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How it worksFlashcards and practice

Why short reviews beat long study sessions

Your flashcards come back for review just before you would forget them. A few minutes a day keeps hundreds of words fresh.

Each card asks you to remember the answer before you see it. Cards you know come back less often, and cards you miss come back sooner.

Try it freeHow to use it well

Try it

Try a quick reviewCard 1 of 3

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Your memory of a wordIllustration
MemoryTime

How to use it well

  1. Try before you look

    Say or type the answer first, even if you are unsure. The effort is what makes it stick.

  2. Grade yourself honestly

    If you needed a hint or got it wrong, say so. That is how the card comes back at the right time.

  3. Review a little every day

    Ten cards a day beats a hundred on Sunday.

Why it works

Testing yourself beats rereading

Students who practised recalling material remembered much more a week later than students who read the same material again.

Source:Roediger & Karpicke, 2006, Psychological Science

Spreading reviews out works

A review of hundreds of memory experiments found that spacing practice out over days leads to better long-term memory than the same practice done all at once.

Source:Cepeda et al., 2006, Psychological Bulletin

The research behind it

Peer-reviewed studies this tool is built on. Tap a title to read the paper.

  1. ExperimentRoediger & Karpicke, 2006
    Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention

    Psychological Science

    What they did
    Students read short texts and then either reread them or tried to recall them from memory.
    What they found
    Rereading looked better after five minutes. After a week, the students who had tested themselves remembered much more.
    Read the paper doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
  2. ExperimentKarpicke & Roediger, 2008
    The critical importance of retrieval for learning

    Science

    What they did
    Students learned 40 Swahili and English word pairs and kept either studying or testing each pair after they first knew it.
    What they found
    Repeated testing led to far better memory a week later. Extra studying added almost nothing.
    Read the paper doi.org/10.1126/science.1152408
  3. Review of many studiesCepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted & Rohrer, 2006
    Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis

    Psychological Bulletin

    What they did
    Combined 317 experiments that compared spread-out practice with practice done all at once.
    What they found
    Spreading practice over time gave better long-term memory, and longer gaps helped more when the test was further away.
    Read the paper doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354

The mistake most people make

Marking hard cards as easy

Do this instead

It feels good, but the card then waits too long and you forget it. An honest "again" saves time later.

Try it free

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