Interval repetition of foreign words: Anki, LinguaLeo, Memrise

I want to compare services that allow using the method of interval repetition.

The article was born from a small study that I conducted to confirm my intuitive assumptions. Since I participated in the development of interval repetition on LinguaLeo , I wanted to be sure that this repetition would be no worse than the implementation of Anki and Memrise .
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The article consists of several points:

• About interval repetition
• Criteria for choosing services for comparison
• Hypotheses
• How I checked the effectiveness
• results
• Conclusions, subjective opinion and impression

About interval repetition

Interval repetition is a kind of panacea that allows you to remember anything with minimum effort. In a nutshell, this is a method in which each specific word must be repeated not at regular intervals of time (every day), but through increasing ones: for example, in an hour, in a day, in a week, in a month, etc. In theory, such a repetition allows you to remember the words during the entire repetition time (even throughout life); in practice, the results are checked for periods not exceeding one year.

On the interval repetition written several articles. I give links not to repeat:

• Memory development: interval repetition method
• spaced repetition: never forget vocabulary ever again

Criteria for choosing services for comparison

Since I needed to compare precisely the interval repetition of words, there were two main criteria:

• the ability to separately learn and repeat foreign words;
• the presence of interval repetition (other implementations of repetition, such as Duolingo strength levels, I immediately dropped as ineffective)

Anki is the most popular interval-repeating application using flashcards. I did not consider analogs with minor differences in the interface.



Memrise is distinguished by the fact that instead of the answer cards “I know / I do not know” it is used to write the translation of the word, plus there are pictures with mnemotechnics.



On LinguaLeo, the repetition is implemented in the form of testing with two possible answers with a timer, which allows you to repeat very quickly.

Hypotheses

Having some experience in using these services (Anki year, Memrise 2 months, LinguaLeo (repetition training) month), I could roughly say what kind of results can be expected when using them.

At Memrise, repetition takes a very long time, the result is almost one hundred percent memorization.
On Anki, the repetition takes an average amount of time, 80-90 percent of words are remembered.
The repetition of LinguaLeo is very fast, but 60-70% of words are remembered.

By the word “remembered” I mean the ability to remember the translation of a word when reading a text in a foreign language.
For (after) what period of time - it does not matter, since in theory, interval repetition allows you to recall a word at any interval, if the interval is not overdue.

How I checked the effectiveness

First things first.
I decided to define the effectiveness of using the service as the ratio of the number of memorized words to the time spent on memorizing and repeating time.
Since I was interested in the overall picture, and I expected to see significant differences, I decided to conduct a study (if you can call it that) alone.

Every day for 10 days I memorized 10 words on each service and noted the time for memorization. At that moment, when I came to memorize the next group of 10 words, words for repetition ripened, and I also repeated them, marking time. On day 11, I repeated the words (which each service gave me to repeat), and on day 12 I checked how many words I remember.

Words on LinguaLeo added with TED , for anki too (imported from LinguaLeo). At Memrise found a collection of complex words. Used only web applications (did not use mobile versions). Checked the words, calling the translation of the word in the English version. I also counted close synonyms for the correct answer (crafty = cunning).

Of course, it is impossible to name this research for a number of reasons:

• only one person (s) participated in the study;
• I used mnemonic to memorize, when it seemed to me rational, not for every word;
• I remembered the words at a time when it was convenient for me: I could go to Anki in the morning, and at Memrise in the evening;
• Memrise teaches parallel writing, but I didn’t test this skill;
• at Memrise at the training session, it was necessary to recall an English translation in the Russian example, and in Anki and at LinguaLeo the opposite.

But as I already wrote, even rough data suited me, as I expected to see big differences between services. In addition, I was interested to find out for myself how to continue using the service for learning foreign words.

results

Number of seconds per memorized word for 11 days:

96 - Memrise
42 - Anki
35 - LinguaLeo

The number of words that could remember:

89 - Memrise
98 - Anki
84 - LinguaLeo

Efficiency:

0.63 - Memrise
1.43 - Anki
1.71 - LinguaLeo

Conclusions, subjective opinion and impression

findings

According to the data received, LinguaLeo takes the least amount of time per memorized word (LinguaLeo - 35 seconds, Anki - 42 seconds; Memrise - 96 seconds).
At Anki, we managed to recall 98% of the words, LinguaLeo - 84%, Memrise - 89%.

Emotional impression

The first days it was interesting to memorize and repeat the words with a stopwatch, but in the past I had to make strong-willed efforts to go to Memrise and Anki.
I wanted to go to the LinguaLeo training session on the contrary, because the repetition of 25-30 words took less than one minute.

Subjective opinion

It is impossible to reduce the study of language to memorizing words. It may make sense to start learning a new language by memorizing the first 500 most frequent words (for this, both Anki and Memrise will do), but it’s already meaningless to cram 5 or 10 thousand words - it would be much more useful to start reading, speaking, learning grammar.
Repetition, which is implemented on LinguaLeo, allows you to learn the language more balanced. Since it only takes a few minutes to repeat, a lot of time is left to read, watch movies, listen to podcasts, study grammar, practice communication, etc.

In addition, the motivation to learn a language may weaken. As experience shows, most of my acquaintances to whom I advised Anki, threw this application after a while. Having missed two or three days, few people are able to clear 120 cards. Memrise is the same (I left it myself). There will be no problem with LinguaLeo with this, and I hope that this approach to the interval repetition of foreign words will justify itself in the long term.