In Cotobara, "lessons" and "reviews" are two different things. A review is a word you already learned coming back on schedule. A lesson is meeting a word for the first time. This post is about lessons: what happens inside one, and how many you should be doing.
Which words you get, and in what order
You don't pick your words — Cotobara picks them, and the ordering is the whole point.
Candidates are ranked by a combination of JLPT level and real-world frequency. N5 words outrank N4 words, and common words outrank rare ones, so what you get next is roughly "the easiest useful word you don't know yet."
Importantly, that ordering is a priority, not a wall. A very common N4 word can arrive before a genuinely obscure N5 word, because in practice you will hear the common one first. You're not locked out of a level until you've cleared every last word beneath it — which is how learners end up grinding through vocabulary they will never actually meet.
Two settings shape the pool:
- Starting level — set it to N3 and Cotobara stops offering the easier stuff. Half-levels like N3.5 skip the most common half of the level below.
- Rare-word filter — raise it and vocabulary below your frequency threshold is left out entirely.
Both live in Settings, and neither disturbs words you've already started.
A lesson is five words
Lessons come in batches of five. That's small enough to hold in your head and finish in a few minutes, and large enough that the quiz at the end is a real test rather than a formality.
For each word you get a card showing the Japanese with furigana and a pronunciation button. Nothing else — you get a moment to guess before the answer appears.
Hit Reveal and the card opens up:
- The English meaning, plus the alternate meanings the grader will accept later.
- A frequency badge telling you how common the word actually is.
- The word breakdown — kanji components, how the parts combine, a mental model, usage notes (more on those here).
- A glossed example sentence with native audio, where you can hover any word for its reading and meaning.
- A bookmark toggle and an alternative meanings editor, if you want to add your own accepted answer up front.
A rail across the bottom lets you jump between the five words, with a checkmark on each one you've revealed. Arrow keys and Enter move you through without touching the mouse.
The quiz you have to pass
Once all five are revealed, the quiz unlocks. It's multiple choice, but it isn't the multiple choice you're expecting.
Wherever the word appears verbatim in its own example sentence, Cotobara masks it — ＿＿＿ — and asks you to fill the blank. You're choosing a word in context, not matching a Japanese string to an English one. Where a cloze question isn't possible, it falls back to a meaning question.
Two rules:
- Miss one and it goes to the back of the queue — you'll see it again before you're done.
- The quiz ends only when all five are correct. There is no partial pass.
The quiz deliberately does not autoplay audio. A question that pronounces its own answer isn't a test.
When you finish, the five words enter your SRS at the first stage and their first review lands four hours later. From there the schedule takes over. If you have allowance left, "Learn 5 more" starts the next batch.
Choosing your daily limit
This is the most consequential number in the app, and most people set it too high.
Every new word you learn today isn't a one-time cost — it's roughly a dozen reviews spread across the next year. Ten new words a day is a comfortable-feeling lesson session and, a few weeks later, a review queue that greets you with hundreds of cards every morning. That queue is where people quit.
Some rough guidance:
- 3–5 a day — the sustainable default, and what the free plan gives you. About 1,000–1,800 words a year, which is a genuine JLPT level or more.
- 10 a day — a good pace if you're studying seriously and have 20–30 minutes daily, every day, including bad days.
- 20+ a day — only worth it if you're pushing toward a fixed exam date and you have honestly checked that you can clear the reviews it generates.
The free plan caps you at 3 new words a day, with unlimited reviews. Premium goes up to 100. The cap is only ever on new words — your review queue is never rationed.
Let the app tell you when you're wrong about your pace
You don't have to guess. Cotobara's dashboard tracks your rolling seven-day accuracy and nudges you when your numbers say your pace is off:
- Consistently above 90%? You have headroom. It'll suggest raising your daily limit.
- Below 80%? You're outrunning your own retention, and it'll suggest lowering it — or drilling your recent mistakes first.
- Between 80 and 90% it says nothing, on purpose. That band is the sweet spot, and an app that nags you inside it is just noise.
The nudges only appear once you have enough reviews in the window to mean something. Accuracy is the honest signal here — not how many words you started, but how many you actually kept.
Start for free and do your first lesson now. Or see everything else Cotobara does.