Spaced Repetition
Forget, then retrieve — that’s where the learning happens.
What the Research Says
The brain remembers things better when you review them just as you’re about to forget them. Cram everything the night before and it’s gone within a week. Revisit the same material on day one, day three, day seven, day fourteen and it sticks for months. This is the single biggest difference between students who peak in mocks and students who peak in the real exam.
Evidence Base
| Study | Finding | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Ebbinghaus (1885) | Without revisiting, 50% of what you learn is lost within an hour and 80% within a day. | The forgetting curve is real — and steeper than most students realise. |
| Cepeda et al. (2006) | Meta-analysis of 254 studies: spaced practice beat massed practice in 259 out of 271 comparisons. | Spacing works across ages, subjects, and skills. |
| Kang (2016) | Optimal gap ≈ 10–20% of the time until the test. For a May exam, that means revisiting material every 3–6 weeks from the start of Year 10. | You can plan exactly when to revisit a topic. |
| Sisti et al. (2007) | Neurons form stronger connections during the “almost forgotten” moment of retrieval. | Struggling to recall IS the learning, not a sign you’ve failed. |
Step-by-Step Method
- 1Learn a topic today — read the lesson, watch the video, write notes. Mark it in a diary or app with today’s date.
- 2Review in 24 hours — do a retrieval practice brain dump, or redo the knowledge check. 5–10 minutes.
- 3Review again in 3 days — if you got it right yesterday, push the gap. Repeat the retrieval.
- 4Review again in 7 days — by now the material is consolidating into long-term memory.
- 5Review again in 2–3 weeks — gap the next review to 14 days, then 30, then 60.
- 6If you fail a review — reset the schedule. Back to day 1. Don’t skip the reset — it’s the point of the system.
Day 1: study the nominative and genitive singular endings for all five declensions, plus the gender rules that go with them (for example, -us/-i masculine for second declension; -a/-ae feminine for first declension; -x/-cis for various genders in third declension). Day 2: brain-dump the full singular and plural endings for each declension, and identify the declension and case of ten words pulled at random from the Defined Vocabulary list (for example, puella, rex, manus, dies, cornu). Day 7: test yourself again, this time translating short phrases that mix declensions (magnae urbis moenia; milites fortes). Day 14: attempt an unseen sentence cold, identifying the case and declension of every noun as supporting evidence for your translation.
After first studying the perfect, pluperfect and irregular verb forms (sum, possum, eo, volo, nolo, fero), schedule five reviews. By day 7, you should be able to recall not just the person endings but the specific details that earn marks: the irregular perfect stems (fui, potui, ivi, tuli), the pluperfect endings (-eram, -eras, -erat and so on), and how deponent verbs such as conor and vereor form perfect tenses despite their passive-looking endings. By day 30, you should be able to spot these forms instantly when reading an unseen Latin narrative under time pressure, and render them accurately when translating a passage into English.
Common Pitfalls
- Reviewing too often. If it’s easy, the gap is too short. Make it harder by stretching the interval.
- Reviewing too late. If you’ve completely forgotten, you’re essentially re-learning from scratch — you lose the benefit of spacing.
- No written schedule. Spaced repetition works only if you actually do the reviews. Use a calendar, the StudyVault flashcard system, or a simple Leitner box.
- Skipping resets when you fail. If you couldn’t recall the material, you haven’t learnt it — regardless of how far through the schedule you were.
When to Use This
This is the organising principle of your whole revision year — not a technique you pull out near the exam. From the first lesson of the course, log every topic you cover and schedule reviews at 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 14 days, and 30 days. The StudyVault flashcard system does this automatically via the Leitner method — questions move between five boxes with intervals of 1, 2, 4, 7, and 14 days. When a card comes up, do it. When it doesn’t, don’t.