How Boostabulary works
Turn any English material into Cambridge-style practice, then keep the words from slipping away.
Put it on your phone
Boostabulary works as an app on your phone.
No app store, no download — your browser puts an icon on your home screen and it opens full-screen, without the address bar.
- Open the site in Safari and tap the Share button — at the bottom of the screen on iPhone, at the top on iPad.
- Scroll down and tap Add to Home Screen
- Tap Add in the top right.
Safari is the surest route. Chrome and other browsers on iPhone can do this too on recent versions of iOS, but the wording of the menu differs — if you cannot find it, switch to Safari.
- In Chrome, tap the three dots in the top right.
- Tap Install app, or Add to Home screen if you do not see it.
- Confirm with Install.
Chrome sometimes offers this by itself in a bar at the bottom — that works too.
You stay signed in, so the app opens straight on the create screen. To remove it, press and hold the icon and delete it like any other app.
Making material
What you get
| Exercise | Modelled on | What it practises |
|---|---|---|
| Vocabulary list | — | Definition, part of speech, example sentence and CEFR level for each item |
| Multiple choice | Reading & Use of English, Part 1 | Choosing between near-synonyms; every wrong option is explained, not just the right one |
| Word formation | Reading & Use of English, Part 3 | Building the right derived form — prefixes, suffixes, change of word class |
| Matching | — | Word to meaning, in rounds. Built instantly and available in every mode |
Everything is generated fresh each time, so the same text will not give you the same worksheet twice.
The vocabulary bank
Generating a worksheet solves today's lesson. The bank solves the harder problem: words met once and never seen again are words lost. After each generation you tick the items worth keeping, and they go into your bank.
From then on the bank decides when to show each word back to you, using a method called the Leitner system.
The five boxes
Picture five boxes on a shelf. Every new word starts in box 1. Each box has its own waiting time before that word comes back to you:
How a word moves
- You recall it — the word moves one box to the right, so you will not see it again for longer.
- You do not recall it — the word goes straight back to box 1 and returns tomorrow, however far it had climbed.
A word that reaches box 5 counts as mastered. Getting there takes 4 correct recalls spread over about 4 weeks — which is the point: remembering something four times across a month is very different from recognising it four times in one afternoon. After box 5 the word comes back every 30 days, so mastered does not mean forgotten about.
Why spacing beats repetition
Reviewing a word five times in one sitting feels productive and does almost nothing: each repetition is easy because the answer is still fresh, and easy recall builds little. Spacing forces you to retrieve the word when it has begun to fade — the effort of that retrieval is what strengthens the memory. The growing intervals are deliberately set just short of the point where you would lose the word entirely.
This is the same principle behind Anki and similar tools, kept to five fixed boxes rather than an adaptive algorithm — simpler to follow, and easy to explain to a class.
Reviewing
Open the bank and you will see how many words are due. In a review you are shown a definition and asked to recall the word — the harder direction, and the one that builds active vocabulary rather than passive recognition. Turn the card over for the word and an example sentence, then say honestly whether you knew it.
Be strict with yourself. "I sort of knew it" is a no — the system only works if the boxes reflect what you can actually retrieve.
Reading the progress bars
The bars on the bank page show how many words sit in each box. Early on everything piles up on the left; over weeks the mass drifts right. A word dropping back to box 1 is not a failure — it is the system catching something before it was lost for good.
Generations and limits
One generation is one run of the material maker, whichever input you use. The trial gives you 7 over 3 days; a subscription gives you 50 in each 30-day period, counted from the day you paid rather than from the first of the month.
- Adding exercises after a vocabulary-only run does not cost a second generation.
- If a generation fails, it is not counted against you.
- Reviewing, matching practice and everything else in the bank are unlimited and always free.