Anki flashcards - making advanced decks 
According to some studies, the average person needs to see a new word 10 - 15 times before it becomes part of their long-term memory. While every language learner has their own tips and tricks to achieve this, ranging from blackboards to mobile apps, there is one tool that has become increasingly popular in recent years: spaced repetition.
Anki (Japanese for "memorization"), is a free and open-source flashcard programme that uses a spaced-repetition algorithm to present the words at strategic intervals over time in order to optimize retention; this allows students to be more efficient in their learning, dedicating only the necessary effort to memorizing those approximately ten thousand words that are needed to reach fluency (not counting the tens of thousands of collocations and idioms).
One of attractions of using Anki is its ability to import third-party content; however, the quality of the majority of the decks available online is mediocre at best. Most advanced learners will probably want to make their own flashcards from scratch.
Making good flashcards can be tricky: a list of words with their translations is really only useful up to a certain point, beyond which context becomes essential in order to gain a deeper understanding of a word or phrase, i.e. how and when it is used naturally.
By reading regularly, whether it be our articles or your own selection of reading material, using our integrated dictionary and video look-up functions, you can quickly and conveniently incorporate new terms into your personal vocabulary list. Then, to increase your exposure to the new vocabulary, you can export it to Anki with just a couple of clicks.
I have designed the cards so that the definition (English, for most of our users) is presented first, along with the fragment of context where part of the word in Spanish is hidden. This way, rather than just testing your understanding of the word, you will be practising word recall - and as a result you will find it a lot easier to use it in conversation. (For an English speaker, it's a lot easier to translate a word from Spanish into English than viceversa.) By enabling the reverse card option in Anki, users can then translate in both directions to further improve fluency.
For those who aren't familiar with Anki, and have no interest in installing the desktop programme, Quizlet is another convenient and popular option. Although it is more limited (e.g. it doesn't accept html and you cannot change repetition settings), its ease of use means you may be more likely to use it, especially the mobile app version - which I like to use when I'm in the queue at the supermarket.
Combining this methodology with our grammar and word-usage annotations, you should find that your active vocabulary increases notably.
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-Anki (SRS) - advanced Spanish decks-
