Many students study English the way some people exercise: nothing for three weeks, then five hours before a test. Both plans fail for the same reason. The brain, like a muscle, responds to regular small loads, not to one heavy day.
Memory researchers have known this for a long time. If you meet a new word today and never see it again, you will forget it within a week. If you meet it today, tomorrow, four days later and two weeks later, it stays. This is called spaced repetition, and it is the idea behind the vocabulary cards in FitForm Learn.
Reading works in a similar way. Reading one difficult article slowly, looking up every word, feels like hard work but teaches little. Reading something slightly above your level, quickly, and meeting the same useful words again in another text, teaches much more.
There is one more similarity. In sport, you measure what you do: repetitions, minutes, days in a row. In language learning most students measure nothing, so they cannot tell whether they are improving. The Learn section therefore counts minutes, reading speed, the share of comprehension questions you answer correctly, and every mistake you make.
The mistakes matter most. A mistake you review becomes knowledge; a mistake you forget becomes a habit.
Vocabulary in this text
- reason /ɹˈizən/ — why something happens
- regular /ɹˈɛɡjəlɚ/ — happening often and at the same times
- load /ˈloʊd/ — the weight or work that something carries
- forget /fɚɡˈɛt/ — to be unable to remember
- spaced repetition /ˈspeɪst ɹˌɛpəˈtɪʃən/ — reviewing material at increasing intervals
- repetition /ɹˌɛpəˈtɪʃən/ — one complete performance of an exercise
- similar /ˈsɪməlɚ/ — almost the same
- article /ˈɑɹtəkəl/ — the words a, an and the
- useful /ˈjusfəl/ — helpful for a purpose
- measure /ˈmɛʒɚ/ — to find the size or amount of something