We're the team behind Flips, a flashcard app built around the idea of showing you a word right before you forget it. The question we get asked most often is simple: "How do I memorize words without forgetting them?"
The short answer first: failing to remember vocabulary is not a matter of talent or a bad memory. There's a way to study that works with how your brain stores information — and most people just never learned it, so they try to brute-force it and burn out. In this article we'll share the memory principles we build our app on, distilled into four tips you can use starting today.
Forgetting isn't your fault — it's how the brain works
In the 19th century, the psychologist Ebbinghaus measured how quickly people forget what they learn. The result is the famous "forgetting curve": meaningless information drops off sharply right after you learn it, and within a day most of it is gone.
In other words, forgetting is normal, not a failure. Not remembering a word you saw once yesterday is completely expected. The real problem isn't forgetting — it's leaving things forgotten. The flip side is powerful: if you recall a word just as it's starting to fade, the memory becomes dramatically more durable. Every good vocabulary tip comes back to this one idea.
Tip 1: A little, often — not a lot, once
A common approach is "I'll master these 100 words today." Understandable, but it's also the fastest way to forget them. Touching the same 100 words across several days beats cramming them in a single session every time. This is called spaced (distributed) practice, and it's one of the most consistently confirmed findings in learning research.
Each session can be short — five minutes on the train, three on a break, a few before bed. It's the number of separate exposures that does the work. If you think you "need a big block of time to study," this single shift makes vocabulary far easier.
Tip 2: The best time to review is right before you forget
So how many days between reviews? This is the most important point in vocabulary learning. Reviewing right after you learn something does little — you still remember it, so there's no effort and little strengthening. Reviewing after you've completely forgotten is almost like learning from scratch — inefficient.
The sweet spot is in between: the moment when it's fading but you can still recall it with some effort. A rough schedule is the next day, a few days later, a week, then a month — widening the gap each time. This is called spaced repetition, and it's the most rational way to make memories last with the fewest reviews.
Tip 3: Practice recalling, not just looking
Staring at a word list and re-reading "word → meaning" over and over is what most people do — and it's surprisingly weak. Reading until something feels familiar is not the same as being able to produce the meaning with nothing in front of you.
What strengthens memory is output (recall), not input (looking). This is called active recall, and simply quizzing yourself raises retention substantially. Hide the answer on a card and try to recall it; answer a multiple-choice quiz. Just switching to study that forces you to retrieve changes your results in the same amount of time.
Tip 4: Learn words as connections, not isolated dots
Memorizing a word and its translation as a bare one-to-one pair is both harder to learn and easier to forget. Memory gets stronger with more connections, so don't store words as isolated "dots."
Concretely: learn words inside example sentences, say or hear the pronunciation, group them by roots (prefixes and suffixes), and link them to images or your own experiences. If you know port (to carry), then import, export, transport, and portable all click into place at once. Learn the sense and image of a word, not just a dictionary gloss, and the memory is harder to lose and easier to apply.
You know the right method. The real question is: can you keep it up?
Put the four tips together and the right way to study appears: a little and often, right before you forget, in a form that makes you recall, connected to other things.
This is where most people get stuck. Tip 2 in particular — tracking the "right before you forget" moment for each word by hand — just isn't realistic. Chasing "this word was learned three days ago so review today, that one was last week so next week…" across hundreds of words in a notebook simply doesn't last. We built our app precisely because we wanted the hardest, most important part handled automatically.
Flips uses Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve to calculate, for every single word, when you should review it next. Words you know get longer intervals; words you struggle with come back sooner. You just answer the words as they appear, and spaced repetition runs on its own. Both Card Mode (recall, then flip) and Quiz Mode (answer from four choices) are forms of active recall, decks for English, Spanish, Chinese and more are built in, and you can create your own. Our whole design goal is to let you practice tips 1–4 without having to think about them.
Memorizing vocabulary isn't a special gift — it's a procedure. Touch words a little, often, in a recall-based way, right before you forget. If you'd like a tool that makes that effortless to keep up, give Flips a try.
Flips
The flashcard app that shows you words right before you forget them. Review timing is managed automatically by the forgetting curve. Free to start.
Learn more about FlipsFrequently Asked Questions
How many words should I learn per day?
The number matters less than how many times you touch them. Instead of cramming a lot at once, add 10–20 new words and review previously learned ones every day. That rhythm is sustainable and sticks better.
Why can't I memorize just by reading a word list?
Reading makes things feel familiar without putting any load on memory. Switching to recall — hiding the answer and retrieving it, or answering a quiz (active recall) — raises retention a lot in the same amount of time.
When should I review?
Right as a word is starting to fade. A rough guide is the next day, then a few days, a week, and a month — widening the gap each time (spaced repetition). Managing this per word by hand is hard, so an app that schedules it for you is the practical choice.
Some words just won't stick. What do I do?
You may be learning them as isolated dots. Use them in an example sentence, say the pronunciation out loud, and link them to a root or image so they connect to other information. Reviewing your hardest words more often also helps.