• the word’s rank in the COCA corpus (for example, perform is the 954^th most frequent word in the corpus)
• the word’s relative frequency in spoken English, fiction, magazines, newspapers and academic texts; for example, sullen (=angry and silent) is used almost exclusively in fiction writing and practically never in spoken English
• collocates, sorted by part of speech and by frequency; for example, perform often occurs together with words such as task, function, well, better, able and poorly
• example sentences containing the word

If you type * into the search box, you can also get a list of the most frequent English words.

If anything seems wrong after you reload the page, please let me know.

Here’s a rundown of the most important changes:

• More readable, better-looking text
• Navigation bar on every page
• Coordinated color scheme
• (articles and blog pages only) Dictionary lookup feature — double-click any word to look it up in the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (includes phonetic transcription, recordings and of course example sentences)
• (articles only) Google Translate link for people who have difficulty reading in English and whose languages are not included in the Translation Wiki.
• (articles and blog pages only) Buttons for sharing an article on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Awesome print stylesheet — if you print an article, it will look almost as good as a page from a book. No ads, no site navigation, just pure text set in a nice font.

Why did you redesign the site?

The goal was to make Antimoon easier to read and more pleasing to the eye. The site contains large amounts of text. I wanted to provide an experience that resembles reading a book. Of course, currently available computer displays cannot match the readability of a book (for one thing, they don’t have enough resolution), but I think I’ve gotten 80% there.

When Antimoon launched in 2001, it had an unusually simple and easy-to-use design for its time. Back then the Web was full of sites that looked like this. I take pride in the fact that I was one of the early followers of Jakob Nielsen’s evangelism. The 2001 design survived for 10 years with some minor tweaks (with the exception of the homepage, which was significantly restyled).

Since 2001, I have learned a lot about typography, graphic design and user experience design. I’ve read books, Web articles, and designed other sites, most notably TypeIt. I wanted to put this knowledge to good use on Antimoon.

Why is the font so big on article pages?

It’s not big. It’s the right size for reading from a screen. When you read from a screen, the screen is typically an arm’s length away from you (it should be, anyway). When you read from a book, the page is much closer. Nobody holds a book at arm’s length. For this reason, the letters displayed on screen should be roughly 60% larger than letters printed on a page to maintain the same level of readability.

If you think 16-pixel Georgia is too big, you are either sitting too close to your screen or you have been conditioned by poorly designed websites. For years, websites have used tiny fonts in an effort to fit as much information as possible on the page. Fortunately, this is beginning to change, as designers begin to realize that there’s no reason why websites should be harder to read than books.

I was wondering how many items we should add to SuperMemo per day. What average worked well for you and your friends when you were in high school?

I was a heavy SuperMemo user for about 2.5 years. In that period, I added 6,000 items to my English collection. Therefore, my daily average was about 6 items per day. The typical scenario was that, every few days, I would sit down and add anywhere between 10 and 50 words and phrases to my English collection. In addition to that, I added an average of 4 items per day to my German collection.

Doesn’t sound impressive at all, does it? If there ever was a conference for users of spaced repetition software (SRS), I think 6,000 items would get me laughed out of the room. I personally know people who have memorized more than 20,000 English items. My friend and ex-partner at Antimoon, Michal Ryszard Wojcik, added twice as many items as me.

Even though my achievements in SRSing were modest (probably due to laziness), it worked out quite well for me. By third grade, my overall English skills were better than anyone else’s in my class, including Michal’s. While he was busy reading books, browsing his Webster’s dictionary and adding items to SuperMemo, I was watching American TV and trying to seize every opportunity to converse with native speakers. He had a clear advantage in advanced vocabulary, so he was much better prepared, for example, to read Lord of the Rings in English — most likely better prepared than the average native speaker! But in more everyday situations, advanced vocabulary didn’t matter. When it came to talking to people or watching a movie, I was much better. (He began to catch up with me only after he began talking in English.) I believe a big part of my success was that I spent less time working with SuperMemo.

That doesn’t mean you should spend less time on SRSing; it just means that in my particular situation, more SRSing would have meant less listening, which would have been harmful to my overall English level. The “general” lesson would be that if you overdo SRSing at the expense of other activities like listening and speaking, your English skills will become “unbalanced” — that is, skewed towards written English.

How many items to add is a difficult question. I am certainly not saying that 6 items per day is some kind of golden number. For one thing, Michal and I were adding definition-word items. If you’re adding sentence items (and you should be), you can probably add twice as many items in the same amount of time.

On the other hand, our SuperMemo experiences happened before the Internet (gasp!). English-language input was not a click away as it is now, so it made sense to review what we had with SuperMemo. If I were learning English today, I would never add many of the words that I added to my collection: why add them if I’m likely to encounter them again on some Web page within the next month?

That doesn’t mean that I would add fewer items. Instead of adding vocabulary from books, I would add things like common mistakes (especially ones I’ve made myself), less frequent grammar structures (e.g. conditionals and the present perfect tense), rare-but-useful vocabulary, and phrasal verbs. I would focus on useful stuff that is hard to learn from input alone. All this knowledge could easily add up to thousands of items.

So instead of giving you some made-up figure, I will just say two things. First, you should not focus on SRS so much that you neglect other activities like listening, writing and speaking (at least not for long periods of time). Second, you should be selective. You should only add things that are (1) useful and (2) hard to remember.

The “hard to remember” part depends on the amount of input you’re getting. The more input you get in your target language, the less SRSing you will need. There’s no point in SRSing things that are kept in your memory anyway through regular exposure to the language.

The amount of input you can get depends on the target language. If you’re learning English, you will have no problem finding a wealth of interesting input on various difficulty levels, so you will get more “natural reviews” and will have less need for spaced repetition software. But if you’re learning a language like Japanese or Russian, it will be much harder to find input you actually like. (I mean, English learners can watch South Park and House MD — what can Russian learners watch that’s equally good?) So, with a less popular language, you will generally get less natural input and will have to make up for that using artificial input in the form of SRS items. In other words, more things will be “hard to remember” and worth adding to your SRS.

If the number is, for example, 20 … what happens if we encounter 20 new useful/important words or expressions before we read 10 full pages? Do we keep reading and ignore the new words?

Or for example, what happens if we learn 20 new important words/expressions while watching TV. Do we not read for that day, or do we read and not add the new words to SuperMemo?

As long as you add only (1) useful and (2) hard to remember things, and you don’t neglect other activities — especially listening, writing and speaking — I think you should use whatever system is most enjoyable.

What I did when I was in high school was write words down in a notebook while reading or listening. Then, whenever I felt like it, I would fire up SuperMemo and add some things from the notebook to my collection. I used a notebook because I didn’t want to add items while reading or listening, and I didn’t want to feel as if I had “missed” something. The disadvantage of this system was that it sometimes led to 20 pages of unadded items. It felt like a backlog of things to do and made me feel like a bit of a loser. Certainly if I could start over, I would be much more selective when writing down things to add to my SRS.

A more radical technique for dealing with an SRS backlog is to set a fixed limit, e.g. 2 items per page, or 10 items per hour, or something like that. If you think there are 4 interesting phrases on that page you just read, that’s too bad — you have to choose the two that you think are most useful and hardest to remember. I’ve never tried this system — in fact, I just came up with the idea — so take this suggestion with a grain of salt.

I’ve recently started to use Your method (especially SRSing, getting a lot of input and learning to pronounce things) and since then I’ve been observing a big improvement in my comprehension. However, I still have many problems with grammar, so a week ago I decided to give “Pause and Think method” a try. When reading a book I’m trying to analyse grammar structures, collocations, word orders etc. I’m also looking up most words I don’t understand in a dictionary (since I read mostly when using public transportation I use a cell-phone dictionary). The method seems fine, but the problem is, it’s horribly time-consuming. To read a single page using this method I usually need some 15-20 minutes. During this time I could probably read 10 pages. So here’s the question: wouldn’t it be more (or similarly) beneficial to read several books (=to get much more input) instead of reading one, but more carefully?

Your message is basically error-free, so perhaps I should tell you to keep doing whatever you’re doing, and things will sort themselves out eventually. As your vocabulary and grammar knowledge increases, it will certainly take you less and less time to “pause and think” through a page, so maybe you should just give it some time.

That said, I would like to praise you for questioning your technique, rather than following it mindlessly.

Let me first say a few words about “pause and think” in general. The “pause and think” technique is based on the observation that input-only (=immersion) learning in teenagers and adults does not always lead to correct grammar. There are people who have received a lot of input (such as immigrants who have lived in an English-speaking country for over 10 years), but still make basic grammar mistakes, such as saying he like instead of he likes. Clearly, being exposed to lots of input is not enough, at least for some learners. (In other words, adults cannot learn English the same way as children.)

What is missing? What are these learners doing wrong? One idea is that they “tune out” the grammatical details. When hearing or reading a sentence, they notice only the words that are necessary to understand the meaning (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) and ignore the “grammatical details”: articles, prepositions, verb forms, collocations, spelling, etc. Why would this happen? Because people (and their brains) usually take the path of least resistance. If they can ignore the grammar and still get the meaning, then that’s what they will generally do.

If people are blind to grammatical details, then it doesn’t matter that they’re surrounded by input. Some of the grammatical information never reaches the language module in their brain. (BTW, this view is known as Noticing Hypothesis in language-acquisition research.)

“Pause and think” is a technique designed to prevent this blindness. The idea is that you should care about grammar and make yourself notice it, so that when you read:

The addition of a “sin tax” is a strong economic incentive against buying cigarettes.

you should notice that it says “the addition of a tax” and not “an addition of a tax”, and “an incentive” and not just “incentive”.

I don’t really know if “pause and think” is necessary to learn grammar well. Perhaps you could achieve similar results with careful output and/or grammar exercises. And I have no idea how much “pause and think” is optimal. Maybe it’s enough to simply fix your attention on each grammatical detail for a second. Maybe more active techniques are better – such as saying or writing the sentence from memory.

Because I have no idea, I recommend a kind of “middle ground”: some reading for content, some light P&T (noticing) and a little intensive P&T (reconstructing sentences from memory). That is what Michał and I did when we were learning English. (In case you’re wondering, we didn’t do it because we thought it was an effective technique – we were simply English nerds interested in grammatical details. When you’re interested in something, you tend to notice it.)

You are right to notice that reading with “pause and think” is much slower than reading for content. What would happen if you never used “pause and think”? If the above analysis is correct, you would keep making mistakes in grammatical details. It doesn’t matter how much input you’d get; the information would never register in your brain. On the other hand, you would get more raw input, so you might make faster progress in areas which do not require so much conscious attention, such as vocabulary.

You mention that it takes you 15-20 minutes to read a single page. My gut tells me the most time-consuming activity is looking words up in a dictionary. It must take a long time to type a word on a mobile device. Maybe you should consider looking up fewer words. If you come across a word that you wouldn’t want to use yourself (such as egregious, portly or kingfisher) and that word doesn’t stop you from understanding the general meaning of the text, then there’s really no need to use a dictionary. You might be tempted to check the pronunciation, but do you really need to know the pronunciation of every word you read?

Secondly, you should consider doing less P&T. You don’t need to analyze things that you don’t want to use in your own sentences. There’s no need to spend too much time on “colorful” language that is not used outside of books and periodicals. Alternatively, you might simply read simpler texts.

Good luck!

After spending weeks trying to configure a replacement for Ask Antimoon, I’ve convinced myself that the project is not really worth the effort. I’ve got to face the facts here: the site never took off the way I hoped it would. The number of visitors was minuscule next to the total number of Antimoon visitors and, while there was an upward trend, it was barely detectable. I know there was a small group of people who really liked Ask Antimoon (I still get enquiries from former users). There were also some insightful discussions there and I’m sorry they’re no longer accessible. Still, setting up, maintaining and administering Ask Antimoon takes really unpleasant work. Since I suck at making money on the Interwebs, there would be zero financial payoff to that work. Of course I like doing stuff for the community, but I think my time is better spent on things other than providing and policing a discussion board.

I apologize to those of you who were waiting for the site to come back up. And no, there will be no revival of the old forum. No way I’m going back to that level of discussion.

I plan to make several updates to the pronunciation section in the near future. Here’s the first one: Learn to pronounce English words as soon as possible. The gist of the article is that you shouldn’t put off studying English pronunciation because doing so puts you at risk of developing fossilized mistakes (bad habits). The article also explains the concept of “getting it right in your head” when pronouncing English words.

I was raised and spent my whole childhood and school years in Serbia where I graduated from the faculty of Pharmacy. Six moths ago I moved to Germany. I am looking for job opportunities here.

All of a sudden everyone expects me to be fluent in German because they heard that immersion is going to do wonders. My wife is also here and she came a year and a half ago but she is still not fluent in German. We both understand a lot of things but we make mistakes when we speak and we have problems to “find the words” during conversation.

No one is forcing us to speak in German and we speak mostly English at home because we have a roommate from Netherlands.

What really bugs me is the pressure from language schools (where I had 28 classes with 20 people who can barely say anything normal or without a lot of mistakes) and my family. Somehow, everyone thinks that we should magically pick up phrases and start talking effortlessly and correctly only because we are in Germany. (…)

The thing is, I don’t feel like rushing with my German language because I feel that speaking bad or slow and incorrect is not helping me. Everyone thinks that we should just start speaking and we will be fluent in no time. It sounds absolutely counter-intuitive to me.

Therefore I started using Mnemosyne to learn German through example sentences and I am listening to language whenever I can. I am trying to apply the philosophy of your site and All Japanese all the Time (AJATT). (…)

Could you give me some advice regarding my German? Am I doing the right thing in your opinion or maybe I should speak even if I feel that I am not ready?

If speaking or writing in German is difficult for you because you don’t know how to express your thoughts in German, your primary concern should be to learn how thoughts are expressed in German (i.e. German vocabulary and grammar). You don’t learn that by speaking or writing. In fact, when you’re speaking or writing, you’re not learning anything new about German. And few people realize there is a huge number of things to learn: thousands of word meanings, contexts where they can and cannot be used, pronunciations, hundreds of grammatical structures with their own usage rules, word forms, etc.

Of course, speaking or writing can teach you new things about German when it leads to input – for example, when someone answers you or corrects your mistake. But it is more straightforward to simply get input by reading and listening to German. From a practical standpoint, it’s easier to find reading or listening opportunities than speaking or writing opportunities. It is also probably more efficient (building sentences in a foreign language tends to take a long time, which slows down the learning process; input gives you more sentences faster).

However, the main reason why speaking too early is counterproductive is that it leads to mistakes (thus forming bad habits). There is little reason to speak with mistakes unless you want to get fluent in bad German. (more about mistakes)

When should you start speaking? Ultimately it is up to you to decide whether you feel “ready”. If you’re in doubt, here’s a good rule of thumb:

You should start speaking when you can say at least simple sentences with confidence and can carry on a conversation with few mistakes (I’d say 1 mistake in 3 sentences is the acceptable limit). If you make more mistakes than that, you should probably keep getting input and studying pronunciation.

I’m trying to use your method to better learn Spanish. I speak some Spanish having lived abroad for a couple years, but I can’t watch a movie, read a book, or participate in a conversation without getting lost very quickly. I have tried to start “getting input” – reading a book, watching a movie, or playing a videogame in Spanish, however it’s very difficult and confusing and like I said – I  get lost pretty quick. And this is with enough skill with the language that I can “get by” (ask questions, order food, etc.) in Spanish already.

I’m sure you’ve counseled people in the past who’ve started out with a language at the very beginning or at least earlier than me. What am I missing? Is it just patience to pore through movies and books and make whatever sense of them I can for much more time? Or is there some other method I should be supplementing at the very beginning (e.g. Pimsleur) until I am able to get through a movie & use a Spanish-Spanish dictionary?

There are three routes you can take when you’re starting to learn a language:

1. Regular content + patience + dictionaries. Diving headfirst into foreign-language content, even with a dictionary by your side, is a real challenge. As with any challenging activity, it can be very satisfying if you succeed, but also very frustrating if you get lost.
2. Simplified content + dictionaries. Simplified books (AKA graded readers) can teach you basic vocabulary and grammar quickly in a fun way. Some may be available in audio form as well. You may also want to look into podcasts for beginners. (More advice on simplified books)
3. SRS/flashcards. Learn 1,000 most common words and basic grammatical patterns using an SRS (Anki, SuperMemo, etc.) or regular paper flashcards. The goal of this is to get you reading regular books (or at least advanced graded readers) and listening to real Spanish as quickly as possible. This method can give you a head start, but learning vocabulary and grammar without any meaningful context can get a bit tedious and requires a fair bit of persistence. Obviously, you also need good resources to study from, which can be hard to find, depending on the language.

Personally, I would go with (2) in most situations.

(1) I find intellectually stimulating, but inefficient.

(3) is efficient, but I always prefer to learn vocabulary in context, in a more “organic” way. I’d choose this method if I was under time pressure (for example, if I had to acquire a working knowledge of Spanish in 3 months) and I had access to a good SRS collection or flashcard deck – or at least a list of most common words, a basic grammar book, and a good learner’s dictionary (then maybe I’d make an SRS collection myself out of the examples in the grammar book and the dictionary). Note: if I was making my own collection, I wouldn’t spend too much time on each item – as these would be basic items, I’d probably stop reviewing them in a few months anyway. In other words, I’d use the collection as a sort of scaffolding.

One more thing: it’s entirely okay to start with bilingual dictionaries. You can move on to monolingual dictionaries when you feel ready. If you then find you’re getting confused by a monolingual dictionary, you can go back to a bilingual one. It all depends on the dictionaries and your personality. Don’t work against your brain just to follow a method!