How to make vocabulary stick between lessons

A good lesson brings ten, fifteen, twenty new words. A week later, at the next lesson, most of them are gone. That isn’t your students being lazy: it’s how memory works. What happens between lessons decides what stays.

Here are four habits that make the difference, and that you can ask of any student.

1. Little and often beats once and long

Memory researchers have known for more than a century that we forget fast, and that each time a memory is brought back it fades more slowly. Spreading practice out — a few minutes on several days — keeps more words than the same time spent in one sitting. A large review of studies on this “spacing effect” (Cepeda and colleagues, 2006) found it across ages and materials.

For a student, that means five minutes a day is worth more than an hour the night before the lesson. Ask for the five minutes.

2. Recall, don’t reread

Rereading a word list feels productive: everything looks familiar. But recognising a word isn’t the same as finding it when you need it. Trying to recall the word — seeing “the bill” and producing l’addition — is what strengthens it. Psychologists call this the testing effect, and it holds even when the student gets the answer wrong and then sees the right one.

So instead of “read your notes”, ask: cover one side, say the other, check. Flashcards, typing the word, picking it out of four: all of them make the student retrieve.

3. Words in context, in the student’s own language

A word on its own is easy to forget; a word in a sentence the student understands has hooks. Give each new word:

• a translation in the language the student thinks in,
• a short example sentence, ideally from the lesson itself,
• its sound — hearing it said is half of using it.

This is also where handwritten notes fall short: a photo of the whiteboard has the words, but rarely the translations, the examples or the pronunciation.

4. Follow up, and look at what they miss

Students who know their teacher will notice are more likely to practise. And the words a class keeps missing tell you what to go over next time — far better than guessing.

A quick “I saw you practised all twelve words, well done” or “avoir faim seems tricky, let’s look at it again” closes the loop.

Putting it together

After each lesson:

1. send the new words — with translations, an example and the sound — the same day;
2. ask for a few minutes of recall practice on several days;
3. bring a word back just as it starts to fade;
4. check who practised, and start the next lesson with the words they missed.

You can do this with paper and a chat app. It’s the routine Tuteo is built around: you send the lesson and its words once, each student practises them from a link, an email or the app, and you see who kept up.