Our method

We teach with science

Every lesson you take is built to a shape taken from published research, and measured against it before it ever reaches you.

Knowing a word is really four skills, each one harder than the last, and a lesson is not finished with a word until you have climbed all four.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  1. Read it
  2. Hear it
  3. Say it
  4. Recall it

Inside your German course

533lessonsall of A1 and A2
5,431exercisessixteen different kinds
1,254wordsyours by the end
71,368times you meet themwe counted every one
100%you will hearnot one word is text only

The ladder

Seeing a word once is not learning it

Most apps stop at the first step: you tap the right picture, the word turns green, and that counts as learned. We take you up all four: you recall every new word five times before its lesson lets you go, and three more times in the lessons after it.

Five is the floor every lesson has to clear, and the number is not ours: Nakata (2017) had learners recall new words one, three, five or seven times and tested them two weeks later. Five and seven held. One and three did not. Across the whole course a typical word is recalled eight times and turns up in 21 exercises.

Recalls inside the lesson that teaches the wordAll 1,254 words in our German course

Words

0200400600
  1. 240
  2. 182
  3. 543
  4. 213
  5. 56
  6. 16
  7. 4
  1. 3
  2. 4
  3. 5
  4. 6
  5. 7
  6. 8
  7. 9

Times the word is recalled

Three ways in

Read it, hear it, say it

A word you have only ever read is a word you will not catch when a real person says it, and one you have never said is a word you cannot use. So every word reaches you three ways: on the page, in your ear with no text to lean on, and out of your own mouth.

Every word, three ways71,368 times a word reaches you, across 533 lessons

Times you meet a word

016k32k48k
  1. 44k
  2. 19k
  3. 8k
  1. Shownread on a card
  2. Heardspoken, no text
  3. Producedsaid by you

How the word reaches you

Remembering

We make sure you don’t forget

A word you meet once is a word you lose. So every word you learn comes back on its own: two lessons later, then four, then a dozen, until you no longer have to try. By the time you are done, a typical word has come back in more than twenty different exercises.

How long a word stays awayLessons between one appearance and the next

Lessons

04812
  1. 2
  2. 4
  3. 12
  4. 10
  5. 9
  6. 7
  1. 1st
  2. 2nd
  3. 3rd
  4. 4th
  5. 5th
  6. 6th

Which return

Pacing

Three new words at a time

We add words slowly on purpose, so nothing arrives faster than it can stick. In 136 of the 533 lessons you meet no new words at all. Those are there to bring back what you already have.

Words you will knowRunning total across all 533 lessons

Words

03507001,0501,400
A1A21,254 words
  1. 0
  2. 100
  3. 200
  4. 300
  5. 400
  6. 500

Lessons you have finished

Coverage

Written against the real exam

The Goethe-Institut publishes the exact vocabulary its certificates are built from: the A1 word list and the A2 word list. We teach you every word on both of them.

Official Goethe vocabulary, coveredWords on each list that our German course teaches
  1. Goethe-Zertifikat A1100% · 625 of 625
  2. Goethe-Zertifikat A2100% · 1,084 of 1,084

Variety

Twenty-seven ways to be asked

Five recalls of the same kind is one skill practised five times. So every time a word comes back it asks you something different.

Tap the picture
Tap the picture
Tap the matching pairs
Tap the matching pairs
Translate into German
Translate into German
Read the text
Read the text

References

  1. Laufer & Goldstein, 2004

    Testing Vocabulary Knowledge: Size, Strength, and Computer Adaptiveness

    Language Learning 54(3), 399–436

  2. Nakata, 2017

    Does Repeated Practice Make Perfect? The Effects of Within-Session Repeated Retrieval on Second Language Vocabulary Learning

    Studies in Second Language Acquisition 39(4), 653–679

  3. Gor, Cook, Bordag, Chrabaszcz & Opitz, 2021

    Fuzzy Lexical Representations in Adult Second Language Speakers

    Frontiers in Psychology 12

  4. Hwang, 2025

    Undesirable Difficulty of Interleaved Practice

    Language Learning

  5. Settles & Meeder, 2016

    A Trainable Spaced Repetition Model for Language Learning

    Proceedings of the 54th Annual Meeting of the ACL, 1848–1858

Short lessons, built on evidence,
that work in a tunnel.

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