Memory · 6 min read
Spaced Repetition: Remember the Words You Meet in Books
How spaced repetition works, why it beats cramming, and a simple routine for turning the words you find while reading into vocabulary you keep.
You read a chapter, look up twenty words, and a week later you remember three. That is not a problem with your memory — it is how memory works. Spaced repetition is the simplest way to fix it.
The forgetting curve
In the 1880s the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus measured how quickly he forgot lists of syllables. He found that memory drops steeply in the first hours and days after learning, then levels off. Every time you review something just before you would forget it, the curve becomes flatter: you forget more slowly.
Reviewing at the right time
Spaced repetition schedules reviews at growing intervals — for example after one day, three days, a week, two weeks, a month. Each successful review pushes the next one further away. Words you find hard come back sooner; words you know well come back rarely. You spend your time where it matters.
Why words from books stick better
A word you met in a story comes with a memory: the scene, the character who said it, what happened next. When you review it, that context comes back too. Flashcards made from your own reading are more memorable than words from a generic list, because they already mean something to you.
A simple routine
- While reading, save only words that appear more than once or that you want to use.
- Keep the sentence where you found the word, not only the translation.
- Review your saved words for five minutes a day, before you start reading.
- When a review is easy, let the interval grow; when you fail, start the word again.
- Every few weeks, delete words you no longer care about. Your list should feel useful, not endless.
Recall, don't just recognise
Looking at a word and thinking “yes, I know that” is recognition. Seeing the translation and producing the word yourself is recall, and it builds a much stronger memory. Mix both directions in your reviews.
Put it together
Reading gives you words in context; spaced repetition keeps them. In the PageWalker iPhone app, words you save while reading come back as flashcards in Learn, scheduled just before you would forget them. Find your next book in our reading list by level, or read how to learn a language by reading.