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Getting started: your first week of vocabulary building
In the first week, do three things: find a text you can read with about 98% of the words already known, set up a flashcard deck with spaced review, and settle into a daily routine of 20–30 minutes of reading plus 10 minutes of review. The seven days below walk through it one small step at a time.
Key points
- Research suggests reading becomes comfortable at about 98% known words: one unknown word in fifty, or about four in a 200-word passage (where 98% comes from).
- Save only words that block the meaning or keep coming back. Most words in a novel appear once and are not worth a flashcard (our counts).
- Review on a growing schedule rather than all at once, and try to recall each word before you check it (spaced repetition).
- Keep the new-card limit small at first. Reviews pile up from every card you add.
This plan assumes you already know the basics of the language: you can read a short, simple text slowly, perhaps with a dictionary. If you are a complete beginner, spend a few weeks on a course or a graded reader series first, then come back.
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Estimate where you are
Take a vocabulary size test or a level test for your language. For English, the Vocabulary Size Test by Paul Nation and David Beglar measures written receptive vocabulary in word families and can be taken free at my.vocabularysize.com (details). For other languages, the Council of Europe's CEFR self-assessment grid describes what a reader at each level can handle; a free placement test from a reputable course or exam provider works too. Write the result down. You will not need it to be precise; it tells you where to look for reading material.
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Learn to check a text in two minutes
Take a passage of about 200 words from a book you would like to read. Mark every word you could not explain in your own language. Four or fewer unknown words means roughly 98% known, which is comfortable reading. Around ten means about 95%: readable with effort and a dictionary. Much more than that, and you will spend the session decoding rather than reading. Try three candidate books this way and keep the one that lands closest to four.
If everything is too hard, switch to graded readers, which are written for learners with a controlled vocabulary. Our book tables show how long each book is and how varied its vocabulary is, which helps you pick a shorter, plainer one to start.
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Set up your flashcards
Pick one spaced repetition tool and stay with it: Anki is free on the computer and on Android, and several reading apps build cards for you as you look words up (see the comparison of tools). Make each card from the sentence where you met the word: the sentence with the word highlighted on the front, the meaning on the back. Set a limit of 10 to 15 new cards a day. It feels slow, but every new card brings reviews for weeks afterwards, and Anki's own manual warns that users who add hundreds of cards in the first days get overwhelmed by reviews.
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Read for 20–30 minutes
Read your chosen book for pleasure and meaning. Look a word up when it stops you from following what is happening, or when you notice it for the second or third time. Ignore the rest; a word that matters will come back. Save up to ten words to your deck, each with its sentence.
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Do your first reviews properly
Before turning a card over, say or write the meaning. Pulling the answer out of memory strengthens it much more than rereading the answer does (the research). Mark a card as failed when you could not recall it, even if the answer looks familiar once you see it. Then read again for 20 minutes and add a few more words.
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Add listening
If your book has an audiobook, reread yesterday's chapter while listening. Hearing the words while you see them ties spelling to pronunciation, and a chapter you have already read is easy enough to follow at speaking speed. Otherwise, listen to anything at your level for 15 minutes: a podcast for learners, a series with subtitles in the language you are learning.
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Look back and adjust
Count the pages you read and the cards you reviewed. If reviews take more than about 15 minutes a day, lower the new-card limit. If the book felt like work on every page, go back to day 2 and pick something easier; if you rarely needed the dictionary, choose something harder. Then keep the routine: most of the benefit comes from doing a modest amount every day for months, not from a heroic first week.
What to skip in the first week
- Long word lists out of context. Frequency lists are useful for choosing what to study, but a word learned with its sentence is easier to recall and to use.
- Texts that are far too hard. In the best-known study of this, only about a third of readers who knew 95% of the words understood a story adequately, and none at 80%. Without the thread of the story, the context that helps new words stick is gone too.
- Collecting every unknown word. About half of the different words in a typical novel occur only once in the whole book (our counts).
Where to go next
- How many words do you need for books, films and conversation.
- Spaced repetition: how to review so that words stay.
- Learning words from reading: what research says reading alone can and cannot do.