Glossary

A word list sorted by how often each word appears in real speech and writing, most common first.

The percentage of words in a text or conversation that you know. 95%+ is where comfortable understanding starts.

A word that does grammar work instead of carrying meaning: the, of, would, that. Half of everything you hear.

A word that carries a picture: nouns, main verbs, adjectives. Easy to learn, easy to point at.

Pulling an answer out of memory instead of recognizing it. The single most effective study technique known.

Reviewing at growing intervals — a day, a week, a month — timed to catch memories as they fade.

The steep drop in memory right after learning. Most forgetting happens in the first day, then slows.

The European scale of language levels, from A1 (beginner) to C2 (near-native). The first 1000 words span A1 into A2.

A base word plus its close relatives: help, helps, helped, helpful, helper count as one family.

Listening and reading you can mostly understand — the raw material language acquisition runs on.

Quizzing yourself strengthens memory more than restudying. The quiz is the study.