Vocabulary App Without Mental Overhead
The Problem With Many Language Learning Apps
Not enough vocabulary. This is a common problem for intermediate French learners - what to do after I finish Duolingo or take some classes? Crossing the bridge between intermediate and advanced is not trivial, and will require more effort than getting started with the language in the first place.
The lessons get too boring, but you are not good enough to comfortably consume native content.
Ironically, this is where the popular apps drop you off - there was a lot of hand-holding in the beginning, but now you are on your own, hitting language learning plateau and wondering if you are improving at all.
But that’s not all. There is another glaring issue: too much to do.
Too Many Decisions, Too Much Noise
Were you ever commuting back home after a long day at work, thinking, what if I spent this time improving my French skills?
You browse popular apps and it is fun and engaging: your XP bar grows, your streak burns brighter, you get gilded achievements and words of encouragement from the cute avian mascot.
But something weighs on you - there is too much to do. Too much tapping, too many decisions, too much context switching.
Do you want to learn new words? Review old words? Do you want a lesson on this topic, or a different one? Which exercises are good? For some reason, a lot of them involve lists of words grouped by topic - food, colors, animals, and so on. These lists are familiar to everyone since high school, but are not necessarily effective1.
At some point, you are not even sure if the excessive gamification actually helps you to learn anything, or just gives you XP. And you are not alone in this2.
Anki is a a separate story. No hate, we love Anki, but:
- Do you want this deck or another? Core 2000, Core 5000, Core 5000+ Revised Ultimate Order?
- Are free Shared Decks good, or do you need to make your own?
- Or maybe you should buy one, for example from Refold?
- What repetition intervals should you use - are the defaults good enough for you?
- Do you need to tweak it until you hit that magical 80%+ retention rate?
- How do you calculate the precise number of cards you need to study to not get buried by a thousand reviews one day?
- What to do when you inevitably get buried by the thousand reviews?
You don’t have time or energy for this. Time spent on pointless decisions is time spent not learning, and decision fatigue does not help. Ideally, you just want to tap one big button that says “learn language”.
This was our thinking process as well, and we came as close as possible to creating that one button.
You Don’t Need So Much Complexity To Increase Your Vocabulary Size
You don’t have to decide everything. The process is as simple as it can be:
- Read the sentence
- Try to understand it
- Read the translation
- Tap the words you didn’t know
And the reverse, where you try to produce the sentence in your target language from the given English sentence.
That’s all there is to it, and it doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. Just two exercise types that broadly cover the most important skills.
Our personalized space repetition algorithms are complex behind the scenes, but it isn’t something that you, the user, should be bothered with. Our UI is minimalist and will not overload you with unnecessary information.
You don’t need to worry whether you are learning the correct thing in the correct order; this is not why you are here. You are here because you want to learn the language, not to play with the app.
Why Exposure Is the #1 Factor in Language Learning
In foreign language acquisition, the most important factor is exposure - how much of the language you see, and how much of it you produce.
Vocaber is designed with a single goal - to provide you with as much content as possible, while optimizing your progression. You will see a lot of sentences, and you will produce a lot as well.
But quantity alone isn’t enough - the input needs to follow the N+1 principle: you need to see new vocabulary and new grammar constructions, otherwise your progress will stagnate3.
Why Talking Isn’t Enough: The Limits of Conversation
Contrary to popular belief, talking is not the primary source of vocabulary - daily conversations are usually limited in their complexity4. You can comfortably live for a decade in a foreign country and barely scratch intermediate (B1) level5.
Traditionally, learners expand their vocabulary outside the classroom, through natural exposure to large volumes of content: reading books, watching media, or studying in the target language. But in today’s world, time is more valuable than ever; everything competes for your attention.
How Vocaber Works: Designed to Minimize Friction
Vocaber solves this issue by combining the natural source of vocabulary with spaced repetition and smart optimization of sentence progression. We track your answers and predict the next step, allowing intelligent scheduling.
The approach is grounded in particular on the American linguist Stephen Krashen’s theory of language acquisition6 and the concept of “comprehensible input”. To this end, the sentences are introduced gradually, and you will only be invited to produce sentences that you are already familiar with.
Our “granular flashcard” approach allows us to further reduce the time spent unnecessarily, and focus on the aspects that you really need to improve - every word in a sentence is a micro-flashcard of its own. They are not traditional flashcards, but dynamic - you will not have to drill the same sentence over and over again like you would in Anki. Instead, you’ll see the learned words in different sentences and different contexts.
Coming soon for iOS and Android.
Evagelia Papathanasiou, The Effects of Semantic Clustering in L2 Word Learning: Evidence from an Action Research Study, PDF: “the result is compatible with the results of previous research, showing that semantically related vocabulary impedes learning while unrelated words are proven to facilitate learning (Tinkham 1993, 1997, Waring 1997, Schneider, Healy and Bourne, 1998, Finkbeiner and Nicol, 2003).” ↩︎
Cláuvin Almeida, Marcos Kalinowski, Anderson Uchôa, and Bruno Feijó, Negative Effects of Gamification in Education Software: Systematic Mapping and Practitioner Perceptions, DOI:10.1016/j.infsof.2022.107142: “We found that badges, leaderboards, competitions, and points are the game design elements most often reported as causing negative effects. The most cited negative effects were lack of effect, worsened performance, motivational issues, lack of understanding, and irrelevance.” ↩︎
Mehdi Latifi, Saeed Ketabi, and Elham Mohammadi, The Comprehension Hypothesis Today: An Interview with Stephen Krashen, Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2013): 221–233, © Centre for Language Studies, National University of Singapore, PDF: “Of course, comprehension doesn’t always lead to acquisition. It happens only when the input contains i+1. […] If the input has no new material that the person hasn’t acquired (and is ready to acquire), there will of course be no acquisition.” ↩︎
Svenja Adolphs and Norbert Schmitt, Lexical Coverage of Spoken Discourse, Applied Linguistics 24(4): 425–438, © Oxford University Press 2003, PDF: “A second analysis was performed on the CANCODE and the spoken component of the British National Corpus, which found that around 5,000 individual words were required to achieve about a 96 per cent coverage figure.” ↩︎
OECD (2022), Skills and Labour Market Integration of Immigrants and their Children in Norway, OECD Publishing, Paris, DOI:10.1787/6109d927-en: “From 2014–20 among migrants with at most low levels of formal education (ISCED 0–2), 67% achieved an A2 or higher in writing, 79% in listening, and 61% in reading. However, only a minority in this education group achieved a B1 or higher in these competencies (listening 28%, reading 21%, writing 14%). Outcomes from previous test-takers who had upper secondary but no higher education show that only about one in two or fewer (listening 55%; reading 52%; writing 32%) achieved B1 (Figure 3.12).” ↩︎
Stephen D. Krashen, “Some Issues Relating to the Monitor Model,” in H. D. Brown, C. Yorio, and R. Crymes (eds.), On TESOL ’77: Teaching and Learning English as a Second Language: Trends in Research and Practice (Washington, DC: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, 1977). ↩︎