Sep 13, 2026 · 8 min read
Spaced repetition is a scheduling habit, not a technique you do once. Instead of repeating a word until it feels comfortable, you let a little forgetting happen and then retrieve the word again. Each time you reach it after a gap, the next gap can be longer. For vocabulary that means a short list of words you owe a review to, and a growing distance between those reviews. This page explains why the gap matters, what a workable schedule looks like, and how to run one using the word lists and games on this site.
Rereading a word list feels productive because the words become fluent on the page. That fluency is recognition, and it hides a problem: recognising feasible in a sentence is much easier than producing it while you speak. Retrieval practice asks for the harder direction. You see a gap in a sentence, or a meaning in your own language, and you produce the English word before you check.
The effort is the point. A word pulled out of memory, even slowly, comes back more easily next time than a word skimmed off a page. This is the same mechanism behind the active recall habits used in other subjects, and it is why a five-minute test beats a twenty-minute read.
A common starting pattern runs: same day, one day, three days, one week, two weeks, one month. Those numbers are a starting point, not a rule. If you produce a word correctly, the gap grows. If you miss it, the gap shrinks and the word comes back tomorrow.
Two words learned on the same morning will not stay together. One is answered correctly every time and drifts out to a month; the other is missed twice and stays close. Keep a small queue of words that are actually due, and let the list you studied be just the source.
If the daily queue grows past twenty or thirty items, cut the number of new words rather than the reviews. A queue you skip is worth nothing.
Themed lists work well as a source because they arrive in sets of ten. Take one set, such as the advanced verbs list, and for each word write two prompts: the English word on one side, and on the other an example sentence with the word removed. On the back, add the partner word the item usually travels with, since a verb without its usual object is hard to use in speech.
Then test production first: read the gapped sentence and say the missing word aloud before you look. Only after that turn the card over and produce a meaning or a translation from the English. Ten words is a good session. The C2 list shows this two-pass method used on a single page, and common phrasal verbs reward it even more, because there the gap has to be filled with a whole particle, not just a stem.
A word game is retrieval practice with a score attached. Flash recall shows a prompt and asks you to produce an answer under a clock; Falling words asks for the same skill while you sort items quickly. Both give you something a page cannot: a record of which words you missed when you were tired or rushed.
That record is the useful part. A word missed during play is a word to put back into tomorrow's queue, and the personal deck keeps those items in one place so the queue is not rebuilt by hand. The game is the session; the schedule is what decides when the session happens. Long-term retention depends on that second part far more than on the game itself.
Five or six short contacts with a word across a fortnight is a realistic target, which is why a hundred-word list is a month of work rather than a weekend.
It is a review habit in which you look at a word again after a gap, starting small and growing the gap each time you produce the word correctly, so that reviews stay few while the word stays reachable.
Ten to fifteen minutes is usually enough for ten to thirty words if you only test production and skip words you answered at once. The point is regular contact, not a long session, and three short reviews spread across a fortnight do more for a word than one long sitting.
Yes. Take one themed set of ten words, cover the English, and answer from an example sentence with a gap. Those ten answers become your review queue, and each set you study adds only a few words to the daily load.
Five to ten new words a day is a sustainable pace for most learners. Adding more raises the review load later, because every new word returns several times before it settles, so a small number you actually review is worth more than a large number you read once.
Change what you store rather than reviewing it more often. Add the sentence you met the word in, add the partner word it usually travels with, and say it aloud in a sentence about your own week. A word with a story attached is easier to reach than a bare translation.
Related reading: spaced repetition in plain English · using flashcards well · all word lists · classroom notes for teachers.