One of my projects is to unearth the French I learned back in school some ten years ago and which I have hardly used since.
So I got hold of a comprehensive list of French core-vocabulary and started reviewing. Fortunately I still remembered quite some of the words already when I was tested for them the first time and another big group came back to mind seeing the right answer the first time. And then there was the remaining group of some 20-30% that I had either forgotten completely or never learned in the first place. Only these would need thorough practice.
Using the build-in "Spaced repetition" (which I think is perfect for completely new vocabulary), the unearthed vocabulary is over-trained at the expense of these 20-30%.
For a repetion like the one described, I would like to suggest a new mode ("Brush up-mode" or something like that), that takes into account, that a part – hopefully the biggest part – of the words has been learned earlier:
- In a first test, all words known at once would be postponed by a long interval, say 50 days for "known" and 100 for "strong" – if I still know them at once after all these years, they are probably well rooted and only need one or two extra checks before I can safely say that I know them.
- In a second round I would still be generous with the advance of the known words: first round has so to say activated the knowledge that was there somewhere in the depth of the brain, so I probably don't need to train these words thoroughly, but another reminder in some weeks time should do.
- First now, I'd start to train the remaining cards, which I failed the first two rounds, by normal spaced repetition after the usual rules.
Any thoughts on this?
Would any of you other users be using a mode like this?
Would it be hard to implement?
Best regards,
Florian.