In order to learn a word, we need to come across it several times.
It seems that the minimum amount of times we need to meet a word is
somehwere around 7 or 8 meetings, but it's very hard to put a figure
on it.
-- Paul Nation, [2020 Victorial University of Wellington](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlJj8vpJxfE)
He’s right, but that never stopped me. I say 10 sentences in a specific practice: When you come across a word you don’t know enough times for it to bother you,
- Ask GPT-4 to generate 10 sentences using the word.
- Add those 10 sentences to an Anki deck.
- Review the Anki deck regularly.
Why 10, not 7-8? Because these won’t be as high-quality meetings with the word as what you will come across in your free voluntary reading. You will however get the boost that comes from Anki throwing the sentence back at you until you finally grok it. In my experience that translates quickly into recognizing the word when you do come across it again in FVR.
Is 10 sufficient for learning a new word? Such a question can only be answered statistically. I’ll put what little pedigree I have on the table here: I maintain one of the better Anki Finnish vocabulary flashcard decks on the Internet, and there is a vast gulf between words I have only in the deck, and words I have in the deck and with the 10 autogenerated sentences in my repertoire. Answer: “Mu. But it’s a really, really good start.”
Why 10, and not “just read as much as you can”? Because “just be a better human being” isn’t actionable advice. Better to be simple, precise, and suboptimal in your prescriptions.