Five hundred words is a genuinely useful milestone - enough to start recognizing a meaningful share of words in simple real content, without requiring months of study to reach. A structured 30-day plan makes this a realistic, achievable target rather than an abstract long-term goal.

Week One: Establishing the Reading Habit

Focus the first week purely on building the habit of daily reading with translation support, without worrying about hitting a specific word count yet. Read something short and genuinely interesting each day - a news article, a few pages of a book - tap-translating and saving unfamiliar words as you go with TransLearn. By the end of week one, aim for roughly 100 to 125 saved words, with the primary goal being consistency rather than volume.

Week Two: Adding Passive Review

With a reading habit established, turn on push notifications and set up a lock-screen widget to start reinforcing week one's vocabulary passively throughout each day, while continuing to read and save new words. Aim for another 100 to 125 new words this week, bringing your running total to roughly 200 to 250, while your earliest saved words start becoming genuinely familiar through repeated passive exposure.

Week Three: Introducing Active Recall

Start running short quiz sessions two or three times this week, testing recall on your growing saved vocabulary list, particularly words from week one that should be reasonably well reinforced by now. Continue reading and saving new words at a similar pace, aiming for a running total around 350 to 400 words by the end of the week, while quiz results start revealing which specific words need more attention.

Week Four: Consolidating and Reaching 500

In the final week, split your attention between continuing to add new vocabulary through reading and deliberately reviewing weaker words identified through quiz performance. By day 30, a consistent daily habit should put your saved vocabulary at or above 500 words, with your earliest words from week one now feeling solidly familiar through several weeks of accumulated passive and active review.

What Happens After Day 30

Five hundred words is a foundation, not a finish line - continuing the same reading, notification, and quiz cycle steadily builds vocabulary well beyond this initial milestone. The habits established in this first month, more than the specific word count reached, are what determine whether progress continues steadily afterward or stalls once the structured 30-day plan ends.