New to phrasing?

Phrasing works by creating expressions, and then extracting them. Extracting them can take a few minutes, so let’s get one running while you read this article.

In the nav bar, you’ll find a create option with a feather icon. Click on that to open the create modal, then enter in the text field:

:: write an advanced sentence in french and italian about my glorious coffee addiction

(replace the languages, level, and subject with ones relevant to you)

Then click autofill, watch it come to life, and click on extract. That’s it! Your first expression is now extracting.

Choose materials

Learning some AI sentences is fine, but doesn’t unlock the full power of Phrasing. For that, we’re going to need some materials.

Our recommendation if you already speak the language to an extent is to find native content in your target language. TV Series, podcasts, and audiobooks are the great places to start. You're going to tire faster from repeatedly consuming content, so having a longer form input will fit better with your level.

Note: If you aren't familiar with the content, and a translation exists in a language you understand (subtitles, dub, or translation) it's best to consume it once in a manner you understand. This will give your brain context to help remember the expressions better.

Find it on Phrasing

If it’s a movie or tv show, you can search for it. If it’s a book, podcast, song, poem, article etc, you can upload it.

When you are a beginner, we recommend choosing an episode/chapter you would be happy to read over and over. This is actually the more effective method in most cases, until you are at a high B2 level.

However, as your level increases, the repetition can get tedious (above 80-90% comprehension). If this is the case, you can start viewing entire seasons of a TV show at one, or uploading multiple chapters in a material. We're actively working on uploading full books, but that won't come until this summer.

Extracting materials

Remember how we extracted the expression before? It’s impractical to do that for every sentence in a material - but we can partially extract every sentence.

When we do this, we can then align the expression across the different languages.

Since the result looks a whole lot like a bunch of partially-extracted expressions, we call this whole process extracting as well.

Choose Expressions

Now the fun part comes in. You can see the materials as a bunch of expressions. You can highlight important words, sort by important words, and choose a couple expressions you’d like to learn.

in a few weeks, you’ll know everything about every one of these sentences. So what do you want to learn?

We recommend learning your favorite quotes, or sentences that use the important words. You can also use the recommendations to get a shortlist - which 12 expressions would unlock the most comprehension of the show, for you, based off of your review history.

If you've been using Phrasing for a while now, you can highlight words you don't know as well. Your recall of each word is taken into account when making recommendations.

Study often

Once you have some expression studied, it’s time to learn! We strongly encourage you to start with Clozeword, and use it as much as possible.

It will be tough at first, but as you do reviews, the algorithm will kick in! We’ve optimized our algorithm to be as addictive as possible. You can use it however often and however much you like.

Skip the boring items

Phrasing works by teaching you the most important words first, then teaching you the "basics" after that. This is by design for several reasons — but one of them is so that you can add any language, and no matter your level, immediately be studying words worth your time.

Read the chats

We do our best to walk the line between beginner-understandable and advanced-enlightning. You should be able to understand all the chats, and learn a bunch to! Feel free to ask the chat about anything you don't understand.

Think of the material

These aren’t just random sentences. Who said these lines? What are they talking about? What is this saying in the larger context?

You should know the story they’re coming from. Attach these sentences to that story in your head. Hear the speakers voice. Think of the reaction to this line, the implications. Give your brain some context to cling to, and these expressions will come to life in your mind.

Grade strictly

As you progress in a language, you should be more strict in your grading. You can be forgiving the first few times you see a new word, but you should advance quickly to a point where spelling a word wrong is marked as a fall failure.

Mnemonics

Coming up with mnemonics is a great way to remember new words. If you aren’t familiar with this practice, there is a “Meme” prompt that will generate some for you.

Each time you see the word, try to recall the mnemonic. If you don’t remember the mnemonic after seeing the word, then create a new one! Good mnemonics are the ones you can’t help but remember when seeing the word.

Explore

Click around on the expression, and explore the sentences! Show the inline information, see how they line up, read the chat for various words.

Use the “Walk through” prompt to get an overview.

Curiosity is a prerequisite for good learning. Sometimes you just do your reviews, and that’s fine! It’s beneficial in its own right. However, whenever you get curious to explore the sentence, then it’s encouraged!

Repeat out loud

Whenever you can, try to speak out loud. Say the words as you input them. Try to read the whole sentence (turn on the inline text if you can’t read the script). Play the word audio on repeat and try to speak in time with the audio.

Use the shadowing exercise, and try to repeat each word exactly as you hear it, immediately as you're hearing it. This means you will be saying the first word as you're hearing the second words, saying the second word as you're hearing the third, etc. Project your voice, speak with confidence, and really focus on your accent.

At some point, you may have several of the expressions memorized. You can say these in line with the audio (you don't have to shadow with a delay). This can be even more helpful in spotting where you don't line up with the TTS.

If a sentence is difficult, you can mark it as struggled (or forgot). You can also pause the activity, and play the word level audio, or play the sentence over and over until it comes easier.

Go back for more

As your comprehension of a language grows, your tolerance for repeatedly consuming content will diminish.

Therefore, you can have multiple different materials 'in progress'. Rotating between a couple pieces of content will make your progress feel faster, improve your retention, and keep things from feeling stale.

A good rule of thumb is one piece of content for every hour of study you do per week.

Phrasing's SRS will continue teaching you vocabulary from all your content.

Expect to do this for 2-6 months

If you’re just starting, you have a lot to learn. however if you stick with it for a couple months, you’ll learn enough to go enjoy the material.

From there, you can…

… binge your way to fluency!

Go find the book, movie, tv, etc and binge it!

If you’re watching a movie or tv show, you can use subtitles the first time - but do not repeatedly use the subtitles!

Watch, listen, or read the material at least three times—each time you will feel like you understand twice as much. There’s no such thing as too much. Each time you’re hearing things you understand, and understand the broader context, you are learning. Some people do this over 50 times!

Each time you watch it will, words you memorized will work their way into words you can understand with ease.

You now have three choices:

- keep rewatching (it’s a whole lot easier to binge something when you didn’t understand it the first time — especially if you keep understanding more and more)

- create expressions for what you didn't understand and study those

- choose a new piece of media (and keep studying this one, coming back to it later)

#### New to phrasing?

If this is your first time using Phrasing, let's extract an expression

#### Find materials

Use professionally edited materials - native content is ideal, but well published translated books are also good.

#### Create expressions

Highlight important words, sort by lexical importance

Recommendations will get more helpful as we learn what you know

#### Study

Grade strictly

Visualize the scene, story, what is happening

Focus on full sentences, deep connections

Phrasing will focus on the important words

#### Explore

Dig into grammar

#### Repeat out loud!

Full sentence!

#### Tackle the content

Until we work on the reader view (which is coming!) you can open the material as a companion app

2 options:

- Dig into words you don't know (intensive reading)

- Write down what you don't know and move on (extensive reading)

Create expressions from what you don't know

#### Add more materials