence. I also have sentence audio, individual word definitions etc. In other words, SRS is at least in principle content agnostic (it can be out-of-context or in-context etc.). I go through potentially thousands of cards each day in a very low effort way (1-5 seconds per card). It does not compete with other forms of learning for me, since I can do it while e.g. listening to audiobooks in German, while walking, during transport, general dead time etc.

Interesting facts about SRS that you brought up. One thing I have noticed while studying Vietnamese words (12 000 unique phrases at this point), is that SRS will not descriminate based on frequency of occurence. So when I go to read sentences or a text, my brain's sense of word frequency is not well training (because I have roughly equal exposure to words regardless of frequency). Reading extensively or semi-extensively (like LingQ) I think allows the brain to really get a good sense of collocations, i.e. prior/probability of certain words appearing in certain contexts or in general.

[spacedinput]

I differentiate between static and dynamic spaced repetition.
Dynamic is like Anki, which recalculate your repetition time accordingly your success with recall the word.
I like to use static spaced repetition exactly for comprehensible input materials where you just simply want to review the same video for 3-4-5 times. This repeted exposure is extremely efficient and neglected. Spaced Input app is amazing for this,
1. you can choose your own review schedule
2. the to-do's are interactive, you tap the to-do and it brings up the app you saved the link from.

I use Anki as well. Whenever a card becomes a, ,leech" I just put another context, another, ,fill-in-the-gap" sentence on the card for having a different view, a different context for the same word. Usually this little trick, ,kill the leech" :D I can recall these cards so much easier. I think it's because I deal a little bit more with the word. It brings me out of this robotic review-mode and of course I have more neurons to fire when I see the card.

[alexandresantos]

As a beginner, I usually use to SRS. At first, we need to know "a pack words" and, for me, at the beginning of the journey is a memorization process, then some time after we can understand some structure, perceive new words. If I only listening, It would is too hard for me. But I agree that spend much time with SRS is no good. Now, after one year studying, I waste 10-15 minutes to review and speak 70 cards.

[rebelcat]

In my experience and my opinion I think that the flashcards are a little boring to me, but I found them useful so I often use them. thanks steve, for your wisdom.

[tedc]

Of coure I agree with everything Steve says. This is just an added thought. SRS is a good tool for remembering things you know, but it does not teach you anything. If I didn't know it on Thursday, I still don't know it on Friday. A student needs some other method for initially learning each item. After that is done, the repeated testing of SRS might help in the transition from "seeing a symbol and remembing its mnemonic" (もis a fishhook and MOE goes fishing) to "seeing a symbol and knowing the sound" (も is MO).

[SuperKaBlooey]

I think the average of 30 seconds per flashcard that Chat GPT came up with might be based on data that is inflated by people who go idle while in the middle of reviewing a deck of flashcards. People who are actively reviewing probably do spend, on average, about 3 seconds on a flashcard. I imagine that people getting up to fetch a glass of water or to do something else, while leaving their spaced repetition program open, has greatly increased the recorded average for those programs.

[ariohandoyo]

Before i didn't know that people that counting on flash cards to learn English, i did that as an elementary school student, but it turns out, that is not the best thing to do. I did use google translator when i don't know the meaning of the words but i never use it over and over, yes we have plans to say something in languange that we are learning we should have a plant to say to tell or to disscuss about certain topics that we will disscuss on our group where people can disscuss or talk about on that group.
There you have it guys, we should have a plan our life.😊

[aidarzharassov]

Good point are made - particularly the part about consistent repeat rather spaceout
It took me 3-4 month to remember n4 kanji, and review n5 kanji a while ago
Now i set in place my learning materials(best tools for srs, example sentence reading, writing characters on phone, some character parts learning) for 2-3 hours a day
I think the last method is going to fold 2-3 times first observed time for more number of complex kanji as n3

First method consisted of agresive digging into writing kanji, it made my even hour of learning stressful kinda

[ancalagonyt]

The point of spacing out the repetitions is not that expanding the spacing improves learning. The point is to reduce your workload.

If I do 10 flashcards per day with a fixed review every 5 days, non-expanding, then every 5 days I'm adding another 10 cards to my workload, and in less than a month, I'll be reviewing 100 cards per day, almost all of which I already know by heart. With an SRS, because the intervals expand when I don't miss a card, I can start out with 10 per day, with the first review at 5 days, then 10 days, then 20, and in a couple of repetitions, it's 6 months or a year and a half.

With an SRS, you spend less time on the words you know, and more time on the words you still need to learn, and that keeps the workload managable.