Turn a dreaded chore into a journey they love
Students turn the words they're learning into their own English stories — and read their way to vocabulary that sticks.
See a first story in 30 secondsSo many students hit the same wall — not for lack of effort. Rote memorization fights how their brains actually hold onto words.
Students aren't bad at remembering words. They just haven't found a story they can't put down.
No rote memorization required. The proof is in the thirty seconds it takes — try it with your students and see.
After all these years of vocabulary study, how much has actually stuck? It's not the student's fault — rote memorization works against the way the brain is built. Words learned in isolation stay scattered in the mind, which is exactly why they fade so fast. Live Vocabulary uses five evidence-backed techniques to make words come alive:
From the textbook or anything students have read; batches of 5–15 work best
Pick a topic, and the AI weaves the words into a story of the student's own
Then review the word breakdowns and self-tests to truly master them
Live Vocabulary is a vocabulary app, leveled reading, and a grammar course in one. Here's everything in the menu:
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Profile setup | Set grade, level, and interests — all content is tailored to the profile |
| Content generation | The core: multi-word stories, grammar example sentences, grammar analysis, and in-depth word breakdowns (below) |
| Word bank | Every word learned, with full breakdowns, saved permanently |
| Grammar bank | Grammar points picked up automatically from reading |
| Article library | Every generated story, ready to reread and review |
| Shared word bank | Browse word lists by topic, grade, or exam syllabus |
| Self-test practice | Seven question types to check mastery (see the four-step journey) |
Enter words, get a personalized story. The level of customization goes far beyond what you'd expect:
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Profile | Grade, level, and interests carry over automatically — difficulty and style fit the student's level and interests |
| Target words | The words being learned — woven naturally into the story, never forced in |
| Grammar mode | A grammar point to practice (past perfect / relative clauses / subjunctive) — grammar lives inside the story, not as isolated rules |
| Fine-tuning | Length, new-word density, difficulty, genre (narrative / dialogue / science) |
| Topic | Dinosaurs, football, space, school life, sci-fi, mystery — whatever the student likes |
| Extra requests | The student's own spin — "make it a mystery", "make the main character a girl", "give it a twist ending" |
Pick a grammar point, get natural example sentences that use it.
Break down the structure of any sentence or passage so students can see how each part works.
Syllables, roots, synonyms, look-alike words, personal example sentences, and an AI-generated memory image. Everything needed to understand a word completely.
Generic word lists? Gone. Someone else's classic novel? Set aside. Only the student's own story remains.
| The old way | Live Vocabulary |
|---|---|
| A fixed 3,000-word list forced on everyone | Students focus on the 20 words they actually get stuck on |
| One-size-fits-all content, no matter what students like | Custom articles — dinosaurs, football, space — the student picks the topic |
| Rote memorization that fades | Natural acquisition through reading, with context, plot, and emotion |
| Learn it today, forget it tomorrow | Word bank, article library, and grammar bank, saved permanently |
| Know a word in isolation, can't use it | In-depth breakdown, secondary meanings, and collocations — so students can actually use it |
Each student tells Live Vocabulary their grade, level, and interests. The more precise the input, the closer the story gets — a football fan gets a football story; a dinosaur fan gets a dinosaur adventure.
Add words (5–15 recommended) → pick a topic → set grammar mode, fine-tuning, and extra requests → generate. Not happy? Regenerate as many times as needed — every version is a brand-new story.
First pass — skim and guess: no translations; use context to guess. This builds the lifelong skill of guessing meaning from context
Second pass — close reading, sentence by sentence: English next to Chinese, checking guesses and understanding each word's precise meaning in context
Third pass — independent reading: read without translations; tap a highlighted word if stuck, and keep going until it reads smoothly. Read it through, and those words are theirs
| Scaffold | How it helps |
|---|---|
| Target-word highlighting | New words are highlighted in the article; tap one for its full breakdown (syllables / roots / synonyms / example sentences / image) |
| Tap any word for a definition | Select any word for an instant dictionary meaning — not just the target words, so students are never stuck on an unfamiliar word |
| Sentence-by-sentence translation | Full sentence-level translation, side by side, to compare and reinforce — understand every sentence to read the whole passage |
After reading, students run the self-test — seven question types that check mastery:
| Question type | What it builds |
|---|---|
| Spelling | Spell from pronunciation and from meaning — builds spelling skills |
| Meaning matching | Match words to definitions — builds meaning recognition |
| Cloze (fill in context) | Fill words into sentences and passages — builds usage |
| Contrast & discriminate | Easily confused and look-alike words (affect / effect, rise / raise) |
| Mixed review | A mix of English–Chinese and other question types |
| Discrimination drills | Tell easily confused items apart and strengthen recall |
| FSRS review | Smart spaced repetition based on the forgetting curve — revisit a word just before it would be forgotten |
The system automatically flags which words need another pass. Open the word bank. Each word's page contains:
Everything a student has learned, read, and needs to review — all in one place, saved permanently, unlimited capacity.
Every article, searchable by time, topic, or word; reread to review and track progress
Every word with its full breakdown, filterable by mastery level, with a tap-through to the full page
The grammar points that actually appeared in the articles students read, with original example sentences — grammar stops being abstract and becomes sentences they've read themselves
Your students' growth, fully visible:
How many words learned, how many articles written, what they're learning now
Vocabulary change at a glance — when forgetting slows down, that's real progress
Celebrations at 100, 500, and 1,000 words
Read a student's generated story together
The AI writes stories at a native-speaker level, not machine-translated English; the Chinese definitions and translations are native-level too. Every new word is used in its correct dictionary sense and its exam sense, and every sentence passes grammar checks — everything students read is natural and correct.
Every piece of generated content passes multiple automated safety gates — input filtering, generation-time detection, and a final output check — so students only see content that is safe, appropriate, and age-suitable. Fully automated, real-time, with no blind spots.
Live Vocabulary covers the full span from primary school to GRE, but story difficulty, word-bank focus, and review pacing all adapt to each level — a primary-schooler and a postgraduate candidate never get the same thing.
| Level | Focus |
|---|---|
| Primary | Short, vivid stories, 3–5 new words each, emphasizing phonics and pronunciation |
| Middle / High school | Curriculum-aligned topics, with secondary meanings and collocations flagged; grounded in core word lists like the Oxford 3000 |
| University and exam prep | Academic contexts, roots and affixes, synonym substitution; aligned to TOEFL and IELTS word lists |
| Advanced (GRE) | Short academic passages, root analysis, synonym discrimination; aligned to GRE core vocabulary |
| Live Vocabulary | Details |
|---|---|
| Compared to tutoring | A single tutoring lesson costs hundreds of yuan. Live Vocabulary costs a few dozen yuan — unlimited words, unlimited articles, and continually updated |
| The simple version | A few dozen yuan, thousands of words, benefits that last |
What you're buying isn't a fixed vocabulary book — it's an AI teacher that keeps adapting to each student. Every article, breakdown, and example sentence is generated for one student at a time, and the product keeps improving.
Students type in three of their new words and get a first personalized story in 30 seconds — free once they sign up.
Start generating a first story