How to make it stick

The best way to make something stick is not to cram it in your brain. Instead of staring at a piece of paper for 5 minutes hoping that you will have memorized what is written on it, it’s better to distribute those 5 minutes over a long period of time. This phenomenon has been widely studied in the last 4 decades.

The technique to exploit this effect is called Spaced Repetition.

(What is) Spaced Repetition

The central idea of Spaced Repetition is to have a deck of cards (also called flashcards), each with a prompt or question on one side and an answer on the other, and then use some kind of system to schedule those cards for review at specific times.

All you have to do is to show up every day, have a Spaced Repetition System throw questions at you, think the answer, check the back of the card for the real solution, and tell the system if you got it right or not.

When optimal, the system will show you a card right when you are on the verge of forgetting it so that, on average, you recall it correctly around 85% of the time.

As you accumulate expositions to an item through reviews, you make it more durable in your long-term memory. This way, the forgetting curve becomes smoother over time.

The most common way to use Spaced Repetition is trough computer or phone apps, but it is possible to use analog systems too.

Forgetting Curve with Spaced Repetition

Image from Wikipedia.

Language learners are usually stuck between 2 bad choices: either a generic Spaced Repetition System (SRS) which is too clunky and inadequate for languages, or a language learning app implementing some flavour of SRS which is almost always too rigid.

Language apps typically err on the side of too much repetition and too little information density. They don’t provide meaningful context, are impersonal, don’t allow content outside their app, and over-focus on word memorization.

Flashcard apps have the big disadvantage that they are not designed for language learning. Languages contrast with other topics in that, on the whole, they require skill, not knowledge. It’s not just about retrieving information but recalling it in real time, as fast as we listen to something.

Also, language always wants you to relate 3 pieces of information (sound, spelling, and meaning), but flashcards apps encourage 2 pieces only.

One way or another, they tend to promote bad learning habits:

• Hard to engage with.
• Promote little or no context.
• Foster memorization without understanding.
• Too reliant on the quality of the scheduling algorithm.
• Abuse clozes (fill-in-the-blanks).
• Punitive. Don’t allow pauses in the schedule.

The good news is that many of these problems can be fixed. Let’s see how.

Higher-order thinking

Higher-order thinking is an idea developed by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom that essentially categorizes learning outcomes in correlated levels of complexity and value: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create.

So he placed those concepts in a pyramid like this:

He proposed the the higher levels are harder to achieve, but much more valuable. Unfortunately, most people who use Space Repetition shoot to the lowest level: remembering isolated words or very short sentences. The problem is that there is very little value in doing that.

You have to aim for the highest levels by creating your own cards from the materials you are already using.

Perhaps you can relate to the experience of crafting a super-condensed cheat sheet for a school exam and then, during the exam, realize that you don’t need it. It turns out that in the process of making the cheat sheet, you have also learned the thing.

This makes sense because making a cheat sheet is hard. You have to squeeze as much information as possible into a tiny piece of paper, leaving cues for yourself so that when you read it in the exam, a lot more stuff will resurface automatically. This requires a deep understanding of the subject and an ability to find hidden relations between disparate concepts.

When you create your own flashcards, you go through a similar process. You are thinking about how to pack the most valuable information in each flashcard without making it too wordy. You are deciding what is important and what is not important. You are synthesizing information, engaging with the content. And you do it hundreds, thousands of times.

That is useful work. When you go through that routine repeatedly, something clicks in your brain: the idea that you own the content.

That is much more effective (and fun) than using someone else deck and drilling their cards. Actually, science shows that retention suffers drastically if a solution has been obtained just by remembering it rather than by solving a problem:

I know what are you thinking: “but that’s hard work”.

Exactly, and that’s why it works so well. If you do this work right, you will need way fewer repetitions to learn something.

The benefits don’t end there. When you create your cards you will naturally use content that interests you. You decide how hard or easy to make the prompts. How fast they should ramp up in difficulty. How many you should have. How to organize your decks.

You can update them, expand them, skip them, repurpose them, delete them.

You control themes, content, focus, difficulty, pace. Everything. No language course will be as tailored for you as the one you craft yourself. You have full control.

The part of “but creating cards is hard” can be mitigated by following some basic principles. There are not many rigid rules, but with practice, you’ll learn to navigate the idiosyncrasies of flashcard creation.

You can find on the book linked at the bottom some important recommendations, but the most important thing is that you don’t create flashcards just as a means to review them, but as an essential part of your routine.

	Front	Back
	Whale	Ballena
	Whales are big	Las ballenas son grandes
	Las                son grandes (ballenas/hormigas)	Ballenas
		Las ballenas son grandes
	La ballena voladora por fin despegó	The flying whale finally took off

Examples of how to (and how not to) create flashcards

Preserving what you learn

The main takeaway I want you to, well, take away from this section, is this:

Use retrieval practice as a means for targeted exposure.

Creating flashcards is intensive work already. Your review sessions should be, most of the time, extensive: keep a steady pace, make an effort to recall, and don’t worry much if you fail. Just keep going.

This is because, again, language is much more than memorization. You want it to communicate, not to recite a dictionary front to cover.

It doesn’t actually matter much if you recall something correctly or not, all it matters is that you make a conscious effort to recall. That is what strengthens the neural pathways in your brain. Saying “yay!” or “boo!” or “doh” after you check the answer makes nothing to your memory (let alone your undertstanding).

So if something is very important to you, like a very common expression, go with a lower interval. If something is not so important, choose a high interval, even if you failed.

What you want to obtain from this kind of retrieval practice is sustained effort, not a perfect score. Repeating cards too often will make the experience more boring but not necessarily more valuable. You get to internalization by progressive familiarization, not rote memorization.

Last but not least, don’t ever allow yourself to be bored by your deck. If a card becomes too easy, or too hard, or it turns out it is not as relevant as you thought, or you don’t like it much for whatever reason, either update it, archive it, or delete it. Always prioritize not losing motivation.