In the 70’s, a German named Sebastian Leitner created a system to learn flashcards, whereas you have different “groups” of flashcards based on how well you know them. Wikipedia says this:

“A widely used method to efficiently use flashcards was proposed by the German science popularizer Sebastian Leitner in the 1970s. In his method, known as the Leitner system, flashcards are sorted into groups according to how well you know each one. This is how it works: you try to recall the solution written on a flashcard. If you succeed, you send the card to the next group. But if you fail, you send it back to the first group. Each succeeding group has a longer period of time before you are required to revisit the cards.”

“The advantage of this method is that you can focus on the most difficult flashcards, which remain in the first few groups. The result is, ideally, a reduction in the amount of study time needed.”

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashcard

Today I’ve added another 20 A-words to my list of growing vocabulary. I like this system, and have seen it used by various free sites online (because it’s from the 70’s and past the copyright time). I am not going to use this system, because I can easily learn my daily 20 words without having “difficult” words that slip through. If I upped it to 30 or 40, which I’ve done before, I’d probably have to use this. But everyone has their own level of recall.

Also (if I wasn’t dead set on this dictionary method) there is a cool site I found called Quizlet. This site has made lists of flashcards on numerous topics, that turns flashcard-vocabulary-building into games.

Now back to my style….

I am going to start the tedious task of harassing native speakers of both Iranian Persian and Afghan Persian (if you know any Tajik nationals in Oregon, contact me!) and get example sentences for each word on the vocabulary list I’m learning. It’s good to learn that “Allowance” is مقرری but if I can’t use it in a sentence, it’s only good for my listening skills.