The theory behind "spaced repetition" is quite simple. When memorizing material using flashcards, cards you know are repeated less often, and the ones you don't more often. Sebastian Leitner developed the algorithms to mechanize this process, and Piotr Wozniak incorporated them in a program called SuperMemo.

Damien Elmes has written an implementation called Anki ("memorization") based on Wozniak's SuperMemo algorithms. The free download includes JLPT vocabulary levels 2-4. User-generated sets in many languages can be downloaded here. Flashcards can also be individually created or imported from Unicode text files.

Anki is available for Windows, Mac OSX, Debian/Ubuntu, iPhone/iPod touch, Zaurus and Windows Mobile. A similar free program is Mnemosyne.

Labels: japanese, language, science, software