What "micro" means (and why lessons are short)

"Micro" means one short recording at a time, with your full attention on it. A clip is four to twenty seconds long; you listen, type what you catch, and find out straight away which words you missed. A whole lesson takes about four to twelve minutes, and the site is built so that doing one most days is enough.

What one lesson asks of you

1. Press Play and listen to one clip, the whole way through.
2. Type what you heard and choose Check my answer. The words you missed are marked immediately, while the sound is still in your head.
3. Replay, fix the marked words, and check again. Then read the transcript and move to the next clip.

That's the loop. A clip is short enough to hold in your memory, so the feedback lands on the exact word you didn't catch, not on a paragraph you half-followed. The Learn tab adds the meaning and a few examples in short steps with one check each; it's there when you want it, not a wall to get through first.

Make it fit your day

Choose Account in the header, then Settings, and set Daily practice time to 5, 10 or 15 minutes a day. Today's practice then shows Your 10-minute plan in three steps: Listen to one lesson (about six minutes on a ten-minute plan), Recall a few phrases (about two) and Try a difficult phrase again (about two). If you've left a lesson unfinished, the first step says Continue your lesson and takes you back to it.

Why the short sessions add up

Two pages turn a few minutes a day into progress:

• Mistake notebook keeps your latest answer for every clip you scored below 100%, with what you typed and the share of words you matched. Retrying one from there takes a minute and targets exactly the sound you're missing. See The Mistakes page.
• Review brings back the phrases you've saved on a schedule. Rate each one Again, Hard, Good or Easy; Again brings it back in ten minutes, the others schedule a later day. See The review queue.

Your Weekly report shows the result over seven days: lessons completed, days with lesson attempts, phrases reviewed and your Average completed score next to the previous week's. See Your weekly report.

A realistic expectation

Ten focused minutes most days beats an hour on Sunday. Listening improves through repetition spaced over days, not through one long push, and a short session is one you'll actually repeat tomorrow. Don't set the 15-minute plan because it sounds serious; set the one you'll keep. If you miss a day, nothing is lost: open Today's practice and do the first step.

If a lesson feels too fast, choose an easier level under Practice in the header, or open Find your starting point on that page (it's under More tools and settings once you're signed in), which plays up to three short samples and suggests a level. Getting most of a clip right is the point; struggling through every word of a hard one isn't.