How a word comes back before you forget it

You can meet a word, understand it completely, and be unable to use it on Friday. Understanding and remembering are not the same event. The first happens while you are reading. The second happens later, when you meet the word again at the moment it has started to fade, and not after it is already gone.

That timing is all that spaced repetition is. Not a longer session. A shorter one, pointed at the words that are about to slip.

One look does not stay

The first meeting leaves a thin trace. Leave the word alone and the trace fades, and the next time you see it you are starting over, with only the feeling that you knew it once. See it again the next day, while the trace is still there, and the second meeting costs less and lasts longer.

Come back too soon, while the word is still obvious, and you have spent the minute on something that did not need you. Wait too long and you are relearning it. The useful moment is the one just before you would have had to look it up again.

The wait grows when you know it

Vocabulary keeps that schedule for the words you saved. The first time you know a word, it comes back the next day. Know it again and the wait grows. After that the gap keeps growing, so a word you really have is not sitting in tomorrow’s pile, asking to be recognised again.

Miss it, and it comes back the next day. It is not dropped, and it is not left for a month as if the miss had not happened. You are not asked to review every word you have ever saved. You open the ones that are due. There is no score for how many you ought to know by now. The only words in front of you are the ones that are ready to slip.

Then you stop

A review of the whole notebook is homework, and homework is what gets abandoned. A review of what is due is often about a minute, because most of your words are waiting, not calling. You do those. You leave. The word you hesitated on will be there again tomorrow. The word you knew will not bother you until it needs to.