How to Use Spaced Repetition for Vocabulary

By Miji · Published September 17, 2026

Step 1: Save the words you meet

Start with words from your own day. You read one in an article. You hear one in a show. You look one up and move on.

Those words beat any list you download. You already know where the word came from. That is a hook, and hooks make recall easier.

A word you had to look up is the best kind to save. You needed it once. You will need it again.

Do not save everything, though. Ten or twenty new words a week is plenty. A short list you finish beats a long list you drop.

Step 2: Turn each word into two questions

A flashcard is a question with one answer. It is not a note and not a summary.

For vocabulary, two questions do the job:

• Show the word, ask for the meaning. That direction helps you read and listen.
• Show the meaning, ask for the word. That direction helps you speak and write.

Keep one meaning per flashcard. A word with three meanings can wait. Start with the meaning you actually met.

Add the sentence you found it in. It fixes which meaning you want, and it makes the answer easier to reach.

Step 3: Answer from memory, not from the page

Rereading a definition feels like work. It teaches you very little.

Say the answer out loud, or think it, before you check. The small struggle is the part that builds memory.

Wrong answers are not failures. Miss a word, and it returns sooner than the rest.

Step 4: Let the gaps grow

Each word you remember should wait longer before it returns. Each word you forget should arrive again soon.

That growing gap is the whole method. Every review flattens your forgetting curve a little.

You can run this by hand. Paper flashcards and a few boxes are enough, and spaced repetition began that way.

Counting by hand gets old fast. An app reads your answers and picks the next day for every word.

Step 5: Keep each session short

Ten minutes a day beats one long Sunday. Vocabulary grows on frequency, not on big days.

Show up most days and you are fine. Perfect streaks are not the point.

A day off costs you little. Your due words wait, and tomorrow is a slightly bigger pile.

If the pile scares you, add fewer new words for a week. It shrinks on its own.

Apps that do some of this for you

Anki, Mochi, Miji and LookUp all pick the next day for you, so step four stops being your job. They differ in where the flashcards come from.

• Anki is an open-source flashcard program, and its iPhone app is a companion to the computer version.
• Memrise is a language learning app, with courses built on videos of native speakers.
• Miji is an English dictionary for iPhone, and the words you look up become the flashcards.
• Mochi is for notes and flashcards written in markdown, then studied with spaced repetition.
• LookUp is an English dictionary with a word of the day and spaced repetition quizzes.

Choose Memrise instead if you want a course to hand you the words; its lessons are built around a goal you pick. Miji starts from the words you looked up yourself.

Coming from Anki on a computer? See the best Anki alternatives for iPhone.

Here is what each one costs and how it is rated.

Miji: save a word in two taps

Looked a word up and lost it by lunch? That is the word Miji is built for.

Miji is an English dictionary first. Search a word, read its meanings, and tap Remember on the one you want.

That covers step two. Miji writes both flashcards for you, one for each direction. There is nothing to type.

Step four then runs without you. When a word is due, its flashcard arrives as a notification. Answer Knew or Forgot from the lock screen. Step three stays your job. The question comes to you, but the answer still comes from you.

Notifications depend on your iPhone's permissions and settings.

Step five is short by default. Each answer takes a few seconds, and your due words also sit in the app whenever you want them.

Miji uses FSRS to pick those days. Anki's iPhone app offers the same FSRS scheduling that Anki on a computer uses.

Miji has no shared decks and no sync. It is English only, and it runs on iPhone with iOS 26 or later. You do not write your own sentence here: both flashcards come from the meaning you tapped. The dictionary works offline, and learning needs no account.

Miji is free to download. The free version starts with room for 10 words. Pro lifts the limit on saved words.