A spreadsheet instead of apps: how the author learned 623 English words via Telegram

⚡ The gist in 5 seconds - The gist: the author learns English words through his own Google spreadsheet with Telegram notifications — 623 words in a year and a half with almost no time spent. - Where it's available: the spreadsheet and Telegram bot; the author talks about the rest in the fcking_english channel. - Nuance: many features of the latest update were suggested by users themselves, and the author is open to new ideas. ### 🔍 What was found The article's author is user f_english; the publication on Habr is dated October 2. It is a continuation of the series "I got tired of English apps and made my own spreadsheet," which has gathered over 200,000 views in total. A year and a half ago he stopped searching for yet another method: before that he had tried learning the language through apps, movies, and books, studied for a while — then errands and work appeared and he dropped everything. The result of the new approach is 623 learned words without willpower, discipline, or changing his usual lifestyle. The mechanics are as follows: a spreadsheet with Telegram notifications, to which a bot sends words every day. They appear in the field of view and, thanks to that, get committed to memory. The method uses spaced repetition — a word appears frequently at first, then less and less often. To add a new word, just send it to the bot: it shows the translation and adds an entry to the spreadsheet, which automatically adds the transcription, translation, and an example of usage in a sentence. Users noted that this format is more convenient than Anki cards and other apps. Updates from recent months: - Translations and examples. Previously, when there were multiple meanings, Google Translate picked only the most common variant. Now AI writes several translation variants and examples for each. - Personalized examples. You can specify several topics at once — gym, travel, cooking; the neural network will write sentences with the words being studied on those topics, where appropriate. - Quick word adding from websites. Previously, a word had to be copied and sent to the bot manually. Now you just select it and press "Add to spreadsheet" — the translation appears on screen. You can also simply translate text without adding it. - Listening repetition. There used to be two stages: learning (the original arrives with a translation) and testing (you can hide one part and recall it). Now you can hide both the word and the translation — instead, only audio arrives: first recognize it by ear, then recall the translation. - Visual summary. Previously, statistics could only be viewed in the spreadsheet; now it arrives in Telegram every evening. ### 💡 Why it matters The main problem with English apps, in the author's opinion, is that you have to open them. In the constant flow of life, you forget about it, put it off, and eventually abandon the whole thing. The spreadsheet works on the opposite logic: words come to the user themselves, pop up on screen, and get memorized over time. Multiple translations, personalized examples, the audio stage, and the daily summary all serve the same goal — keeping English in everyday life without setting aside dedicated time for it. The brain sees the results of its eff

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