Most students revise vocabulary by reading the list again and again. It feels productive, but rereading is one of the study methods that research rates as low in usefulness. A better routine has four moves: produce each word from memory, check it, correct the mistake, and bring it back on a planned day. It works for French, German and Spanish, and for any language course.
What the research says
In 2013, John Dunlosky and colleagues reviewed ten common study techniques. Practice testing and distributed practice received the highest utility ratings. Summarising, highlighting and rereading received low ratings, which Dunlosky said surprised him given how much students use them. Source: Association for Psychological Science, on the 2013 review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
Spacing matters for vocabulary in particular. In a 1993 study, Bahrick and colleagues followed four learners over nine years as they learned and relearned 300 English–foreign language word pairs. Wider gaps between relearning sessions slowed learning slightly, but the learners kept substantially more words later. Four people is a small sample, so treat it as a strong hint rather than a rule. Source: Bahrick et al., 1993, Psychological Science.
The four-move routine
1. Produce. Cover the English and write or say the target word from memory. If you can’t, that tells you exactly what to study next.
2. Check. Uncover the answer and compare. For French, German and Spanish, check the gender and accents too.
3. Correct. Write the word in a sentence you could actually say, not as a list item.
4. Return. Plan the next review before you finish: tomorrow, then three days later, then a week later.
A worked example: five words for one week
Choose five words, not twenty. Here is a French set: la bibliothèque (library), malgré (despite), à mon avis (in my opinion), ça dépend (it depends) and bien que (although).
Monday: produce all five from memory, check them, and write one sentence with each. Note the words you missed. Wednesday: produce the missed words first, then the rest. Saturday: produce all five, then say one sentence about your weekend aloud.
Rotate the prompt type
If you only test English to French, you practise one direction. Rotate four prompts: English to target, target to English, a spoken sentence and a written sentence. Speaking and writing use the same words but need different recall.
Two mistakes to avoid
Rereading the list on a schedule still counts as spacing, but it makes recall weak. The part that does the work is covering the answer and writing the word from memory.
Adding twenty new words a night. Most of them are forgotten by Friday. Five well-practised words beat twenty you cannot recall.
Make it part of your week
Set one 15-minute vocabulary slot after each lesson and one longer review at the weekend. For a full plan that fits around your other subjects, read how to build a spaced repetition schedule that lasts.