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

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: a lesson makes you recall every new word several times before it lets you go, and the lessons after it bring the word back again.

The idea is not ours: Nakata (2017) had learners recall new words one, three, five or seven times and tested them two weeks later. The words recalled five and seven times held. The ones recalled once or three times did not.

What held, two weeks laterNakata (2017) had learners recall new words 1, 3, 5 or 7 times

Times a new word was recalled

01357
  1. 1×
  2. 3×
  3. 5×
  4. 7×
  1. Faded
  2. Faded
  3. Held
  4. Held

Remembered two weeks later?

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 waysThe same word, met on the page, in your ear and in your mouth
  1. Shownread on a card, with its meaning
  2. Heardspoken to you, no text to lean on
  3. Producedsaid by you, out loud

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: a couple of lessons later, then further apart each time, until you no longer have to try. By the end of a course, a word has come back in many different exercises.

Each return waits longerAn illustration of the pattern: one word, across a run of lessons
  1. taught
  3. 1st
  6. 2nd
  11. 3rd
  19. 4th

Lessons, one dot each →

Pacing

Four new words at a time

We add words slowly on purpose, so nothing arrives faster than it can stick. Some lessons bring no new words at all: they are there to bring back what you already have.

Four at a time, with room to breatheAn illustration: new words per lesson, and lessons that only bring words back

New words in the lesson

01234
  1. 4
  2. 4
  3. 4
  5. 4
  6. 4
  7. 4
  9. 4
  10. 4
  12. 4
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12

Lessons, in order

Coverage

Written against a real syllabus

Every course is planned against the reference its language already has, level by level, so the words you learn are the ones that matter. Swiss German has no official standard at all, so its course follows the school that has taught it for over twenty years.

European PortugueseThe Camões Institute’s Referencial, level by level
Swiss GermanSwissABC’s Chuchichäschtli Program, as it is spoken

Variety

Many 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
Build the sentence
Build the sentence
Fill the verb table
Fill the verb table
Play the scene
Play the scene

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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