
Spaced Repetition is Awesome - frrp
http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/spaced_repetition_is_awesome.html?utm_medium=rss&utm_source=feedly&utm_reader=feedly&utm_campaign=rss
======
xiaoma
I used to blog about spaced repetition systems five years ago back when it was
mostly just language geeks into it: [http://toshuo.com/2009/review-anki-
spaced-repetition-learnin...](http://toshuo.com/2009/review-anki-spaced-
repetition-learning-system/)

It's undeniable that SRS is great for remembering discrete chunks of
information, but making it the primary portion of language learning efforts is
generally a mistake since learning a language is not simply a process of
memorizing a dictionary, word by word. Unlike an SRS, Extensive Reading will
also help solidify a learner's understanding of collocations and semantics. It
teaches more of the target language's culture, too.

There are two places in language learning where an SRS is fantastic. It's a
great way to speed up learning the very basic scaffold necessary for engaging
with graded readers or children's materials. Basic phonics training is
particularly low-hanging fruit. Another great use is for memorizing words that
one will very rarely hear in daily life and yet are the kinds of words
everyone would be expected to know.

I recently tried Duolingo. I like some aspects of it, but it's really too bad
that it mixes comprehension and production in all the activities. Far more
practice time should be spent on comprehension (both listening and reading)
than on production. This is true at every level but even more vital for
beginners. Typing out words in a foreign language just isn't the best use of a
beginner's study time.

~~~
freehunter
I really wish there was a way for Duolingo to test comprehension without
translating. Far too often translations are non-intuitive, especially with
idioms. I don't know how they could do that, though.

Edit - an example from Duolingo: Ihm gehören viele Zeitungen.

Ihm means he/him

gehören means to be a part of or to belong to, from Duolingo:

(to) be part of

(we/they) belong to

(we/they) are part of

viele Zeitungen is many newspapers.

But the sentence does not translate as "he belongs to many newspapers". What
it actually means is "He owns many newspapers". When Duolingo asks you to
translate, there's no good way to translate that as a student. That is a
complex sentence that, for all intents and purposes, can only be understood in
German. You can't translate it without rewording it. Duolingo doesn't mention
that gehören can mean "to own" in certain circumstances, because they can't
give you the connotation of every situation that arises. Huge unsolved problem
in language learning that would be great if it were fixed.

------
merraksh
From his examples I wonder if these apps are good for grammar too, given that
the two Portuguese sentences he writes have wrong grammar and/or declination.

1) _Mulheres bonitas sao muito motivado._ Literally "Beautiful women are very
motivated", though the correct one (for gender and number) should be "Mulheres
bonitas são muito motivadAS". Not sure what sense this makes though, I guess
he wanted to say beautiful women were a good motivation (for him to learn
Portuguese), "Mulheres bonitas são boa motivação".

2) (NSFW) _Sua rabos e bonita_ should better be "seu rabo é bonito", i.e.
(literal translation) "your a__ is nice". Wrong gender in "your" and "nice"
and wrong number in a __.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Thanks. I did those from memory, still learning. Never claimed anki will make
you perfect instantly.

~~~
ricardobeat
Is that really on Duolingo? The wording "seu rabo é bonito" would be
considered hugely gross regardless of context or location.

~~~
JetSpiegel
I think it makes you look like a prude or a child more than gross. There are
widely used slang in both european and brazilian variants if you want to make
those kinds of remarks. Not to mention all the african variants I'm not really
familiar with.

~~~
ralmeida
As a Brazilian, I agree with ricardobeat. I don't think I ever saw a situation
where saying 'rabo' as a slang for ass would be considered even slightly
prudish or childish, but always at the very least explicit. The african
variations for 'ass' are much more tame (used on TV broadcasts, for example).

~~~
JetSpiegel
As a portuguese, that's how it's used here. A sanitized version of slang.

~~~
ralmeida
Oh, I didn't know that. Well, that's a good reminder that pt and pt-BR have
several vocabulary differences. A few more I can remember would be the words
"bicha" (pt: queue, pt-BR: male homossexual) and "durex" (pt: condom, pt-BR: a
kind of adhesive tape).

~~~
JetSpiegel
"bicha" has already picked up your meaning here in the last years.

Endless source of crappy jokes anytime someone says they waited somewhere. :|

------
tzs
There was a discussion of spaced repetition here two days ago. Does this mean
the optimum time for the next spaced repetition discussion is now about 10
days from now?

~~~
walterbell
Could be an alternate view of the "saved stories" list. Since it would be
repeated only to those who saved the story, it could increase increase ongoing
engagement with the story. Would need a way to terminate the repetition.

------
juanre
For those of you using Emacs and org-mode org-drill is a great option,
[http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-
drill.html](http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-drill.html)

------
tokenadult
After reading all the comments posted here till now, I see that they are
almost all about foreign language learning, with few mentioning other
applications of spaced repetition systems. I had better apply my own
background in foreign language learning (I learned Chinese as a second
language beginning at age seventeen well enough to spend most of my twenties
working as a language teacher, translator, and interpreter) to letting my
friends here on HN know what else is useful to do for learning a human
language well.

I hope the FAQ information below helps hackers achieve their dreams. As I
learned Mandarin Chinese up to the level that I was able to support my family
for several years as a Chinese-English translator and interpreter, I had to
tackle several problems for which there is not yet a one-stop-shopping
software solution. For ANY pair of languages, even closely cognate pairs of
West Germanic languages like English and Dutch, or Wu Chinese dialects like
those of Shanghai and Suzhou, the two languages differ in sound system, so
that what is a phoneme in one language is not a phoneme in the other language.

[http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/Wha...](http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneme.htm)

But a speaker of one language who is past the age of puberty will simply not
perceive many of the phonemic distinctions in sounds in the target language
(the language to be learned) without very careful training, as disregard of
those distinctions below the level of conscious attention is part of having
the sound system of the speaker's native language fully in mind. Attention to
target language phonemes has to be developed through pains-taking practice.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10442032](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10442032)

It is brutally hard for most people (after the age of puberty, and perhaps
especially for males) to learn to attend to sound distinctions that don't
exist in the learner's native language. That is especially hard when the sound
distinction signifies a grammatical distinction that also doesn't exist in the
learner's native language. For example, the distinction between "I speak" and
"he speaks" in English involves a consonant cluster at the end of a syllable,
and no such consonant clusters exist in the Mandarin sound system at all.
Worse than that, no such grammatical distinction as "first person singular"
and "third person singular" for inflecting verbs exists in Mandarin, so it is
remarkably difficult for Mandarin-speaking learners of English to learn to
distinguish "speaks" from "speak" and to say "he speaks Chinese" rather than *
"he speak Chinese" (not a grammatical phrase in spoken English).

Most software materials for learning foreign languages could be much improved
simply by including a complete chart of the sound system of the target
language (in the dialect form being taught in the software materials) with
explicit description of sounds in the terminology of articulatory phonetics

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulatory_phonetics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulatory_phonetics)

with full use of notation from the International Phonetic Alphabet.

[http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/ipachart.html](http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/ipachart.html)

Good language-learning materials always include a lot of focused drills on
sound distinctions (contrasting minimal pairs in the language) in the target
language, and no software program for language learning should be without
those. It is still an art of software writing to try to automate listening to
a learner's pronunciation for appropriate feedback on accuracy of
pronunciation. That is not an easy problem.

After phonology, another huge task for any language learner is acquiring
vocabulary, and this is the task on which most language-learning materials are
most focused. But often the focus on vocabulary is not very thoughtful.

The classic software approach to helping vocabulary acquisition is essentially
to automate flipping flash cards. But flash cards have ALWAYS been overrated
for vocabulary acquisition. Words don't match one-to-one between languages,
not even between closely cognate languages. The map is not the territory, and
every language on earth divides the world of lived experience into a different
set of words, with different boundaries between words of similar meaning.

The royal road to learning vocabulary in a target language is massive exposure
to actual texts (dialogs, stories, songs, personal letters, articles, etc.)
written or spoken by native speakers of the language. I'll quote a master
language teacher here, the late John DeFrancis. A few years ago, I reread the
section "Suggestions for Study" in the front matter of John DeFrancis's book
Beginning Chinese Reader, Part I, which I first used to learn Chinese back in
1975. In that section of that book, I found this passage, "Fluency in reading
can only be achieved by extensive practice on all the interrelated aspects of
the reading process. To accomplish this we must READ, READ, READ"
(capitalization as in original). In other words, vocabulary can only be well
acquired in context (an argument he develops in detail with regard to Chinese
in the writing I have just cited) and the context must be a genuine context
produced by native speakers of the language.

I have been giving free advice on language learning since the 1990s on my
personal website,

[http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html](http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html)

and the one advice I can give every language learner reading this thread is to
take advantage of radio broadcasting in your target language. Spoken-word
broadcasting (here I'm especially focusing on radio rather than on TV) gives
you an opportunity to listen and to hear words used in context. In the 1970s,
I used to have to use an expensive short-wave radio to pick up Chinese-
language radio programs in North America. Now we who have Internet access can
gain endless listening opportunities from Internet radio stations in dozens of
unlikely languages. Listen early and listen often while learning a language.
That will help with phonology (as above) and it will help crucially with
vocabulary.

The third big task of a language learner is learning grammar and syntax, which
is often woefully neglected in software language-learning materials. Every
language has hundreds of tacit grammar rules, many of which are not known
explicitly even to native speakers, but which reveal a language-learner as a
foreigner when the rules are broken. The foreign language-learner needs to
understand grammar not just to produce speech or writing that is less jarring
and foreign to native speakers, but also to better understand what native
speakers are speaking or writing. Any widely spoken modern language has thick
books reporting the grammatical rules of the language,

[http://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Chinese-Functional-
Reference-...](http://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Chinese-Functional-Reference-
Grammar/dp/0520066103/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Comprehensive-Grammar-
Grammars...](http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Comprehensive-Grammar-
Grammars/dp/0415150329/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Grammar-English-
Language...](http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Grammar-English-
Language/dp/0582517346/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English-
Language/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English-
Language/dp/0521431468/)

and it is well worth your while to study books like that both about your
native language(s) and about any language you are studying.

~~~
neves
Learning in context is really an underrated aspect of language learning. Some
more tips:

1) Podcasts: you can handpick a theme you like, so you can transfer your
knowledge between languages to get all subtleties.

2) Graphic Novels (aka: comics): you see the dialogs with a corresponding
image. You mix narrative aspects of a book, where you read whats in the mind
of the characters and see with a corresponding image.

3) Movies: you should watch them with subtitles in the spoken language.

4) Kindle Touch/Paperwhite: you will easily click in a word to see its
definition.

~~~
ktf
_> 3) Movies: you should watch them with subtitles in the spoken language._

I can't believe I never thought to do this. Great idea, thanks!

------
watterssn
For those looking for SRS built around keyboard shortcuts and programming
editors give [https://www.shortcutfoo.com](https://www.shortcutfoo.com) a try.
The learn section uses an SRS algorithm and uses timing to determine the
rating (vs selecting a number). shameless plug: I built it :)

------
rmc
One of the hardest things for spacedrrepetition software is finding/creating
decks of words to learn. Does anyone have any recommendations for how to go
about that?

~~~
633nm
I've mostly used Anki for learning Japanese, so I'm biased towards that
specific language. There are however some awesome free tools floating around
that take the pain out of creating flashcards:

-[1] EPWING2Anki creates flashcards from a wordlist and a dictionary in EPWING format

-[2] Sub2srs creates flashcards based on a movie and subtitle files

It's also possible to use e.g. spreadsheets to mass-create cards. Further
tools analyze e.g. a selection of ebooks and create word frequency lists of
unknown words, Combined those tools have greatly assisted my progress.

[1]: [http://subs2srs.sourceforge.net/](http://subs2srs.sourceforge.net/)

[2]:
[http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=181475](http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=181475)

~~~
shawnps
User hermanschaaf and I live in Japan and set out to build a fast Japanese
dictionary: [http://nihongo.io](http://nihongo.io)

Source is here: [http://github.com/gojp](http://github.com/gojp)

Take a look if you have time, feature requests are very welcome :)

~~~
Larrikin
Once you study Japanese for any amount of time romaji becomes more of a
liability than anything else. The thing I dislike most about most these one
search bar dictionaries is there is no way to ignore romaji input. Its one of
the main reasons I still use jisho.org so often and I'm very unexcited about
their new beta. Adding the ability to turn it off would be a great start

~~~
shawnps
I understand what you mean; I've been studying Japanese for five years now and
learned hiragana and katakana in the first two weeks of class. I have always
told new learners to do that first as you rarely see romaji used in Japan.

Do you mean that on jisho you always use the Japanese search box?

~~~
Larrikin
When I'm searching Japanese yes. Jisho splits up English and Japanese so that
I don't have to filter through completely unrelated results if an English word
just happens to be made up letters that could be romaji. I also usually type
into both boxes if I have an idea of the word or I want a sentence example of
the word used in a specific way

~~~
shawnps
Ah, I think I get it. When searching for the term "shin" for example, it would
ignore any English definition matches such as shin guard, and only match
Japanese terms containing it, like 心配.

------
patrickk
Sivers on SRS (great info): [http://sivers.org/srs](http://sivers.org/srs)

~~~
pitt1980
great link

I'd love to see more non-foreign language SRS applications

seems like every college textbook/class (or really any textbook/class) should
have a SRS application to go with it

wouldn't it be nice if all those freshman level lessons had gotten implanted
in your memory

------
erikb
Since I started SRS (first Anki and now even more successful with memrise) I
have to agree that it's the most awesome thing I encountered so far learning
languages. To say the truth due to lazyness and being tired after work I
haven't found a reasonable alternative to learn thousands of vocabs. So before
SRS I really was screwed, only learning very, very slowly.

------
yummyfajitas
Let me just say this post was mainly to inform my readers that SRS exists. A
far better submission for HN would have been gwerns review article, with
science and such.

------
brok3nmachine
I'm close to launching a memory trainer for remembering Names and Faces. It
uses a spaced repetition algorithm based on Super Memo 2 (Anki does as well,
but I'm not sure how far it has evolved from its SM2 roots):
[http://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/sm2.htm](http://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/sm2.htm)

I've also found SRS to be incredibly effective when combined with other
mnemonic techniques, while learning French. I wrote about this recently:
[http://www.ubermemory.com/blog/understanding-
mnemonics](http://www.ubermemory.com/blog/understanding-mnemonics)

------
aabajian
I wrote a free spaced-repetition app for iOS a while back:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/memorize-
me!/id578975798?mt=...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/memorize-
me!/id578975798?mt=8)

My plan was to release packs of things to memorize (e.g. Famous Quotes, Ten
Commandments, etc.), but with 0-10 downloads a week, I just gave up on it. If
there's some interest, I'll consider releasing an update.

~~~
rahimnathwani
So did another HN user :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8152267](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8152267)

~~~
aabajian
Nice, haha, there's probably a dozen or so such apps. My motivation was to
make an app that pings me when it's time to remember a certain item. So I
could be anywhere and all of a sudden I'd get a message, "Propranolol (INN) is
a sympatholytic non-selective beta blocker". I was in med school at the time.

~~~
gingerlime
At Kenhub[0], we built an anatomy learning platform that uses spaced
repetition. The algorithm might not be as elaborate, but the basic concept is
the same.

In our case, it's a little different from a flashcard system, because anatomy
structures are typically grouped and asked together (e.g. choose the right
term from the following images, choose the correct term in the picture from
the following list etc). There's also more complex topics such as origin,
insertion, innervation, function - which covers the way anatomy structures
'interact' (e.g. this muscle flexes the arm...).

[0] [https://www.kenhub.com](https://www.kenhub.com)

------
hngiszmo
The biggest list of learning apps, many of which do support SRS is
[http://www.flashcardapps.info/](http://www.flashcardapps.info/)

It's iOS only but my point is to show how there is a huge variety even for iOS
users.

I did my own free SRS flashcards app and focus much on cooperative content
creation: [https://fluxcards.de/](https://fluxcards.de/)

My suggestion is to try it out if you never did as it is truly amazing. It
can't replace a teacher or actually using what you are trying to learn but it
can make sure 100% that you learn faster and never forget facts that you want
to make sure you know. Try Anki or any other other SRS app if you don't want
to fall for my bold self-advertisement but try it out. It's worth it and
should be known by all.

------
jms
I've almost finished building a system for learning language specifically
using spaced repetition.

Instead of basic flash cards, reads you the word (audio); then if you don't
get it you'll be shown the word (visual); then you'll be read the word in
context; then shown the word in context.

The system doesn't just drill you on single words, it tests comprehension on
full sentences and documents too.

I'm currently putting the last polishes on to make sure new users can easily
start learning. If you're interested, I'll announce the beta launch on my
mailing list at www.hotglot.com , or if you're super keen email me at james @
hotglot.com and I'll give access to the alpha version.

------
cbovis
I can testify to the benefits of SR apps too after using Skritter to improve
Chinese reading and writing. Once you get the ball rolling you quickly find
yourself easily memorising characters and in some cases even predicting the
formation of characters you've never met before. For anyone who wants to learn
written Chinese or Japanese I would highly recommend it!

That said though, for learning the spoken language there's no substitute for
communicating with native speakers on a regular basis. SR tools simply help as
an additional tool to speed up your spoken learning or help with
reading/writing.

[http://www.skritter.com/](http://www.skritter.com/)

------
kyro
Spaced repetition is indeed awesome. For a month now I've been working through
a deck of hard English vocabulary using Anki, and already my speech and
reading comprehension capabilities have increased dramatically.

~~~
kremlin
Care to link?

------
melling
Can anyone explain how a good SRS system should work? Are there any
deficiencies in the current apps? I've got several iOS language apps and I'm
looking for features for my next release. I just added about 1000 pictures so
it's easier to learn by association, rather than word pairs e.g. gato/cat.
Here's my Spanish app.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-
lite/id388918463?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-
lite/id388918463?mt=8)

~~~
Larrikin
I personally wouldn't use your app because it doesn't look like you can add or
modify cards and list and doesn't appear to robust enough to be the main way
of studying.

~~~
melling
Yeah, I've got to find a way to allow for word lists to be imported. iOS
doesn't really have a good way to import csv. iOS 8 has some data sharing that
I'll look into.

~~~
walterbell
Dropbox?

------
bayesianhorse
I think spaced repetition is over-hyped and under-understood.

In language learning, it can have some benefit, but I think duolingo's
approach, which does not obsess over computing repetition times, more
effective than flash card software.

I found that in order to use a new word, 6 repetitions isn't enough, you
rather need a few hundreds to make it stick. Also waiting a few weeks until
the next repetition is just a waste of time...

------
a3_nm
A very cool thing with Anki (with contrast with Duolingo) is that it is free
software (as in free speech), and is distributed on F-Droid
[https://f-droid.org](https://f-droid.org) for Android users who do not have
Google play.

------
jongraehl
Read [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22815528-anki-
essentials](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22815528-anki-essentials)
(Anki Essentials) to get started.

------
donniezazen
I have used Anki. I really wish they had paid high quality decks to study.

------
hasenj
1\. Flash cards are boring as hell

2\. Memorizing a bunch of vocabulary does _not_ help you learn the language.
If anything, it might be a hinderance.

Bear with me here.

The main obstacle in learning a language is not the acquisition of vocabulary
per se, but getting familiar and acquainted with how ideas are expressed in
the language.

The most common mistake that beginners make is they try to form the sentence
in their native language, then translate it to the target language. This
approach is guaranteed to make you form BAD sentences.

You need to be exposed to not just vocabulary, but phrases, collocations[0],
and idioms.

You must train your mind to use the expressions of your target language from
the start .. _without_ starting from some expression in your native language.

To get there, you need to be exposed to tons of natural
speech/writings/dialogs in the target language.

That's why a vocabulary list on its own is pretty useless.

If you're going to use flashcards, let the entries be phrases and
collocations, instead of single words.

[0]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collocation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collocation)

~~~
stdbrouw
My experience has been exactly the opposite. When speaking or reading Spanish,
German or French, I never think "gee, if only I knew more grammar" but almost
every day I think "well, it sure would be nice if I knew the word for ___."

It seems your advice is directed towards language learners who think they
might get away with just learning words and not bothering at all with grammar,
collocations, expressions and all of the other things you need to truly grasp
a foreign language, like practicing listening comprehension. For those people,
your advice makes sense. But realistically, even among flash card aficionados,
how many people do you figure think learning a language is as easy as just
learning words? Do those people even exist?

~~~
hasenj
Ah, but the word for X in this context is not necessarily the same word you
should use in some other arbitrary context.

~~~
stdbrouw
And many people to add hints to their cards (e.g. to distinguish _prevoir
quelqu 'un_ from _prevoir quelque chose_ ) as well as add example sentences –
or, as you suggested, have sentence decks in addition to word decks. But even
regardless of that, not using flash cards because sometimes contextless
learning is not ideal would be throwing away the baby with the bathwater; the
increase in speed at which you can learn vocabulary is just immense with SRS.

~~~
hasenj
> not using flash cards because sometimes contextless learning is not ideal
> would be throwing away the baby with the bathwater

No, that would only be the case if one decided to stop learning the language
all together because they think they'll never be fluent.

I'm proposing to learn the language properly: by exposing yourself to as much
material as you can, for prolonged periods of time.

~~~
stdbrouw
> I'm proposing to learn the language properly: by exposing yourself to as
> much material as you can, for prolonged periods of time.

... which is what you need for mastery, I absolutely agree (it's what I do
too!), but it's very, very slow.

~~~
hasenj
It's not really very slow. It took me about one year to learn English when I
arrived to Canada (I was 16).

