Guus Bosman

Milan and Nadia, Sasha's parents, visited us for a month and we had a great time. We speak Bulgarian with each other, so this was a great opportunity to improve my vocabulary. It's easier learning vocabulary from conversations, since there is more context to remember words by.

For example, I learned the word блато (swamp, marsh) while we were on our way to Wilmington with Irena and we drove through the swamps. лепя and кантар came up when making bread with Nadia, знак and спирачка when talking about driving with Milan. I tend to specialize in my vocabulary... I'm really good in talking about recipes and cooking now.

For my French studies I started using a tool called Anki to maintain my vocabulary. It's spaced learning system that keeps track of which cards you find easy or hard, and repeats them appropriately. It also provides various charts and metrics. A couple of months ago I converted the words from my home-made Bulgarian vocabulary program into an Anki deck. I've added 210 new words to the system while Milan and Nadia were visiting us, so an average of 7 new words per day.

Here are some statistics:

Deck created: 5.5 months ago
Total number of cards: 2471
Total number of facts: 1240

Card Maturity
Mature cards: 2188 (88.5%)
Young cards: 249 (10.1%)
Unseen cards: 34 (1.4%)
Average interval: 77.4 days

Correct Answers
Mature cards: 98.7% (858 of 869)
Young cards: 76.8% (6611 of 8603)
First-seen cards: 73.3% (1791 of 2445)

How many cards will due in the next 6 months. Younger cards will be due much sooner than 'mature' cards.

Amount of repetitions in the previous 90 days. Indicates how often I've studied my words.