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How Lingom works

Learning science behind every feature · Updated August 6, 2026

Lingom is built around one question: out of the thousands of words in a language, which ones are worth your time right now, and how do you make them stick?

Every feature in Lingom exists to answer part of that question. We rank words by how often they actually get used, so you spend your first hours on words that pay off immediately instead of rare ones you might never see again. We let you skip words you already know, so review time goes to words you don't. We schedule review at increasing intervals instead of leaving it to memory or guesswork, and we ask you to meet each word more than once, in more than one way: reading it, hearing it, saying it, writing it, and using it in context.

None of this is unique to Lingom. It is drawn from decades of published research on vocabulary acquisition and memory, and on every feature section below we link directly to that research so you can judge it yourself. We are honest about the difference between "this design choice reflects a well-replicated finding" and "this feature has been clinically trialled." It is the former. We have not run controlled trials of Lingom itself, and we are not claiming to. What we can promise is that our defaults (word order, review intervals, practice formats) are not arbitrary: they map to specific, citable findings, and we would rather you read the original papers than take our word for it.

Frequency-ordered vocabulary

What it does in Lingom

Lingom does not present words alphabetically or by topic first. It orders vocabulary by frequency and usefulness, so the words you meet earliest are the ones that appear most often in real English. Roughly the first 3,000–4,000 words in that ordering are the highest-leverage words in the language: learning them gives you a working grasp of everyday spoken and written English before you ever touch a rare or specialized word.

Why it matters

Vocabulary size and text coverage do not scale linearly. A small number of very common words accounts for the large majority of what you will actually hear and read, while thousands of additional words each add only a fraction of a percent of coverage. Spending early study time on high-frequency words maximizes the return on every minute you put in.

How it helps you learn

By front-loading frequency, Lingom makes sure that words you learn today are words you are likely to encounter again tomorrow, in a podcast, a conversation, or a news article. That real-world repetition reinforces what you studied without any extra effort, and it means early progress in Lingom translates almost immediately into being able to follow more everyday English.

Research

  • Multiple corpus studies of spoken and conversational English independently converge on the same figure: the most frequent 3,000–4,000 word families cover about 95% of everyday spoken language. Lexical coverage review (ERIC PDF)
  • Paul Nation's foundational analysis of British National Corpus word-family lists found that reaching high comprehension of written and spoken English requires knowing several thousand word families, with the most frequent families contributing disproportionately more coverage than any equivalent-sized set of rarer words. Nation, 2006
  • A large multinational study found a steady, close-to-linear relationship between the percentage of vocabulary a reader knows in a text and how well they comprehend it, meaning every additional high-frequency word you learn produces a measurable comprehension gain. Schmitt, Jiang & Grabe, 2011
  • Lingom's word ordering draws on the same frequency-list methodology (BNC/COCA word families) published and maintained for public use by vocabulary researcher Paul Nation. Nation vocabulary lists

Swipe triage

What it does in Lingom

Before a word enters your review schedule, Lingom asks you to sort it. Swipe left if you already know the word: it is marked as known (box 0) and taken out of active review. Swipe right if you want to learn it: it enters box 1 and joins your spaced repetition schedule.

Why it matters

Study time is limited, and the biggest waste of it is re-studying something you have already mastered. Triage exists so that your review sessions are made up entirely of words that actually need attention, not padded out with words you knew before you opened the app.

How it helps you learn

By removing already-known words up front, swipe triage keeps every subsequent review session dense with useful practice instead of filler. It also puts a small decision in your hands at first contact with each word, which research suggests is itself a more active, more memorable moment than simply being shown a word passively.

Research

  • A controlled study found that once a learner could correctly produce a vocabulary word, continuing to restudy it produced no additional benefit for long-term recall, while continuing to test it did, which is the same logic behind removing known words from the active review pool rather than re-teaching them. Karpicke & Roediger, 2008
  • Learning is often more durable when material is at least somewhat effortful to process, a principle researchers call "desirable difficulty." Spending review time on words you don't know rather than words you already know keeps difficulty calibrated to where learning actually happens. Bjork & Bjork, 2011
  • Research on study-time allocation shows that learners benefit from choosing not to study items they judge as already known, focusing effort instead on the region just beyond current mastery. Triage operationalizes that first choice explicitly instead of leaving it to chance. Metcalfe & Kornell, 2005

Collections and sets

What it does in Lingom

Instead of presenting the entire vocabulary list as one undifferentiated mass, Lingom groups words into collections and sets: manageable chunks you can pick up, finish, and move on from, organized around frequency level and theme. You can pin collections to your home screen and track progress per set.

Why it matters

An open-ended, uncapped list is discouraging and hard to plan around. A defined set with a visible end gives you an achievable unit of study and a natural point to review before moving forward, which keeps sessions focused instead of sprawling.

How it helps you learn

Working through bounded sets encourages you to space your study of a given group of words across more than one sitting rather than cramming it into a single pass, and it gives Lingom's spaced repetition system a clean unit to schedule review around.

Research

  • A flashcard study found that studying material in a way that increases spacing between encounters, rather than massing everything into one dense block, produced significantly better long-term retention, which is the same principle behind studying manageable sets across sessions rather than one giant list in one sitting. Kornell, 2009
  • A large-scale meta-analysis of over 300 experiments confirmed that distributing study across sessions consistently outperforms massed study for verbal recall, supporting the value of returning to a set over multiple sessions instead of exhausting it in one. Cepeda et al., 2006
  • Nation's frequency-based word-family lists, the same methodology behind Lingom's ordering, are themselves published and used in defined tiers (for example, the first 1,000, 2,000, and 3,000 word families) rather than as a single undifferentiated list, reflecting the same logic of learning in bounded, sequenced chunks. Nation vocabulary lists

Native language support

What it does in Lingom

You can set a native language in your profile so word meanings and definitions can be shown with translations in that language. Support for understanding a new English word does not itself become a comprehension barrier while you are trying to learn.

Why it matters

For beginning and lower-intermediate learners in particular, requiring English-only explanations to learn English words adds a second layer of difficulty on top of the one you are actually trying to solve. Native-language meaning support removes that barrier so effort goes toward learning the word, not decoding the explanation of it.

How it helps you learn

With a native-language anchor available, you can confirm a word's meaning quickly and confidently, then spend your remaining attention on the word itself: its pronunciation, its spelling, and how it is used, rather than on parsing a definition written in the language you are still learning.

Research

  • A controlled study of second language vocabulary learning found that translation-based learning produced greater short-term retention gains than context-only learning, particularly for less proficient learners who often could not yet transfer context-based guesses into correct meanings. Prince, 1996
  • A study of beginning-level learners using computer-assisted language software found that access to native-language, sentence-level translations produced significantly greater short-term and long-term retention of word meanings compared to inferring meaning from context alone. Grace, 1998
  • A follow-up study confirmed the same retention advantage for learners with access to native-language translations regardless of gender, reinforcing that the benefit comes from the translation support itself rather than any particular learner group. Grace, 2000

Spaced repetition

What it does in Lingom

Every word you are actively learning sits in one of five Leitner-style boxes. A correct review moves a word from box 1 to box 2, then 3, 4, and 5, with review intervals of 1, 2, 4, 7, and 14 days respectively. Succeed at box 5 and the word is marked fully learned (box 10). Get a word wrong at any point and it resets back toward box 1, so it comes up for review again soon rather than being dropped. This is a fixed-interval Leitner-style schedule: Lingom does not currently use adaptive algorithms like SM-2 or FSRS that recalculate a per-item interval based on individual difficulty.

Why it matters

Left alone, memory of a newly learned word decays quickly, often within a day or two. Reviewing too soon wastes time on something you still remember; reviewing too late means you have already forgotten it and have to relearn it from scratch. A structured schedule times each review to land close to the point where forgetting would otherwise happen, which is when review does the most good.

How it helps you learn

Because intervals expand as a word survives more reviews, well-known words are reviewed less and less often, freeing up your time for words that still need reinforcement. Getting a word wrong sends it back to more frequent review, which matches effort to actual difficulty rather than treating every word identically.

Research

  • Hermann Ebbinghaus's original memory experiments established that forgetting is not linear: retention drops sharply in the first hours and days after learning and then levels off, which is the basic curve that spaced review schedules are designed to interrupt. Ebbinghaus, 1885/1913
  • A meta-analysis of 317 experiments on distributed practice found that spacing study sessions apart, rather than massing them together, reliably improves long-term retention, and that the ideal gap between study sessions grows as the desired retention period grows, which is the logic behind expanding review intervals. Cepeda et al., 2006
  • A widely cited paper from Duolingo's research team on spaced repetition modelling for language learning explicitly frames its work as an extension of the Leitner system, the same box-based, fixed-interval approach Lingom uses, and discusses why box-based scheduling remains a practical, easy-to-reason-about baseline for vocabulary review. Settles & Meeder, 2016

Review sessions

What it does in Lingom

When words in your boxes become due, Lingom bundles them into a review session: a short block of retrieval exercises covering whatever is due that day, rather than an open-ended, unstructured practice mode. Home and progress views show when review is ready, and the app nudges you to review before opening new words.

Why it matters

Actively trying to recall a word is a fundamentally different (and more effective) cognitive act than simply rereading it. Structuring review as retrieval attempts, rather than passive re-exposure, is what makes review sessions worth the time they take.

How it helps you learn

Each review session gives your memory a deliberate retrieval challenge at roughly the moment it is most useful, timed by the box schedule. Succeeding reinforces the memory trace and pushes the word further out; failing flags it for more frequent practice. Either outcome moves your overall vocabulary forward.

Research

  • Testing yourself on studied material produces substantially better long-term retention than an equivalent amount of additional restudying, even though restudying tends to feel more effective in the moment. Roediger & Karpicke, 2006
  • A flashcard-based study of real learners found that grouping material into a single larger review pool studied across sessions outperformed studying the same material in smaller, isolated chunks, supporting session-based review over ad hoc, unscheduled practice. Kornell, 2009
  • The benefits of retrieval-based review sessions are not limited to the exact material tested: repeated testing has been shown to improve transfer to new, related questions better than repeated studying does, meaning review sessions build usable knowledge, not just memorized answers. Butler, 2010

Review reminders

What it does in Lingom

When you have words due for review, Lingom can send you a reminder (push notification or a Telegram message, depending on your latest active device) prompting you to come back and complete that session.

Why it matters

A spaced repetition schedule only works if reviews actually happen close to when they're due. Without a prompt, it is easy to let a due review slip by a day or a week, at which point the timing advantage of spacing is lost and the word may need to be relearned rather than simply refreshed.

How it helps you learn

A reminder acts as an external cue tied directly to a specific, small action: open the app, review what's due. That kind of concrete, situational trigger is more reliable at prompting follow-through than relying on memory or general intention alone, and it keeps your actual review timing close to the schedule your boxes were designed around.

Research

  • Linking a clear situational cue to a specific intended action ("when X happens, I will do Y") reliably increases the rate at which people follow through on that action, compared to simply intending to do it. A due-review notification functions as exactly this kind of cue. Gollwitzer, 1999
  • A field study of real-world habit formation found that repeating a behavior in a consistent context builds automatic follow-through over time, but also that the process takes many repetitions and is fragile without consistent cues, underscoring why an external prompt matters especially early on. Lally et al., 2010
  • The value of a reminder is inseparable from the value of spacing itself: research on distributed practice shows that the timing of a review, not just its eventual occurrence, determines how much it helps retention, which is why a reminder is timed to when a word is actually due rather than sent at arbitrary intervals. Cepeda et al., 2006

Definition study

What it does in Lingom

Each word's study card presents its definition, part of speech, an image, US and UK phonetic spellings, and audio pronunciation together, rather than definition text alone.

Why it matters

A word is not really one piece of information: its meaning, its sound, its grammatical role, and a visual association are all separate mental handles you can use to recall it later. Presenting them together gives you more than one route back to the word when you need to remember it.

How it helps you learn

Pairing an image with the text engages a different mental channel than reading alone, so you end up with two connected memory traces instead of one. Hearing the audio while seeing the spelling links how the word looks to how it sounds, which particularly matters in English, where spelling and pronunciation frequently diverge.

Research

  • Dual coding theory holds that verbal and visual information are processed through separate but connected mental systems, and that material encoded both ways is remembered better than material encoded through only one channel, which is the basis for pairing an image with every word's definition. Clark & Paivio, 1991
  • Multimedia learning research shows that combining relevant images with corresponding words or narration, when done without unnecessary extra elements, measurably improves learning outcomes compared to text or narration alone. Mayer & Moreno, 2003
  • Working memory contains a phonological loop specialized for holding new sound patterns while more permanent word memories are being built, and research shows this loop plays a crucial, specific role in learning the pronunciation of new words, which is why audio and phonetic spelling are included alongside every definition. Baddeley, Gathercole & Papagno, 1998

Example sentences

What it does in Lingom

Alongside its definition, each word appears in one or more example sentences that show it used the way it would actually be used in real English. Premium unlocks more examples and example voices (TTS).

Why it matters

Knowing a dictionary definition is not the same as knowing how to actually use a word. Meaning and usage are often clearest in context: which prepositions a verb takes, whether a noun is countable, what tone a word carries.

How it helps you learn

Seeing a word inside a real sentence gives you a second, richer encounter with it beyond the isolated definition, and multiple such encounters across different contexts are one of the most consistently documented ways vocabulary knowledge deepens over time.

Research

  • A controlled study of vocabulary acquisition found that each additional encounter with a word in context produced measurable gains in multiple types of word knowledge, including form, meaning, and grammatical use, with meaningful learning occurring by around ten encounters. Webb, 2007
  • Research on second language input consistently finds that meaningful exposure to words in comprehensible context is one of the primary ways vocabulary is acquired, independent of any explicit study of definitions. Krashen, 1989
  • Guidelines for vocabulary learning through reading emphasize that encountering a word repeatedly across varied, meaningful contexts, not just once in isolation, is what drives durable vocabulary gains from any reading-adjacent activity. Nation, 2015

Pronunciation practice

What it does in Lingom

You can hold to speak and get feedback on your pronunciation, matching what you said against the target word and acceptable variants (on-device speech recognition and/or server transcription, depending on platform). Pronunciation practice is available as a Premium feature.

Why it matters

Vocabulary you can only recognize on a page is of limited use in a real conversation. Being able to actually produce a word's sound correctly is a separate skill from recognizing its spelling or meaning, and it is one that silent, text-only study does not build.

How it helps you learn

Producing a word out loud forces you to actively retrieve and generate it rather than passively recognize it, which is a more demanding and more memorable mental act. It also strengthens the specific memory of how the word sounds, which supports both listening comprehension and speaking later on.

Research

  • Working memory's phonological loop is theorized to have evolved specifically to support learning the novel sound patterns of new words, and evidence across normal learners, children, and clinical populations shows this subsystem plays a crucial role in acquiring new vocabulary. Baddeley, Gathercole & Papagno, 1998
  • Producing information yourself, rather than simply reading it, reliably produces better memory for that information than passive exposure does, a well-replicated effect known as the generation effect. Saying a word aloud is a form of generation. Slamecka & Graf, 1978
  • Dual coding research shows that engaging both verbal and non-verbal (in this case, motor and auditory) systems around the same piece of information strengthens the associative network supporting recall, compared to engaging only one system. Clark & Paivio, 1991

Writing and spelling

What it does in Lingom

For each word, you reconstruct its spelling by arranging scrambled letter tiles into the correct order, rather than typing freely or selecting from multiple-choice options.

Why it matters

Recognizing a correctly spelled word when you see it is a much easier task than producing that spelling yourself from memory, and it is a much weaker test of whether you actually know the word.

How it helps you learn

Arranging tiles into the right order requires you to actively generate the sequence of letters rather than simply confirm one, which is a more demanding retrieval task and, according to research, a more effective one for building durable memory of exactly how a word is spelled.

Research

  • Generating an answer yourself produces significantly better memory for it than being shown the same answer to read, an effect that has held up across a wide range of recall and recognition tests. Reconstructing a word's spelling from scrambled letters is a generation task in this sense. Slamecka & Graf, 1978
  • A controlled vocabulary study specifically measured orthographic (spelling) knowledge as one of its outcomes and found it improved with each additional active encounter with a word, supporting repeated, effortful spelling practice rather than a single pass. Webb, 2007
  • Research on vocabulary acquisition through reading argues explicitly that spelling knowledge, like vocabulary knowledge, is built up through repeated, active encounters with the written form of a word rather than through explicit rules alone. Krashen, 1989

Personalized stories

What it does in Lingom

Lingom generates short stories that weave in words you are learning (preferring tricky, in-progress, and known words). You can tap highlighted words for meaning. Free users get limited stories; Premium unlocks daily stories and a longer history.

Why it matters

A word learned only in isolation is easy to forget and hard to use naturally. Seeing it embedded in a coherent narrative, alongside other words you're also learning, gives you a more realistic sense of how it fits into real sentences and real meaning.

How it helps you learn

Reading a story built from your own target words provides multiple, varied encounters with each word in a single sitting, in different sentence positions and combinations, which research on vocabulary learning through reading consistently associates with stronger retention than isolated repetition alone.

Research

  • Guidelines for vocabulary learning through extensive reading emphasize that meaningful, connected input at a comprehensible difficulty level, with words recurring across the text, is one of the most reliable conditions for vocabulary gains from reading. Nation, 2015
  • Research on the input hypothesis argues that vocabulary and spelling are substantially acquired through exposure to comprehensible, connected text, providing evidence that reading personalized, comprehensible content supports vocabulary development beyond explicit study alone. Krashen, 1989
  • A controlled study found that vocabulary knowledge improves with repeated encounters with a word across contexts, which a personalized story naturally provides by re-using target words across multiple sentences within one connected passage. Webb, 2007

Chat with Lingom

What it does in Lingom

You can have a back-and-forth conversation with Lingom's AI chat partner in simple English. It weaves in words you are learning and offers soft corrections. Daily message limits apply (higher with Premium).

Why it matters

Vocabulary that only appears in flashcards rarely transfers smoothly to actual conversation. Practicing a word inside a live, responsive exchange, where you have to understand it and then produce a reply, is closer to the real skill you're ultimately building toward.

How it helps you learn

A conversation forces active comprehension and active production in the same exchange, rather than either one alone, and it exposes you to natural variation in how a word can be phrased or responded to, which static content cannot replicate.

Research

  • The Interaction Hypothesis proposes that conversational exchange, particularly negotiating meaning when something isn't immediately understood, is a mechanism that makes input more comprehensible and supports language acquisition beyond passive exposure. Long, 1981
  • Retrieval practice benefits extend to producing knowledge in new contexts and formats, not just the exact wording originally studied, supporting the idea that using a word inside a live conversation, not just a matching exercise, deepens learning. Butler, 2010
  • Actively generating a response yourself, such as replying in a conversation, has been shown to produce better memory for that material than simply reading equivalent content. Slamecka & Graf, 1978

Quizzes: Beat Mavish

What it does in Lingom

In Beat Mavish, you answer multiple-choice questions about your own vocabulary (definition to word, or fill-in-the-blank) while competing against the mascot Mavish. You need enough known or learning words to play, and correct answers earn XP.

Why it matters

A quiz is, at its core, a retrieval test, and retrieval tests are one of the most effective tools for strengthening memory, more effective than an equivalent amount of extra studying. Framing that retrieval as a race against an opponent adds a reason to engage with it repeatedly.

How it helps you learn

Every question you answer in Beat Mavish is an act of active recall under mild time pressure, which is a more demanding and more memory-strengthening task than simply rereading the same words. The competitive framing also encourages you to return to the vocabulary you've already studied instead of only ever meeting words once.

Research

  • Taking a memory test on material, rather than simply restudying it, produces substantially better long-term retention, an effect that holds even though restudying often feels more effective at the time. Roediger & Karpicke, 2006
  • Repeated testing has been shown to produce a large positive effect on long-term recall compared to repeated studying of the same already-learned material, directly supporting quizzing as a review method rather than rereading. Karpicke & Roediger, 2008
  • The benefits of quiz-based retrieval practice extend to new, related questions, not just the exact items originally tested, meaning quizzing builds more flexible, transferable knowledge than restudying does. Butler, 2010

Friend quiz

What it does in Lingom

You can challenge a mutual friend to a live vocabulary duel on overlapping words you both know or are learning, then compare results head-to-head.

Why it matters

A quiz against a friend combines the memory benefits of retrieval practice with a social reason to keep coming back to it. People also naturally evaluate their own performance by comparing it to others, and a friend quiz gives that comparison a direct, personal reference point.

How it helps you learn

Answering quiz questions is still active retrieval practice, with the same memory benefits as any other quiz, but pairing it with a friend adds accountability and a reason to return to previously learned material rather than only ever moving forward to new words.

Research

  • Taking a test on studied material, rather than simply restudying it, produces substantially better long-term retention, the same underlying mechanism at work in any quiz format including a friend quiz. Roediger & Karpicke, 2006
  • Foundational social psychology research established that people have a built-in drive to evaluate their own abilities by comparing themselves to others, particularly others similar to themselves, which is the mechanism a head-to-head friend quiz draws on. Festinger, 1954
  • A review of empirical gamification research found that competitive and social elements in learning tools generally produce positive motivational effects, though the size of the effect depends on context and the individual user. Hamari, Koivisto & Sarsa, 2014

Progress overview

What it does in Lingom

Lingom shows you a dashboard of your own learning: words due for review, known, in progress, fully learned, and scheduled, plus your streak calendar and entry points to reviews and tricky words.

Why it matters

Learners are often poor judges of how well they've actually learned something, tending toward overconfidence that leads them to stop studying too early. A concrete, external view of your actual progress, rather than your gut sense of it, is a more reliable guide to what still needs work.

How it helps you learn

Seeing exactly how many words sit in each stage of the review schedule gives you an honest picture that can correct overconfidence, and a visible trajectory over time is itself a source of motivation to continue, distinct from the motivation created by any single session.

Research

  • A pair of controlled studies found that students who were more accurate in judging their own learning achieved significantly better long-term retention, while overconfident self-evaluation was directly linked to worse outcomes because it led to stopping study too early. Dunlosky & Rawson, 2012
  • Research on study-time allocation shows that learners rely on their own judgments of what they've learned to decide what to keep studying, meaning inaccurate self-assessment can directly misdirect further study effort unless learners have an external check on where they actually stand. Metcalfe & Kornell, 2005
  • Research on desirable difficulties notes that learners are frequently misled by their own subjective sense of fluency during study into believing they know material better than they do, underscoring the value of an objective, external record of progress. Bjork & Bjork, 2011

Tricky words

What it does in Lingom

Words that need extra practice relative to their current box (words where repeats outpace progress) are surfaced in a dedicated tricky words list so you can give them focused attention. This is a Premium feature.

Why it matters

Not every word is equally hard for every learner, and a handful of stubborn words can quietly account for a disproportionate share of your mistakes if they're left mixed in with everything else. Isolating them turns a vague sense of "some words are hard" into an actionable, specific list.

How it helps you learn

Concentrating extra practice on words that are demonstrably at the edge of your current knowledge, rather than spreading effort evenly across everything, is a more efficient use of study time and directly targets your actual weak points instead of your strengths.

Research

  • Research on study-time allocation shows that the most productive place for a learner to focus effort is the "region of proximal learning": items that are almost, but not quite, known, which is exactly the population of words that repeatedly fail their reviews. Metcalfe & Kornell, 2005
  • A controlled experiment found that continued retrieval practice specifically on items not yet fully learned produced a large positive effect on long-term recall, supporting focused, repeated retrieval attempts on a word's hardest, unresolved cases rather than broad review. Karpicke & Roediger, 2008
  • Learners' own sense of how well they know something is often inaccurate, and less accurate self-evaluation is linked to worse retention, which is why surfacing objectively difficult words (based on actual review failures, not self-report) provides a more reliable target for extra practice. Dunlosky & Rawson, 2012

Daily streaks and streak freeze

What it does in Lingom

Lingom counts your consecutive days of study activity as a streak (timezone-aware). If you're going to miss a day, you can spend a streak freeze (bought with Lings) to protect it rather than losing your count. Streak milestones can grant XP and Lings.

Why it matters

Vocabulary learning depends far more on consistent, repeated practice over time than on any single long session. A streak turns "study regularly" into a visible, trackable number, and a streak freeze offers a small buffer so one missed day doesn't undo the habit you've built.

How it helps you learn

A daily habit is what actually delivers the spaced review your vocabulary needs on schedule. The streak gives you a concrete reason to open the app on days you might otherwise skip, which, cumulatively, is what keeps your review schedule on track.

Research

  • A field study following real habit formation over 12 weeks found that consistent daily repetition in the same context is what builds an automatic habit over time, and that missing occasional opportunities did not necessarily derail the process, though consistency overall mattered most. This supports both the value of daily engagement and the safety net a streak freeze provides. Lally et al., 2010

XP

What it does in Lingom

Completing activities in Lingom (knowing or learning words, reviews, quizzes, stories, streak milestones, and related actions) earns you XP, a running point total that reflects your overall engagement with the app.

Why it matters

XP gives you immediate, visible feedback for effort that would otherwise be invisible day to day, translating the abstract idea of "studying consistently" into a concrete, growing number.

How it helps you learn

Because XP accrues from the same activities that actually build your vocabulary (reviews, quizzes, practice), chasing a higher XP total and doing more effective vocabulary practice point in the same direction, rather than pulling against each other.

Research

  • A review of empirical studies on gamification elements, including point systems like XP, found they generally produce positive motivational and behavioral effects, while noting that the size of the effect depends on the specific context and user. Hamari, Koivisto & Sarsa, 2014

Badges

What it does in Lingom

Reaching specific milestones (words learned, streaks, set completion, quiz wins, and similar achievements) unlocks badges you can view on your profile.

Why it matters

Long-term vocabulary learning is a slow accumulation with few dramatic moments along the way. Badges mark specific milestones as they happen, giving you concrete points of recognition inside what is otherwise a gradual process.

How it helps you learn

A badge tied to a real milestone, a certain number of words fully learned, for instance, reinforces the specific behaviors that earned it, encouraging you to keep doing the review and practice that got you there.

Research

  • A literature review of empirical gamification research found that achievement-based elements such as badges are among the most commonly studied gamification mechanics and are generally associated with positive effects on engagement, with effect size depending on context. Hamari, Koivisto & Sarsa, 2014

Rankings and leaderboard

What it does in Lingom

Lingom shows how your weekly XP compares to friends or the broader community on a leaderboard.

Why it matters

Seeing where you stand relative to others gives you an additional, external reference point for your own effort, on top of your personal progress overview, and for many learners that comparison is itself motivating.

How it helps you learn

A leaderboard doesn't teach vocabulary directly, but it encourages the consistent, repeated engagement (showing up, reviewing, practicing) that does. The more consistently you show up because of it, the more your actual vocabulary schedule stays on track.

Research

  • Foundational social psychology research established that people have an inherent drive to evaluate their own standing by comparing themselves to others, especially in the absence of an objective, non-social standard, which is the basic mechanism a leaderboard engages. Festinger, 1954
  • A review of gamification research found that competitive elements like leaderboards are commonly associated with positive engagement effects, though the review is careful to note these effects vary by context and by user. Hamari, Koivisto & Sarsa, 2014

Lings

What it does in Lingom

Lings are Lingom's in-app currency, earned through activity and spent on conveniences like a streak freeze. Lings are a reward mechanism, not a learning method: they don't teach vocabulary on their own. They support the habit features that keep you coming back to the vocabulary work that does.

Why it matters

Small, immediate rewards for effort help sustain a habit over the weeks and months it actually takes for vocabulary learning to compound into fluency.

Research

  • A review of empirical gamification studies found that reward and currency-style mechanics are common components of gamified systems and are generally linked to positive engagement outcomes, with the caveat that effects depend heavily on context and individual users. Hamari, Koivisto & Sarsa, 2014

References