Word NotebookHow many new words a day should you learn?
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For most learners, three to twelve new words a day is realistic: about three or four with 10 minutes a day, seven or eight with 20 minutes, ten to twelve with 30. The right number isn't the most you can look up, but the most you can still review. Every new word brings several reviews with it, so your daily time decides your number.
The short answer
There's no magic number of new words a day. A better question is: how many words can you add today and still review all of them this week? Work backwards from the minutes you really have. If you're unsure, start with five a day for two weeks, then adjust.
New words create reviews
To keep a word, you'll review it several times: on the day you add it, a few days later and at the end of the week, plus whenever you get it wrong. So your review load grows for about a week and then levels off. If you add five words a day and review each one three times in its first week, then from the second week you're doing around fifteen reviews every day, on top of the five new words. The mistakes you make add a few more.
Our rough working figures, not research results: about 90 seconds to look up a word and write a short example sentence, and about 20 seconds to review it.
A table by daily minutes
Here's what those figures give for different amounts of daily time, once the reviews have built up (from week two onwards).
| Minutes a day | New words a day | Reviews a day | New words a week (5 study days) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 3–4 | about 10 | 15–20 |
| 15 | 5–6 | about 15–18 | 25–30 |
| 20 | 7–8 | about 21–24 | 35–40 |
| 30 | 10–12 | about 30–36 | 50–60 |
Two things stand out. First, reviews take up about a third of your daily time, so if you only budget for new words, you'll run out of time in week two. Second, small daily numbers add up: four words a day on five days a week is around 80 new words a month.
Three example learners
Priya, university student, learning Spanish. She has 20 minutes on weekdays. She adds seven words a day from her course reading: about 35 a week, with weekends free.
Daniel, commuter, learning German. He has 12 to 15 minutes on a crowded train. Writing sentences there is hard, so he adds four or five words in the evening and uses the train for reviews only.
Sophie, weekend learner, learning French. She has an hour on Saturday and Sunday but almost nothing in the week. The trap for her is adding 40 words on Saturday: that creates over 100 reviews she has no time for. Instead she adds ten words each weekend day and does a five-minute review on Wednesday evening.
When to lower your number
Lower your number of new words when reviewing starts to feel like a chore. Signs to watch for:
- Reviews take longer than new words, and you're starting to skip them.
- Your mistakes list keeps growing instead of shrinking.
- You recognise words but can't recall them when you cover the meaning.
- You've missed several days in a row.
Drop to three new words a day for a week and review everything, starting with your mistakes. Short sessions help: a daily session you actually start beats a long one you keep postponing. If you study on your phone, Word Notebook (Dil Defteri) has a daily reminder and a dark theme for late-evening reviews. For ways to make each review count, see nine methods to memorize vocabulary.
One more point about targets: the Council of Europe's CEFR defines its six levels, A1 to C2, through "can-do" descriptors, not word counts. Be wary of any plan that promises a level by a date if you learn a fixed number of words a day.
Frequently asked questions
Is 10 new words a day too many?
Ten new words a day is manageable if you have about 30 minutes a day, because those words bring around 30 reviews a day with them from the second week. With 10 or 15 minutes, ten is too many: you'll add them but won't keep up with the reviews. Choose fewer words and review them all.
Is it better to learn words every day or only at the weekend?
Every day is easier, because short sessions spread the reviews out. Weekend-only learning works too, but add fewer words than you'd like, since reviews pile up until the next weekend. A single five-minute review in the middle of the week makes a noticeable difference to what's left by Saturday.
Sources
- Council of Europe, The CEFR Levels: coe.int (checked 30 September 2026)
The times and example learners here are our own working estimates, not research figures. See how we write and check our posts.
Written by the small team behind Word Notebook (Dil Defteri). How we write these posts and where to report a mistake is on the About page.
This post in other languages: Español
