English words stay with you for the long term when you learn them in context, recall them without a hint, try them out in speaking and writing straight away and come back to them at intervals. If you only reread lists, youâll recognise a word in a text, but it wonât come to mind when you need to say or write it. LetsWords teaches you to use words without mistakes: you build sentences with the word youâre learning, the trainer points out usage and grammar mistakes, suggests a correction and explains it, and spaced repetition makes the result stick.
A plan for your first week and a 15â20 minute session
Each session has three parts:
- Review, 5 minutes. Recall earlier words from their meaning, without peeking at the answer. If a word doesnât come back, put it at the front of your next review.
- New words, 5 minutes. Take 5â7 words. For each one, read the definition and two examples, and notice which words it goes with.
- Usage practice, 7â10 minutes. With each new word, write a sentence about your work, your life or an exam topic. Check it and save the corrected version.
Your first week:
- Day 1. Decide why you need the words: work, moving abroad, travel, IELTS. Choose a source: a ready-made collection for your level or words from your own emails and documents. Thereâs no review in your first session.
- Days 2â5. Start with recall, then take new words and write sentences.
- Day 6. No new words today. Recall all of this weekâs words and use a few of them in a short text: an email to a colleague, a message to a friend or an IELTS paragraph.
- Day 7. Mark the words you struggled to recall: youâll start week two with them.
By the end of the week, youâll have 25â35 words: youâve already recalled every one of them yourself and written with each one. In the LetsWords vocabulary trainer, all three parts are built into a single session.
Which words to learn first
Start with high-frequency words: they turn up in almost every text and conversation. Then add the words your goal calls for. For work: words from emails, meetings and reports. For living abroad: renting, banking, seeing a doctor, paperwork. For IELTS: academic vocabulary and Writing topics such as education, technology, cities and the environment.
Learn words around the topics in your own life, not school-style lists like âAnimalsâ and âColoursâ. A simple filter: take a word if you can picture where youâll say or write it in the next month.
Learn combinations, not single words. Decision on its own gives you a translation. Make a decision gives you a ready-to-use chunk of a sentence with the right verb.
LetsWords has ready-made collections: by level, exam vocabulary, academic words and expressions, collocations, phrasal verbs and idioms. You can add words from your own emails and documents to personal collections.
How many words to learn a day
A sensible range is 5â10 new words in 15â20 minutes. If you study for an hour, you can take 15â20. Review sets the limit: every new word will come back to you several more times. Take on 30 words a day, and within a week youâll have over 200 words in review and no time left for new ones.
If review takes up more than half your session, cut back on new words. If words come back easily, add more. Short daily sessions beat one long session at the weekend: you come back to the words more often.
Learning words fast is not the same as remembering them
The most common question is how to learn English words fast. You can learn a list in one evening well enough to remember it the next morning. But if you donât come back to those words, youâll have forgotten many of them a week later. A word stays with you for the long term when you recall it and use it several times, with gaps in between.
So cut back on new words, not on review: a word you forget has to be learned all over again. Ten words you can still recall a month later and use in an email are worth more than fifty you only recognise on a list.
Recall, donât reread
A list youâve reread feels familiar. But in a conversation thereâs no list in front of you: you have to pull the word out of memory yourself. Cover the answer and recall the English word from its meaning. Going from your native language into English is harder, but itâs exactly the direction you need for speaking and writing.
Karpicke and Roediger studied how students learn SwahiliâEnglish word pairs. A week later, the students remembered the pairs they had kept recalling in tests better than the rest. Extra rereading of pairs they had already learned added nothing, and the studentsâ own predictions of what they would remember didnât match the results.
Thatâs exactly how review works in LetsWords: you see the meaning in your native language and rebuild the English word, opening a hint only if it wonât come.
Flashcards and spaced repetition
Flashcards are a handy way to practise recall. Put the meaning or a situation on the front, and the word with a collocation and an example on the back. Review at growing intervals: the next day, a few days later, a week later. If you miss a word, bring it back sooner.
A review by Cepeda and colleagues brought together hundreds of experiments on how spacing study over time affects recall. Spaced reviews help you retain material better than the same number of reviews done back to back. And the longer you need to remember something, the longer the gaps should be.
In LetsWords, you donât need to keep a schedule: spaced repetition brings words back in later sessions on its own, based on how well you recalled them.
Learn words in context and use them straight away
A translation tells you what a word means. Context shows you how to use it: which preposition, which structure, which situation. After depend, your first language may suggest from, but English needs depend on. Any example makes this obvious. A word-and-translation pair doesnât.
The next step is to use the word yourself. When you build a sentence, youâre the one choosing the meaning, the form and the situation. Hulstijn and Laufer compared three tasks with the same new words: reading a text, reading and filling in gaps, and writing a composition where learners had to use the words themselves. The words stuck best after the composition and worst after reading alone.
But a sentence nobody checks can lock in a mistake. LetsWords feedback shows what to fix and why. You can get it in brief or in detail, and it takes your goal into account: an exam or general English. To see how a familiar word becomes one you use freely, read our article on turning a word you know into active vocabulary.
Word associations: when they help
An association links the form and the meaning of a difficult word that just wonât stick. Take procrastinate, âto keep putting things offâ. Hidden inside it is the Latin cras, âtomorrowâ: the task keeps getting pushed to tomorrow. A hook like this speeds up the first encounter.
But an association wonât tell you how to build a sentence. It wonât tell you that suggest isnât followed by me to. Save associations for the few stubborn words, then move on to recalling and using them.
Learning with or without translation
A translation gives you the meaning fast, and at the start itâs hard to do without. But it hides differences. Your native language may use one verb for both suggest and offer, and a translation wonât tell you which one you need.
This is where a monolingual approach helps: English definition and example first, translation only if the meaning isnât clear. In LetsWords, itâs your choice: switch on English explanations and hide the translation, while still getting feedback on your mistakes in your native language.
Where to start as a beginner
If youâre starting almost from scratch, take a ready-made collection for your level and learn with translation. Five new words a day is enough. Keep your sentences short and about yourself:
I usually start work at nine.
If you donât know what to write, the LetsWords generator suggests a sentence in your native language at the difficulty you choose, and you put it into English.
LetsWords feedback example: making suggest your own
Meet the word. In an email from a colleague:
Iâd suggest moving the call to Thursday so that everyone can join.
You add suggest to your collection and study its definition and examples.
Recall it. In your next session, you see its meaning in your native language, something like âput forward an idea or a planâ, and rebuild the English word yourself.
Write a sentence about your work:
My manager suggested me to take an online course.
What the feedback shows. The word choice is right: your manager gave you advice. The problem is the structure. Suggested me to is a typical learner mistake: after suggest, English doesnât use a person followed by to and a verb. To report advice to do something, there are two patterns. Suggest + -ing when you donât name who will do it. Suggest that + person + base form of the verb when you do. In British English, should take is also possible.
The corrected version:
My manager suggested that I take an online course.
A more precise version names the course and the purpose of the advice:
My manager suggested that I take a data analysis course to prepare for the new project.
Use it in a new situation. When the word comes back in review, write about something else. Asking a colleague to pick a time:
Could you suggest a time that works for your team?
Or an argument for IELTS Writing:
Many experts suggest limiting screen time for young children.
The first sentence uses suggest + noun, the second suggest + -ing. The difference between suggest and offer is covered in a free exercise.
Free LetsWords exercises, no sign-up needed
You can start with the free LetsWords exercises, which cover more than 1,000 expressions. Each page gives you the meaning and a translation, the pattern, examples, a common mistake with a correction and an explanation, and an exercise that checks your answer. Choose the section that fits your goal: Collocations, Phrasal verbs or Confusing words. Good places to begin are make a decision and remember or remind.
The free exercises cover ready-made expressions. Words from your own work, reading and exam prep belong in the trainer: you add them to a collection, recall them from their meaning, learn to use them without mistakes and review them at intervals. For IELTS, the same service offers Writing practice: from criterion practice on short passages to full answers with detailed feedback on all four criteria.
Anki and Quizlet: how far flashcards take you
Flashcards in Anki and Quizlet train the link between a word and its translation: one side prompts the other. But a correct answer on a card doesnât show whether you can use the word to say or write what you meant without mistakes. LetsWords checks exactly that and explains what to fix. For more detail, read our comparison of Anki, Quizlet and LetsWords, and for an overview of apps, see our roundup of apps for learning English words.
The bottom line
Donât stockpile lists. Take every new word all the way to real use: understand it in context, recall it, write with it, correct your sentence and come back to it after a gap.
Start vocabulary practice in LetsWords. Answer a few questions about your goal and level, take a vocabulary test, and LetsWords will choose practice that teaches you to speak and write with new words, not just recognise them.