Sorry, I’m so sure this must’ve already been posted at some point, but I can’t seem to find it in any searches.
I’m curious as to how many words people aim to learn per day? And also maybe what the context is, ie which language and how much time you are able to devote to it.
Also for people attempting to learn a large number of words, if you have any tactics in terms of spacing out your sessions?
Thanks,
Ahil
Here’s what I’ve tried, from most words per day to least:
Level 1 - Hardcore: In January 2015, Memrise had a contest for who could learn the most new words. I aimed to plant 300+ new words per day. Most of them were Spanish; a few of them were German. At the time, I knew no German, but could already speak Spanish at an intermediate-to-advanced level. Learning new Spanish words was much easier than learning new German words. Working on courses that conjugated irregular Spanish verbs was easiest.
Strategy: Do Memrise until tired, take a 25-minute nap. Do more Memrise. Or do Memrise until tired, take a break and eat, walk, or something, and then do more Memrise.
Pros: By Memrise’s count, I learned over 9,600 words, though as I said above, many of those were verb conjugations. Even if you exclude the conjugations, I learned a lot of new vocab… more than I would have without the challenge. It definitely helped my ability to converse about a variety of topics in Spanish.
Cons: Because I was trying to plant as many words as fast as possible, I didn’t create nearly as many mems as I should have, so some of those words were not as easy to recall as I would have hoped.
Level 2 - Intense: January 2015 was a revelation. Until I tried it, I had no idea I could learn so much day after day. After taking it easy for a couple weeks, I set a bunch of course goals. For about 6 weeks, I learned 150-200 words per day. This time, I slowed down, created mems as I needed them, and got started on German. If I remember correctly, I aimed for 15-45 new German words per day, and the rest was Spanish.
Strategy: Take breaks between learning Spanish and learning German. Create mems.
Pros: I made a lot of progress in Spanish & German, and I earned a lot of points. (I was also reviewing all those words from the January Memathon at the time…)
Cons: I spent a lot of time sitting in front of my laptop! I believe I spent 3-4 hours per day on Memrise. As I worked farther into advanced Spanish courses, I had to create a lot more mems. (Fewer people had learned those words before me, so many of them simply had no mems.) Eventually, I needed a break.
Level 3 - Reasonable: At the beginning of April 2015, I took a few days off, and then went back to Memrise, this time at a more reasonable pace. From April 2015 to April 2016, most months I averaged 50-75 new words and earned 100,000+ points per day.
For the months where I did less, there were good reasons. In August, I was busy with summer traveling. In October, I took a German class every morning for 3 ½ hours. In November, I did a lot of Memrise, but most of it was reviewing, not learning. In December, I was busy with holiday traveling, but still managed to average 25-30 new words per day.
What I’m really saying is that for me, learning 50-75 words per day is sustainable for a long time.
Strategy: Spend 1-2 hours per day on Memrise, split between 2-3 sessions. For example, plant in the morning and water in the afternoon and/or evening. Nap, walk, eat, and/or drink water when my brain gets tired. In mid-May, after I’d made progress learning German, I started learning Turkish and mostly stopped learning new Spanish.
Pros: I was able to keep up this learning pace for months at a time. I learned to read and speak German, and I made progress learning Turkish. (Note: I used language-learning resources besides Memrise…)
Cons: Learning at this level is still a big commitment, and sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day to fit it all in… From time to time, I wondered if spending so much time with Memrise was keeping me from using other language-learning resources as much as I needed to.
Level 4 - Consistent: No matter how busy or tired I am, I aim to do something every day. Since May 2016, I’ve been keeping the learning streaks on 3-8 courses. Sometimes I do that with learning, and sometimes with reviewing. I believe I’ve been averaging around 15 new words per day.
Strategy: Do something every day.
Pros: A few minutes per day is enough to convince my brain that Spanish, German, and Turkish are worth remembering. I’m able to maintain the learning streaks in a few courses, as well as my overall learning streak. I’m spending more time with other language-learning websites, including Clozemaster, which I discovered in June.
Cons: Compared to learning 50 words per day, the progress is slow. I’m way behind on watering—the number of words due for review is five digits long. Yikes!
woah, thanks for the very thorough and inspiring answer.
I’m still trying to work out how much I can get done. I’m trying to give my Tamil vocab one last boost before we head over to SL. Problem is I am having to create the course myself as I’ve found the variation between Sri Lankan Tamil and the more common and documented South Indian Tamil to be too much.
Either way, spacing sessions out throughout the day seems to work really well.
(Meekly raises hand) I learn five words per day… 
At my peak, I was learning fifteen per day, but I was forced to slow down once I began building my own courses, as they take a lot of time to prepare.
I test the words in three different directions, too (learning Japanese), so I’m technically adding an average of around 15 items per day.
Probably not much of a surprise then that I agree with Kaspian’s “Level 4” point the most, and feel that consistency is much more important than speed. You don’t want to burn yourself out, and as already mentioned, doing at least something with it every day keeps your brain in the right ‘mode’ to work with the information and get comfortable with it. I’ve been able to stick to learning at least something, and keeping up on my reviews, every day since joining Memrise back in early 2014, and I’m very happy with that, even if the pace has been somewhat slow.
I also agree with spacing out sessions. For reviewing specifically, my method used to be to get through roughly a hundred of my items up for review as soon as I got up every day, then finish it off after breakfast. I don’t recommend the first part, as I’ve found that I do much better (and therefore have less work down the road with repeat reviews) if I wait until after I’ve woken up a bit. I’ve since removed that first time slot, and instead added one after dinner (provided I have the time), so I can get a head start on the next day’s reviews.
There are many approaches to choose from, but this is the one that I’ve found myself comfortable with. I’d personally recommend tweaking your routine as you go. If you feel you can do more, do more. If you start to feel overwhelmed, cut the daily load down a bit. Good luck! 
I have a bit of a different approach: a shameful one which gets frowned upon a little around here 
I aim for points – about 100 thousand every day. That’s the goal, and if I’m falling a little behind in the week or in the month (which I usually do) I try to make it up on better days. That’s a good rule of thumb for me, and doesn’t force me to learn new words every day, or do a certain ritual every day.
I have two sessions on most days one in the morning, one in the evening. The morning one is shorter, about 30 minutes, the evening one is spread out during the evening. When I was commuting I added an extra session on the bus too.
I review everything, every day. Whatever comes up, I try to clear it up before I go to bed. If it is something extreme, I might leave it for the next day, but will finish it off then. That’s my main rule, I don’t let “any flowers whither” if I can avoid it.
I learn Swedish, nothing else – I pair it up with either (my native) Hungarian or English.
Time is a difficult question, because right now it’s pretty much my life to learn it, that’s what I did in the past few years at the university, and that’s what I do now full time. (I’m in Sweden right now on a scholarship to go to school and improve my language skills.) So memrise-ing is just one part of the process, but arguably the most quantifiable part of the equation. According to my statistics it’s about an hour a day – but in reality it might be a bit more than that: it’s not only the actual learning and reviewing, but also the “staring blankly at the screen and trying to get myself together” parts and course creation is not logged either.
When it comes down to learning words, it is different in every category.
I have “my course” which I develop and increase all the time, but is always about 98-99% complete, so I can’t learn that much before needing to add new words. But if I build up a new level (always from a certain text or grammar exercise, so they vary a lot in length) I learn it the next day most probably.
I have courses I am learning: usually 3 or 4 at a time, and I do at least one 10 word long learning session on each of them every day.
I have courses which I have already completed, so there I only do the reviewing, but that I do every day.
It all averages at about 50 new words a day and a couple hundred words of reviewing. At least that would be my estimate. But for me the main point is to keep focused on the language, not to miss a day (even if I’m not learning new days, I review at least and reach the goals – 20.000 on my course, 6.000 on my current favourite and 1.500 on the others). After all, who knows, what could happen if I missed a day? Maybe I’d immediately forget everything. Probably.
I find that this goal of 100.000 points a day fits my learning perfectly: it measures up to the amount of time, energy and brainpower I can sacrifice every day. It wasn’t like this in the beginning, almost three years ago, but I kept adding to the volume until I reached a level I cannot comfortably exceed.
You’re falling for the fallacy of targets here. The best way to explain it, is New Your Cab drivers; they set a target each day, when it’s raining they make it easily and go home. On a good weather day, they wait around putting in long hours until they are done.
This results in no cabs being around on a rainy day and a huge number chasing fewer customers on sunny days. If you want to make most money per hour, you should work long hours on the rainy days and take the day off and enjoy the good weather on sunny days…
Think about it … some days you learn easy, other days your target is motivating you to work longer; but is that the right thing?