Frequently Asked Questions

Vocaber is an advanced flashcard app for Android and iPhone (soon) that helps you build French vocabulary through a lot of dynamic sentences. Inspired by immersion and input-based methods (including Stephen Krashen’s theories). The original goal of Vocaber was to provide a bridge between B1 and C1. We were frustrated with the existing language learning apps that only get you so far, and artifically limit your progress speed. We try to give you as much content as quickly as possible, and minimize distractions.

No, Vocaber is designed for learners who already know the basics or are familiar with a related language. For example, if you already speak Spanish or Italian, you don’t really need to know that much. If you’re brand new, we recommend reviewing the alphabet and core grammar first. You can also check out our French Introduction crash course.. If you are a monolingual English speaker, it will be harder.

Vocaber emphasizes learning through context and input, not grammar rules. For explanations, we suggest using external resources or grammar guides. We are considering adding AI grammar explanations, but so far our experiments show that it is unreliable and not very useful. Let us know if you have any particular features in mind.

Short sentences allow quicker exposure to more vocabulary. For deeper comprehension, pair Vocaber with native content in your target language. Also, the sentences get longer the higher level you are.

Sentences advance based on your performance. In general, it follows the N+1 principle - introducing one word at a time.

About 20,000 word forms, i.e. quite a bit into C2 territory.

Vocaber uses CEFR as a general reference for vocabulary difficulty. For official certification, a formal exam is required. Every exam interprets it in a slightly different way, and different languages can have different standards. In French, for example, TCF and TEF differ a lot (especially the oral part), and you can get wildly different results. Additionally, the actual CEFR levels are also not necessarily a thing for the exam you are looking for - some exams only provide informal equivalency. At the end of the day CEFR is just a helpful broad framework, don’t get too hung up on it.

Not at all. This is a silly obsessive perfectionist idea that language learning can be contained to a box. There are no boxes, consume as much content as you possibly can. SRS is here to help you, not to dictate your life.

We don’t use ads or sell user data. Subscriptions support the infrastructure needed to maintain the app (belive or not, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all want money for some reason). We understand that it might be expensive. You can try it free for 30 days to see if it’s right for you. Also, we are indie devs who need to eat and pay rent. Unfortunately, ad-supported monetization only works for the mass-appeal apps, whereas Vocaber is niche. We don’t have any investment capital either. Theoretically, we could cut some corners and reduce quality of some features to make the app free for the users who don’t care, but it isn’t planned at this point.

Duolingo is (allegedly) great for beginners and gamified learning. Vocaber is for learners ready to expand vocabulary through fast, focused sentence practice - without the handholding. Essentially, we assume that you already mostly know what you want. You know some French and want to improve quicker, or you want to maintain the language, and you only really need Comprehensible Input and SRS, without the noise and too many buttons. The same answer works for Drops, Memrise, and so on.

No, but we broadly agree with their principles. The fact is that input-based learning is effective and well-founded, despite being not that widely known among the masses, so it’s inevitable that Refold, Dreaming Spanish, and other Krashen-inspired approaches will be similar. Also, we don’t have Spanish language, we only have French.

Vocaber builds on the spaced repetition model with language-specific features, dynamic sentence generation, and a more intuitive experience. Try both and see which works better for you. We also provide some supplemental Anki decks here.

Each word is tracked individually across varied sentence contexts, maximizing exposure and review efficiency. It also creates variety and prevents the issue of memorizing entire sentence instead of understanding them.

Our flashcards process is optimized for speed. Vocaber minimizes decision fatigue. If you don’t know a word, just tap it and move on - no complex review options to manage. If you didn’t tap any words, it means that it is all ‘correct’.

A web version is in development - stay tuned!

The podcasts right now is just a catalog page, they are a great source of native audio if you are already at B1/B2. It is a part of our strategy to provide you with more information on where to get good, interesting content. We are currently experimenting with additional features that will help you find appropriate content even easier.

We’d love to hear from you! Contact us anytime at dev@vocaber.com.