You need: one lesson. One calendar. 23 minutes. Spread over a week.
That’s all. No Sunday marathon. No all-nighter before the holiday. Four short sessions. Then the tense sticks.
The plan at a glance
- Today: the whole lesson. All parts in order. 10 minutes.
- After 1 day: sing along once, look at the memory card. 3 minutes.
- After 3 days: from memory. Exercise 3 on the worksheet, no help. 5 minutes.
- After 7 days: the mini-check in the explanation. 5 minutes.
Total: 23 minutes. Less than one episode of your favourite series.
How to set it up
- Do the lesson today.
- Open your calendar straight afterwards.
- Add three entries: tomorrow, in three days, in seven days.
- Write in each entry what to do. For example: ‘Song 01 + memory card’.
- Set a reminder. Same time as today.
That takes one minute. After that you don’t have to think. You just follow the calendar.
Why breaks help
Short and honest: we forget. All of us. Quickly at first, then more slowly. That is normal. It is not a flaw.
The trick is to review exactly when something is just starting to fade. Then your mind has to search for a moment. And that searching is the training.
How well is this supported? Very well. In 2006, a large review brought together data from 317 experiments. The result: people who spread learning over several sessions remember more than people who learn everything at once. And the longer you want to remember something, the bigger the gaps can be.
Odd but true: the man who learnt nonsense syllables
In the 1880s, Hermann Ebbinghaus measured forgetting. On himself. He memorised lists of nonsense syllables so that no previous knowledge could skew the result. Then he tested how quickly he forgot them. That is how the famous forgetting curve came about.
More than 130 years later, in 2015, two researchers in Amsterdam wanted to know whether it still held. So one of them did it again. For around 70 hours he learnt lists of syllables and relearnt them after 20 minutes, one hour, nine hours, one day, two days or 31 days. The results looked remarkably like Ebbinghaus’ data.
One detail: at around 24 hours the curve did not continue smoothly but made a small jump upwards. Exactly why is not fully clear yet. For you it simply means: the ‘after 1 day’ session is well chosen.
Why 1, 3 and 7?
Honestly: because it is easy to remember. And because the gaps grow. That is the core. Research does not say that 1, 3 and 7 are the perfect numbers. It says: growing gaps work well.
So you can adapt the plan.
- Only need it for next week’s holiday? Shorter gaps are enough.
- Want to still know it in three months? Add one more session about a month after day 7.
- Missed a session? Do it tomorrow. Carry on. No restart needed.
What to do on review days
Reviewing does not mean reading everything again. Reviewing means pulling it out of your head for a moment. That is harder. And that is exactly why it works.
- Day 1: song on, sing along. Look at the memory card. Nothing more.
- Day 3: turn the card over. Say the forms from memory. Then check.
- Day 7: mini-check. Mistakes are allowed. Mistakes show you what to practise next time.
Not in the mood for a worksheet? Pick one of my five apple games. Or clap the forms as in Laura’s Rhythm instead of rules. That counts as reviewing too.
Common questions
Can I do several lessons at once? Yes. But start no more than two a week. Otherwise the calendar fills up and you lose track.
What if I’ve forgotten everything by day three? Then the session came at exactly the right time. Have a quick look at the explanation. Then from memory. The searching counts more than the knowing.
Does it help to review more often? A few extra minutes don’t hurt. But four short sessions are better than one that lasts an hour.
What you can try today
- Take a lesson you already know. Or Lesson 01, the Right-Now Camera.
- Do it once, completely, today.
- Add the three sessions to your calendar.
- Write what you will do in each one.
- Put the calendar away. Done for today.
Your step for today: add tomorrow’s session to your calendar. Just that one. Three minutes. No more.
Sources and image credit
- Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T. & Rohrer, D. (2006): Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
- Murre, J. M. J. & Dros, J. (2015): Replication and analysis of Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0120644. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120644
- Ebbinghaus, H. (1885): Über das Gedächtnis. Untersuchungen zur experimentellen Psychologie. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.
- Cover image: Clay Banks / Unsplash.