Restarting English After Years Away
You studied English once. It's rusty, not gone. How to find your real level and rebuild fast.
- Step 1
Take the placement check honestly
Rusty learners always misjudge their level, in both directions. Use the placement check on the home page and answer honestly: 'know' means you could use the word in a sentence right now, not that it looks familiar. Familiar-but-unusable is exactly what rust is. Most restarters land around bands 3-5, not band 1.
- Step 2
Speed-run the bands below your level
Do not skip the early bands; sprint them. Run each earlier band's quiz first. Score 9+ and you move on immediately; anything lower and you flip through that band's cards once, marking only the strangers. Rebuilding this floor usually takes days, not weeks, and the wins rebuild something else you lost: confidence.
- Step 3
Expect the vocabulary cliff
Somewhere in the middle bands you will hit the cliff: pages where every word is a stranger. This is where your old course stopped, and it is where the real work begins. Slow to normal pace, 10-15 new words a day. The cliff feels discouraging precisely because everything before it felt free. That contrast means the system is working.
- Step 4
Attach English to a current habit
You quit last time for a reason, usually that study time competed with life and lost. This time, do not schedule study time; attach it. After the morning coffee, during the commute, in the elevator queue: 20 minutes riding on a habit that already survives your busiest weeks. The routine you do not have to defend is the one that lasts.