Editing Incremental reading (section)

==Method==
When reading an electronic article, the user extracts the most important parts (similar to underlining or highlighting a paper article) and gradually distills them into [[flashcards]]. Flashcards are information presented in a question-answer format (making [[active recall]] possible). [[Cloze deletions]] are often used in incremental reading, as they are easy to create from the text. Both extracts and flashcards are scheduled independently from the original article.

With time and reviews, articles are supposed to be gradually converted into extracts and extracts into flashcards. Hence, incremental reading is a method of breaking down information from electronic articles into sets of flashcards.

Contrary to extracts, flashcards are reviewed with [[active recall]]. This means that extracts such as "George Washington was the first U.S. president" must ultimately be converted into questions like "Who was the first U.S. president?" (answer: [[George Washington]]), or [[cloze deletion]]s like "[...] was the first U.S. president."

This flashcard creation process is semi-automated – the reader chooses which material to learn and edits the precise wording of the questions. In contrast, the software assists in prioritizing articles and making the flashcards and does the scheduling: it calculates the time for the reader to review each chunk according to the rules of a [[spaced repetition]] algorithm. This means that all processed pieces of information are presented at increasing intervals.

Individual articles are read in portions proportional to the [[attention span]], which depends on the user, their mood, the article, etc. This allows for a substantial gain in attention, according to [[Piotr Wozniak (researcher)|Piotr Wozniak]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Piotr Wozniak |title=Advantages of incremental reading: attention |url=https://www.supermemo.com/help/read.htm#Attention |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171213011111/https://www.supermemo.com/help/read.htm#Attention |access-date=December 12, 2017|archive-date=December 13, 2017 }}</ref>

Without spaced repetition, the reader would quickly get lost in the glut of information when studying dozens of subjects in parallel. However, spaced repetition makes it possible to retain traces of the processed material in memory. {{cn|date=May 2022}}<ref>{{Cite web |date=February 2, 2023 |title=Spaced Repetition: Remembering What You Learn |url=https://www.kpu.ca/sites/default/files/Learning%20Centres/Think_SpacedRepetition_LA.pdf |website=Kwantlen Polytechnic University}}</ref>