Category
The science of studying, remembering, and getting good at things — and the popular study habits the evidence does not support.
The most popular study strategy in the world is re-reading, and it is rated low utility by the researchers who reviewed the evidence. The reason is a specific cognitive illusion — and the fix takes no extra time.
Reviewing something four times in one evening and reviewing it four times over a month cost the same effort and produce wildly different results. The spacing effect has been replicated since 1885 — here is the mechanism and the schedule.
Adults are not worse at learning languages than children — they are worse at one specific part of it, and better at several others. What the research says about the critical period, how many words you actually need, and how long it takes.