If you've ever crammed French vocabulary the night before a test only to forget it a week later, you've experienced the limits of massed practice. Spaced repetition is the solution — and the science behind it is compelling.
What Is Spaced Repetition?
Spaced repetition is a learning technique where you review material at increasing intervals over time. Instead of reviewing every word every day, you review words you struggle with more frequently, and words you know well less often.
The idea was formalised by psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885, who mapped the forgetting curve: without reinforcement, we forget roughly 50% of new information within an hour, and up to 70% within 24 hours. Spaced repetition fights this by timing reviews just before you'd naturally forget something.
How It Works in Practice
On FrenchFlasher, every word carries a score from 0 to 5:
- Score 0–2 (New / Learning): The word appears at the front of every session until you've answered it correctly at least 3 times.
- Score 3–5 (Mastered): The word is deprioritised — it still appears occasionally, but newer words take precedence.
Each time you tap "Got It", the score increments. Each time you tap "Still Learning", it drops. This keeps the harder words circulating at the front of your queue.
Why It's More Effective Than Flashcard Apps Without It
A plain shuffled flashcard deck treats every word equally — you'll review bonjour just as often as vraisemblablement. Spaced repetition allocates your study time where it actually matters: the words you haven't locked in yet.
Research published in Psychological Science found that spaced practice produced 200% better long-term retention compared to massed practice over the same total study time.
Tips to Get the Most Out of Spaced Repetition
- Study daily, even for 5 minutes. Short, consistent sessions beat infrequent marathon sessions.
- Be honest with yourself. Only mark a word "Got It" if you were genuinely confident — not if you guessed right.
- Use the example sentences. Seeing a word in context helps anchor it in memory far better than a bare translation.
- Listen to the pronunciation. Pairing a sound with a word creates two memory pathways instead of one.
Ready to put it into practice? Start a session on FrenchFlasher — it's free, no download required.