Guides to learning English vocabulary

Straight answers about how English vocabulary is actually learned, including the places where the popular advice falls apart. Written to be useful whether or not you ever install this app.

• Comprehensible input and i+1, explained without the jargon

  The idea behind "read things you almost understand" is older and narrower than the internet version of it. Here is what the hypothesis actually claims, where the evidence is genuinely weak, and what it means for what you read tonight.

• How to actually learn English vocabulary by reading

  Words are picked up from reading, but only under conditions most people never meet: a text you mostly understand, and enough repeat encounters for a word to survive. Here is how to arrange both.

• What IPA is, and the dozen symbols that actually matter

  The International Phonetic Alphabet looks like a barrier and is mostly a shortcut. You need about a dozen symbols and two stress marks to get the value out of it, and you can ignore the rest for good.

• Why vocabulary books stop working around word 300

  Almost everyone has a vocabulary book with the first forty pages worn and the rest untouched. The failure is not willpower. It is a set of specific, nameable design faults — and a few of them are worth keeping.

• How to use an IELTS, TOEFL or CET word list without wasting a month

  Exam word lists are a real tool with a narrow job. Knowing how they are built tells you what they can do for you, why "learn the whole list" fails, and what the last two weeks should actually look like.

• Why phrasal verbs resist memorisation

  Phrasal verbs are the part of English that most reliably defeats advanced learners. The reasons are structural — and they explain why a list of two hundred of them is close to useless while meeting them in sentences is not.

• What offline study and no sign-up are actually worth

  Offline and account-free are usually printed as features and rarely explained. Both buy something specific, both have limits, and there is a straightforward way to find out whether an app really has them before you rely on it.

• How to practise pronunciation with a synthesised voice

  A text-to-speech voice is a genuinely useful pronunciation tool for some jobs and useless for others. Here is the loop that works, what a synthesised voice can and cannot tell you, and why saying words aloud helps you remember them.