Intro

This handbook explains how to learn vocabulary quickly and reliably by using Obstino. It is for anyone who is learning a foreign language, or who wants to improve their vocabulary in their native language.

Whichever method you use to learn a language, be it with a teacher, following a language book, learning via an app, doing online courses or watching YouTube videos, having a good strategy for learning words can significantly boost your understanding of the language.

We’ll cover the following:

Strategy — overview of an approach to learning words.
Choosing words to learn — there’s only so many words we can learn in a day. Let’s choose words that make the biggest impact on our progress.
Adding words to Obstino — when we identify which words to learn, we add them to Obstino.
Using context to speed up learning — ordinary flashcards apps use only definitions to teach words. With Obstino you experience how context powerfully improves learning.
How to review words — here we reveal how to use context to review words.

Currently Obstino supports English and Spanish.

Who should read this

Learners of a foreign language and also anyone who wants to improve their vocabulary in their native language.

What is Obstino?

Obstino is an app for iPhone, iPad and Mac that helps you learn vocabulary. You can store and practice new words you encounter as you learn a language.

Obstino is NOT a full-fledged app for language learning. It works well with any other language learning method.

How is Obstino different?

The main difference between Obstino and other apps is that Obstino has been designed from the ground up to teach words through context.

Instead of reviewing definitions, you review example sentences of a word that convey real emotions, objects, or feelings. This makes it easier to remember and understand words.

Strategy

There are two ways to encounter new words in a language:

Out-of-context words — words are given to you without any context. This could be an app that serves you a random list of words. Or you could get them from a word frequency list.
In-context words — words that come with some context. Usually, they are part of a sentence and convey extra meaning

Learning words out-of-context is not effective for the human brain. We explain why in the context section, later.

That’s why Obstino’s learning strategy is based on in-context words. This simply means you find words that are in-context, before adding them to the Obstino library for study.

In practice, you add words you find in stories, articles, news sites, books, or conversations. You save the sentence in which the word appears and then you use that to study it. Additionally, the app provides ways to collect more example sentences, through which your understanding of the word increases.

Now the outline of strategy looks like this:

Find words in-context — notice words you want to learn when you read a book, an article, browse the web, or have a conversation.
Add a word to Obstino with context — now add a word to Obstino together with the sentence in which you found it.
Find more context — Obstino has three ways to add extra example sentences for a word you just added.
Practice — review examples using spaced repetition to learn words.

Learning words in Obstino boils down to:

Learning words = Context + Repetition

That’s the strategy, now let’s dive into details.