I didn't learn English from drills. I learned it from reading.

I started English in first grade. Twenty years later I still could not hold a normal conversation.

I knew rules. I could pass a test if I had time. I could not understand someone talking at full speed, and I could not answer without translating in my head first. The words lived in a vacuum — flashcards, homework, the next unit. Not in life.

What actually broke through was reading. Slow, annoying reading at first: a book on one side, a dictionary on the other, looking up every third word. Then work forced me to read English every day — articles, long posts, technical stuff I actually needed. Within a year I was not only reading. I was thinking in English. Speaking came after that, almost as a side effect.

Years later I moved to a Spanish-speaking country. I did not have twenty years. I looked for a tool that gave me the same thing reading had given me: real language, real context, the words I cared about, at my level. Most apps wanted me to protect a streak or clear another lesson. So I built LinguaLex.

What drills are good at (and what they miss)

Drills are fine for short-term recognition. You “know” a word on a card, then freeze when it shows up mid-sentence. There is no scene to attach it to. No reason to finish the next line except the app telling you to.

Reading is different because you want the next sentence. Grammar rides along. Memory gets a place, not a blank face.

The cost is speed. Looking everything up is slow. The fix is not more drills. It is text at the right level, built around the words you already chose to learn.

How dual-language stories help

In LinguaLex you save words from anywhere. Each day you get a short dual-language story — about three to five minutes — woven from your list. Target language first, your language underneath when you need it. No highlight circus. No “type this conjugation” interrupt.

Telegram is one way in. The web is another. The product is the reading, not the platform.

I am not saying you never need to talk to people. You do. I am saying the foundation that finally worked for me was reading with context — and I wanted that without turning language into homework again.

If you want to try it

LinguaLex is invite-only pre-alpha. Free and paid tiers are listed on the homepage. Or start with the longer version of this story on the manifesto.

And if you only take one thing: pick ten words you actually care about, put them in a short text you want to finish, and read that tomorrow. That loop is the whole idea.