Does Learning a Word a Day Work? What the Research on Spacing Says

One new word a day is 365 words a year, but only if you remember them. The research on memory is clear about how to make that happen: see each word again, spread out over days and weeks, rather than all at once. A short daily habit with spaced reviews beats cramming every time.

What the research says

In 2006, Nicholas Cepeda and colleagues pulled together 839 assessments of spaced practice from 317 experiments in 184 published articles, mostly on learning words and facts. Spreading study sessions out led to better long-term memory than studying the same material in one go. The review also found that the ideal gap between study sessions gets longer as the time you want to remember something grows. To remember a word for a test next week, review it after a day or two. To remember it for a year, space reviews over weeks.

A simple routine

1. Day 1: read today’s word of the day, its meaning and example. Write your own sentence.

2. Day 2: recall yesterday’s word before you look. Then check.

3. Day 7: recall last week’s words. Use one in conversation or a message.

4. Day 30: quiz yourself on the month’s words. Keep the ones you missed for another round.

Make the words stick

• Recall before you look. Trying to remember strengthens memory more than rereading.
• Use it. A word you have said or written is easier to recall than one you have only read.
• Pick words worth knowing. Our word of the day comes from a pool of medium-difficulty words, ones most people recognise but rarely use. For a harder challenge, try the vocabulary word generator.
• Keep a list. Tap ★ on any word card to keep it on your device, then review your kept words weekly.

Sources

• Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T. and Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin 132(3), 354–380.
• Brysbaert, M. et al. (2016). How Many Words Do We Know? Frontiers in Psychology 7:1116.