You’ll spend a fixed amount of time every day learning new words, remembering the words from last week, and occasionally meeting old friends from months or years back. By doing this, you’ll spend most of your time successfully recalling words you’ve almost forgotten and building foundations for new words at a rapid, steady clip. Playing with timing in this way is known as spaced repetition, and it’s extraordinarily efficient. In a four-month period, practicing for 30 minutes a day, you can expect to learn and retain 3600 flash cards with 90 to 95 percent accuracy.
