Lesson Transcript

Hey everyone, welcome to The Monthly Review, the monthly show on language learning, where you discover new learning strategies, motivational tips, study tools, and resources.
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Okay, today's topic is how to master 500 words with spaced repetition.
If you want to speak more of the language, you'll need to know more words. But is there a best way to learn words, especially if you forget a lot of what you learn? Well, there is. Stick around. Today, you'll discover the problem of learning something just once, the power of spaced repetition learning and how to learn words fast.
But first, if you're looking for new, free language resources and downloads, here are this month's new lessons and resources. Be sure to download these now before we take them down in a few days.
First, the Talking About Where You Live PDF Conversation Sheet Sheet.
Learn how to say where you live, how close or far your place is, and master over 20 words and phrases inside.
And second, the 50 Adjectives to Describe Your Personality PDF Workbook.
This bonus teaches you the 50 must-know adjectives for personalities so you can talk about yourself in your target language.
To get your free resources, click the link in the description below right now. They're yours to keep forever.
How to Master 500 Words with Spaced Repetition Part 1, The Problem with Learning Something Just Once If you're like most casual language learners and you're learning new words, chances are you'll look at them once or twice and never again, hoping that they'll stick.
But if you want to boost your vocabulary and, say, learn 500 words in a month or two, this is not the best way to do it.
And it doesn't matter if it's 500 words, 50 words, or 5 words.
If you learn 5 new words right now and one day later I ask you what they were, you'll likely remember less than 50%, maybe one or two words.
And in two days, you'll have forgotten them all.
Why? That's because we naturally forget what we learn if we don't review.
In fact, the rate of forgetting has been studied, documented, and graphed out by the late German psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus, who came up with the forgetting curve, which shows the relationship between time and memory retention, so you can see just how fast you forget.
It's a big drop if you don't review, which brings us to reviewing and repetition.
Reading a word or phrase once won't save it to your brain, but reviewing it from time to time will help, because our brains are not like computers, but more like muscles.
And this is where spaced repetition learning comes in.
Part two, the power of spaced repetition learning.
Spaced repetition learning simply means revisiting or coming back to review something over time.
And the space between each review session gets longer and longer.
So if you learned a word today, you can review it in two days, then in five days, then in seven days.
That way, you review the word before you forget it, and as a result, you strengthen your memory and remember it better in the long run.
But you may think, coming back to review in two, five, seven days, it's inconvenient, and no normal person would remember to do that.
And you're right, it's hard to do manually.
Luckily, technology can do that for you, specifically spaced repetition flashcards, which you'll find in our system.
Part three, how to learn with spaced repetition flashcards.
These flashcards space words out based on how well you know them and test you at appropriate times, so you don't forget the words. And the result is your progress skyrockets, and you'll easily master 500 new words in a month or two.
Now, how can you use the spaced repetition flashcards inside of our learning system?
Find the flashcards in the vocabulary dropdown menu on the site.
There, you should already have the 100 must-know words deck.
That's the default deck, but you can always create others.
Click on study and start session to start learning.
You'll get a flashcard with the word in the target language.
Click on show answer to confirm the meaning, and mark it as correct or incorrect.
Based on your answer, the flashcards will start sorting the words for you.
If you know a word and mark it as correct, you won't see it for another two days.
But if you don't, you'll keep seeing it in that session until you get it right.
So just continue reviewing the words and keep at it until the study session is done, which should only take a few minutes.
Once you're done, come back tomorrow to review some more and try to drill every day, because you tend to learn better when you review consistently.
You can also review with three modes.
One, recognition.
You get the word in the target language and see if you know the meaning.
Two, production.
You get the meaning and see if you know it in the target language.
And three, listening.
You hear the pronunciation and see if you know the meaning.
And you can create flashcard decks from words you learn in our lessons, the 2000 core word list, entries in your word bank, and the words and phrases in our free vocab lists. Plus there are suggested lists right below your decks to help you get started.
The beauty of these flashcards is that all you have to do is put in the time until the words are stuck in your head. Don't worry about rushing or cramming.
Just do a little each day and the spaced repetition flashcards will do the rest.
So thank you for watching this episode of Monthly Review.
Next time, we'll talk about how to write a thousand words in five minutes a day - Daily Dose Diary.
If you enjoyed these tips, hit the like button, share the video with anyone who's trying to learn a language, and subscribe to our channel. We release new videos every week.
And if you're ready to finally learn language the fast, fun, and easy way and start speaking from your very first lesson, get our complete learning program. Sign up for your free lifetime account right now. Click the link in the description.
See you next time. Bye.

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