© Tomasz P. Szynalski, Antimoon.com
What is SuperMemo?
SuperMemo is a computer program which lets you learn English words, phrases, and grammar
structures, and remember them forever.
It is based on scientific
research on human
memory.
With SuperMemo, you can learn English words, phrases, and grammar structures. However, in this
article we are going to talk mostly about words (to make it simpler and shorter).
You can also read about
Tom's personal experiences
with SuperMemo in the past 9 years.
Stop forgetting!
Have you noticed how your
vocabulary
never seems to increase?
You go to an English class, and you come back with 30 new words in your notebook.
You learn these words. Next week your teacher gives you 30 new words. You learn the new words,
but... you forget the 30 words from last week. So instead of 60 new words, you know 30 again.
What a
nightmare.
What can you do to help yourself and
make progress?
There is only one way.
You have to do something to stop forgetting the words that you learn. How can you do it?
One of the best answers is: SuperMemo.
How SuperMemo works
-
You add some English words to SuperMemo. In order to do this, you create SuperMemo items.
An item has two parts: the question (Q) and the answer (A). It can look like this:
| Q |
the mother of your husband or wife
|
| A |
mother-in-law
|
(This is a very simple item, and there are
other
kinds.)
Items are held together in SuperMemo collections. One collection can hold thousands of items.
To use SuperMemo, you don't have to make your own items. You can use
collections made by other people and companies.
-
You review the words. Every day, you run SuperMemo and review some of the words. Each day you review
different words. For example, if you added 50 words to SuperMemo, on Monday you may review 5 of them,
on Tuesday — another 4 of them, etc. The words that you review are chosen by SuperMemo.
Here's the best thing: SuperMemo knows how long you will remember each word.
You review each word a short time before you forget it.
For example, if you will remember the word greenhouse for a month,
there's no need for you to review it tomorrow or in a week. That would be a waste of time.
With SuperMemo, you will review the word in a month, just before it disappears from your
memory.
Because you reviewed it, it will stay in your
memory
for another two months. Then you will review it again, and so on.
The word can stay in your head forever.
How does SuperMemo know how long you will remember a word? It collects information about your
memory
every time you review a word.
What happens during a repetition
Here's what happens during a repetition (when you review a word in SuperMemo):
-
SuperMemo shows you the question, for example: the mother of your husband or wife.
-
You answer the question (you think about it or you say it). You do not type the answer on your keyboard.
-
SuperMemo shows you the correct answer, for example: mother-in-law.
-
You compare your answer with the correct answer, and you give yourself a
grade
— between 0 (bad) and 5 (very good). The
grade
tells SuperMemo how well you remember the word.
-
SuperMemo decides when you should review the item again. This is called repetition spacing.
From your
grade,
your
previous
grades
for this item, and other statistics, SuperMemo is able to calculate
how long you will remember the word. It then plans the next repetition.
The next repetition will happen just before the day on which you would normally forget the word.
There is a longer explanation of
memorizing and reviewing knowledge in SuperMemo (with screenshots).
An everyday session with SuperMemo
Your everyday SuperMemo session may look like this:
-
Review the words planned by SuperMemo for today. Usually, the number of words that you review
every day is very small. For example, if you have 8,000 English words in your collection, you may have
to review only 40 words per day.
-
Review difficult words again. This is called final drill. You review all the words for
which you got a
grade
of 3 or less. You review every word until you get at least a 4.
-
Memorize
new words. You learn words for the first time. The next review of these words
will be planned by SuperMemo.
-
Add new words to the collection. You can use a dictionary to
make your own items with
a question and an answer.
Why SuperMemo is good
We discovered SuperMemo in 1993. The program completely changed our way of learning English.
In high school, we would spend hours making our own collections and talking about the program.
Here are the main advantages of SuperMemo's method of repetition spacing:
-
You don't have to worry about forgetting. Simply add an English word to SuperMemo, and it
will be in your head forever. The word is yours. You can learn other words, and you will remember
them, too. You can
build your English as much as you like.
-
You don't review words that you already know well. You only review the words which
you almost forgot. SuperMemo only asks you the difficult
questions, so you do not waste time on the easy ones.
-
You review each word less and less often. After each repetition, you remember a word for a longer time.
For example, after the first repetition of the word greenhouse you may remember it for two days.
After two days, you review greenhouse again, and this time you will remember it for 7 days.
After the third repetition, you may remember this word for a month. The time between repetitions becomes
longer and longer. After a year of learning with SuperMemo, you may have some words planned for the
year 2010 and later!
Benefits of using SuperMemo
SuperMemo has a large effect on people's ability in English.
After adding about 1,000-2,000 items to your
SuperMemo collection, you should begin to notice big changes in your English.
SuperMemo can help you:
-
Increase your vocabulary. You will begin to use new,
interesting words when speaking and writing — words like devour, appalling, or live down.
In an hour, you can add more than 20 new words to your SuperMemo collection.
You can start using these words
immediately
— at
your next English class, in your next e-mail message, etc. Show other people that you are good!
-
Read books in English and understand spoken English. With your growing vocabulary,
reading and listening to English will become easier and easier!
-
Be the best in your class.
If you take English classes, you may notice that you are the only person who remembers
vocabulary
from last month. You may also notice that you don't have to study for
vocabulary
tests anymore.
-
Improve your grammar. You can develop a grammar intuition if you add
example sentences to your items. You can also use special items which test your grammar knowledge.
-
Learn the pronunciation of words. You can add pronunciation information to your items
or use special items for learning the pronunciations of words.
-
Fight your mistakes. If someone corrects your mistake, just add the corrected sentence
to your SuperMemo collection. SuperMemo will make you review the correct version, and forget the
incorrect one.
-
Increase your
motivation to learn English.
Only with SuperMemo do you really feel that you are
building your
vocabulary.
Why? Because you know that every word you add will be with you forever.
Making your own collection is also a great way to learn English.
When you add items to your collection, you improve your
vocabulary, but also
you read many definitions and example sentences in your English dictionary.
You automatically learn new words and grammar structures from these definitions.
Getting SuperMemo
You can buy and download SuperMemo
at the Super Memory Store.