What the research found
Students who read a passage and then recalled it remembered far more of it a week later than students who simply read it again — even though rereading felt more effective, and won on a test five minutes later.
With foreign words the same holds after a word is learnt: going on recalling it kept it; going on restudying it added nothing.
A review of the research found the benefit larger when you produce the answer yourself than when you pick it from options, and larger when the right answer follows.
Roediger & Karpicke (2006). Test-enhanced learning: taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science 17(3), 249–255. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
Karpicke & Roediger (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science 319(5865), 966–968. doi:10.1126/science.1152408
Rowland (2014). The effect of testing versus restudy on retention: a meta-analytic review of the testing effect. Psychological Bulletin 140(6), 1432–1463. doi:10.1037/a0037559
How Word Gallery uses it
- From the card to memory. After its card, each new word is asked from memory both ways in the same lesson: its meaning from the new word, then the new word from its meaning.
- A hint, never the answer. If the new word does not come, the app shows how it starts — never the whole word — and gives you another try. Still stuck, it asks again two turns later.
- Then three rounds. Into the new language, back into yours, then a last round in random order.
- The answer follows every turn. Whatever you said, the app then says the right word, so you hear it right after you tried.
