Last month, I had the whole class install a vocabulary app. Today, several students told me they have to review three or four hundred cards every day, and they simply can't finish them all.

Three or four hundred? How many new words are they adding each day?

I told them to add one hundred a day, thinking they could go through all the exam vocabulary before the final exams.

That's exactly the problem. These apps are based on the forgetting curve: words you learn today are reviewed once tomorrow, then again a few days later, with the intervals getting longer and longer. The more new words you add, the more cards you'll have to review later—it just keeps snowballing.

No wonder it felt pretty easy at first, but kept getting worse later on. But if they add fewer words each day, they won't finish memorizing them before the final exams.

You can't bite off more than you can chew. If they can't keep up with reviewing a hundred words, they'll end up remembering none of them. It's better to do twenty a day—what matters is actually remembering them.

Then I guess I'll just have to tell them it's okay if they can't finish memorizing that vocabulary list before the final exams.

Also, when they review, have them try to recall the answer themselves first, and only look at the card if they can't remember. If they just reveal the answer and click “Remembered,” that's basically not reviewing at all.

They must all be revealing the answers right away. But what should they do about the several hundred cards they've already accumulated? We can't exactly have them delete them all, can we?