Practice

Storing information in our brain long-term is really expensive for our body. That’s why the brain tries desperately to forget as much information as it can by pruning everything it thinks is useless.

But if we want to retain words long-term and use them, we need to trick it into thinking those words are important. How do we do this? We do it by reviewing words multiple times over a longer time period. When your brain sees a thing often enough, it “marks” it as important and moves it to your long-term memory.

Obstino, like many other apps that exercise memory, uses spaced repetition to review words you need to remember.

The difference with Obstino is what you review. Normally when you learn words, you review definitions. We already established that definitions on their own don’t help you learn words and retain that well. That’s why in Obstino you review context and example sentences that use the word.

Go to the Review tab to review words in Obstino:

This is where you find a list of all your words to review for today. This is how you review each word:

Read the example sentence — you’ll be shown one example from your example’s list for that word.
Think about what does the word mean — briefly think of the meaning of the word in this context.
Check the definition (optional) — if you don’t know the word’s definition, you can just tap on the blurred text to reveal the definition and/or translation.
See more examples (optional) — if you would like to see more example sentences of the word, just tap on the ‘Show All Examples’ button.
Write a new example (optional) — you don’t have to do this for each word, but for some it’s useful to write a new example.

You should review your words in the Review tab every day. Have fun!

Summary

We’ve covered an entire cycle of how learning words with Obstino works. Here’s the final list of things to do:

Find in-context words.
Add them to Obstino together with its context.
Find more context for the word (we do this continually for some period of time).
Practice words by reviewing their context.

If anything in this handbook seems confusing, don’t hesitate to contact us!