I was reading Hacker News today and found an (old) article about a Polish guy who created a software called SuperMemo. This software helps you to remember anything, but I am using it to learn Chinese words and characters.
It works based on scientific research last century that people tend to forget things at different rates. In the beginning you should repeat stuff often, but later you can repeat it at larger intervals. If you later repeat too often, you would waste your time; if you don’t repeat early enough, you would have forgotten it.
Supermemo costs money, but luckily there are free alternatives, the best one I’ve found is The Mnemosyne Project
.
By repeating at the exact right moment, you don’t waste time and remember more!
On the Mnemosyne website you can download a client program for Linux, Windows
or the Mac. You then import your own flash-card (can be downloaded from
the website as well) and you’re ready to start learning. Everytime you
see a flashcard, it will ask you to give a rating between 0 and 5. This
number means how good you remember it. It’s very easy to use and I have
high hopes for it!
Other users already added flash-cards for learning Chinese, you can download them here (Cards and plugins / Languages )