Jack Cheng elaborates on a learning method developed by Paul Pimsleur for memorizing language vocabulary:
[Pimsleur] observed that the first time you learned a new word, you’d forget it almost immediately. But if you reviewed it again as you were about to forget it, each subsequent review would exponentially increase the staying power of the word. To put it another way, if you could only remember the word for 5 seconds at first, reviewing it after those five seconds would boost your retention time to 25 seconds, then 2 minutes, 10 minutes, and so on. At this rate, the tenth review wouldn’t have to take place until about four months after the first.
I’ve been employing a similar method for building my vocabulary (in preparation for the unavoidable SAT). Essentially, whenever I run across an unfamiliar word, I note it as an alarm in iCal set to go off 5 minutes later. Once prompted, I try to recall the word (and look it up if I forgot), then change the alarm to go off in 10 minutes, gradually increasing until it’s up to a year. Right now, I’m working on writing some software to automate this process, including the ability to add words from my iPhone.
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