Why words slip away
Your brain confuses “familiar” with “I can say it.”
Scientists taught two groups of learners 40 words in Swahili, a language none of them knew.
Group A kept quizzing themselves on every word, even the ones they’d already got right. Group B stopped quizzing a word once they got it right once.
A week later, Group A remembered 80% of the words. Group B remembered 36%. Before the test, both groups guessed they’d remember about half. Group B felt just as ready.
Quizzing yourself more than doubled what learners remembered.
A word that feels familiar isn’t proof you can use it. The only real test is trying to pull it out of your head. Scientists call that active recall.
Karpicke & Roediger, Science (2008). Read the study
So how do you get a word from “familiar” to “I just said it”…
Our science-first method
One word. Four steps. Each one built on a study.
Every step asks you to pull the word out of your head, a little harder each time. Then the loop starts again with new words. Tap a step to jump to it.
↺ then new words tomorrow
It starts before you see a single flashcard…
Step 1 of 4 · Story first
Meet new words in a story, at your level, read aloud.
Before your session starts, today’s new words show up in a short story. It’s written at your level, about things you care about, and read by a natural voice.
So when you meet la forêt on a card a minute later, you’ve already heard it and seen it used.
Luca marchait lentement dans la forêt, les feuilles tombant doucement autour de lui. Il aimait le son des oiseaux.
Why we built it this way: a word with a story around it has something to hold on to. A word on its own doesn’t.
Words met again in a story were almost 4× more likely to be remembered.
Words stick better when they live inside a story. That’s why your new words start in one.
Words recalled later. van den Broek et al., Cognitive Science (2022), experiment 1. Read the study
You hear the word before you study it, so it already means something.
Then the word becomes a flashcard. But it doesn’t stay the same card…
Step 2 of 4 · Cards that grow
Each time a word comes back, you do a little more with it.
The first time, you flip the card and say how it went. The next time, you type the word into a sentence from memory. Once you’re comfortable, you write a sentence of your own.
The dots on each card show how far a word has climbed. Each new level unlocks a harder way to practise it.
Tap each visit to see how the same card changes.
Why we built it this way: recognising a word is the easy part. We move you to typing it, then using it, as soon as you’re ready.
Writing with a word beat filling a blank, which beat just reading.
The more work you do with a word, the longer it stays. So each visit asks a little more of you, never all at once.
Bars show the order only. Hulstijn & Laufer, Language Learning (2001). Read the study
By the third visit, you’re not recognising the word. You’re using it.
The next question is when each word should come back…
Step 3 of 4 · Right on time
Words come back right before you’d forget them.
Memory fades fast after you learn something. Each time you pull a word back up, it fades more slowly.
So liivret works out the best day for each word to return. Words you know well come back less and less. Words you struggle with come back sooner. This is called spaced repetition.
Timed by FSRS, an open-source scheduler tested on more than 700 million real flashcard reviews. See the benchmark
Spreading reviews out beat cramming, across 317 experiments.
The best moment to review a word is just before you’d forget it. liivret works that moment out for you, word by word.
Average recall across studies: Cepeda et al., Psychological Bulletin (2006). Read the review
Curve is illustrative, shape from Ebbinghaus (1885) as replicated by Murre & Dros, PLOS ONE (2015). Read the replication
You review less, and remember more.
And the words that gave you trouble today don’t wait days…
Step 4 of 4 · One more round
The words you found hard get one more go, while they’re fresh.
When your session ends, liivret writes a new short story using the words you struggled with. You fill in the blanks and listen to it.
Replay the saved audio to hear those words in context again.
Ce matin, Inès a décidé de marcher jusqu’au lac. Dans la forêt, les feuilles craquaient sous ses pas.
Watch the story blanks fill with the words from your session.
Two things you’ve already seen, working together.
You pull the word up yourself, which is active recall. And you meet it again in a story, which is context. Each new sentence gives your brain one more way back to the word.
Today’s hard words get one more go before you close the app.
Here’s a tip if you want a challenge…
Tip · Hard mode
Turn the text off. Just listen.
In hard mode, you only hear the word. You type what you heard, then check. It’s tough, and it’s fun.
It trains the skill you need when someone is talking to you at normal speed.
Learners know far fewer words by ear than on paper.
Recognising a word when someone says it is its own skill. That’s why a native speaker can feel like a wall, and why hard mode exists.
Illustrative. 185 adult learners had a much smaller listening vocabulary than reading vocabulary. Iizuka, University of Maryland (2024). Read the study
Your ear learns the word, not just your eyes.
All of this runs on its own. You just show up…
The easy part
Never too much. Always something to show for it.
Open liivret and your session is ready. You never get more than 12 new words a day, so it stays light even on a busy week.
And every word shows how far it has climbed, so you can see your progress, not just feel it.
4
things at once is about all your working memory can hold.
So we keep each session small, and spread new words out.
Cowan, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2001). Read the paper
People speed up when they can see the finish line. Kivetz et al. (2006)
Last thing: getting your words in takes seconds…
Add words
Build a deck in seconds. Try it.
Generate a pack on any topic, paste your own list, or bring the decks you already have. liivret adds the audio, example sentences and gender colours for you.
Choose how you want to add vocabulary
tap one to try it
Same steps as the app.
83%
of everyday English text is made of the 2,000 most common words.
Learning the most common words first gets you understanding more, faster. Our starter decks come from real frequency lists, like Lexique for French and NoWaC for Norwegian.
Cambridge English Corpus, via the New General Service List. See the data
Questions
Questions learners ask
Why do I forget vocabulary I’ve studied?
Usually because you’ve practised recognising words, not recalling them. Most of us study by re-reading (84% of learners in one survey). Re-reading makes a word feel familiar, but finding it on your own is a separate skill. Testing yourself, spacing reviews out and using words in sentences build that skill.
What is active recall?
Active recall means pulling an answer out of your memory instead of looking at it. In a 2008 study, learners who kept testing themselves remembered 80% of new words a week later. Those who stopped testing remembered 36%.
How many new words should I learn a day?
Fewer than you think. Working memory holds about four things at once, and every new word adds future reviews. liivret never gives you more than 12 new words a day.
Does spaced repetition really work?
Yes. A review of 317 experiments found that spreading study out over time beat cramming the same amount. liivret uses FSRS, an open-source scheduler, to time each word’s return.
Sources
- Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science, 319(5865), 966–968.
- Karpicke, J. D., Butler, A. C., & Roediger, H. L. (2009). Metacognitive strategies in student learning: Do students practise retrieval when they study on their own?. Memory, 17(4), 471–479.
- van den Broek, G. S. E., Wesseling, E., Huijssen, L., Lettink, M., & van Gog, T. (2022). Vocabulary learning during reading: Benefits of contextual inferences versus retrieval opportunities. Cognitive Science, 46(4), e13135.
- Hulstijn, J. H., & Laufer, B. (2001). Some empirical evidence for the involvement load hypothesis in vocabulary acquisition. Language Learning, 51(3), 539–558.
- Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380.
- Murre, J. M. J., & Dros, J. (2015). Replication and analysis of Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0120644.
- Iizuka, T. (2024). Does modality matter? Aural and written vocabulary in second language listening and reading comprehension. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland.
- Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), 87–114.
- Kivetz, R., Urminsky, O., & Zheng, Y. (2006). The goal-gradient hypothesis resurrected. Journal of Marketing Research, 43(1), 39–58.
- Open Spaced Repetition (2025). SRS benchmark: FSRS and other spaced repetition algorithms. GitHub.
- Browne, C., Culligan, B., & Phillips, J. (2013). The New General Service List: coverage. newgeneralservicelist.com.