Why 100 words?

The research behind it

Eight findings from language teaching and memory research shaped how Hundred Words works. For each one, here is what it means for you and what we do about it.

1. Learn for the situation you are going into

   Language for specific purposes starts with a needs analysis: what will this learner actually have to do in their target situation, and what language does that take? Courses for nurses, pilots and engineers are built this way. A trip is a target situation too, with a short list of tasks like paying, ordering and asking the way.

   What we do: every language is built from the scenes of a real first trip, and only the words those scenes need make the 100.

   Hutchinson and Waters (1987), English for Specific Purposes: A Learning-Centred Approach, Cambridge University Press (needs analysis and target situations, summarised in a university ESP handout)

2. A few words do most of the work

   50%

   In English, the 100 most common words make up about half of all written text. Speech is even more concentrated: around 2,000 words cover about 96% of informal conversation. These figures are for English. We expect a similar curve in other languages, but that is our reading, not a measured result.

   What we do: we choose the 100 for the situations a traveller is in, like shops, taxis and hotels, where the range of words is narrower still.

   Oxford English Corpus figures, via "Most common words in English" · Nation and Waring (1997), Vocabulary size, text coverage and word lists

3. In shops, a request is often answered with a question

   A classic study of service encounters found that when a customer asks for something, the server often replies with a question of their own instead of an answer. "Do you want a bag?" and "Cash or card?" are exactly this pattern, and they are where travellers freeze.

   What we do: every scene shows what you will hear back as well as what you say, and the Reply drill trains you to answer.

   Merritt (1976), On questions following questions in service encounters, Language in Society 5(3)

4. Listening is the hard part

   Speech has no gaps between words, and learners describe it as "a blur of sound". Short-term memory holds roughly two seconds of speech, so if you decode slowly, the start of the sentence is gone before you reach the end.

   What we do: audio plays slightly slower than normal speech, and each sentence hangs on one key word, so catching that one word is enough to understand.

   Conti (2025), What research says about why students struggle with listening (summarising Field 2008, Goh 2000 and Baddeley 2000)

5. Fluent speakers use ready-made phrases

   Native speakers rely heavily on fixed phrases that they retrieve whole, and use grammar mainly to join them together. "Will you marry me?" turns up far more often than any equally correct way of saying the same thing.

   What we do: you learn 不用，谢谢 (no need, thanks) or "không cần, cảm ơn" as one unit, the way locals say it.

   Cobb (2003), review of Wray (2001), Formulaic Language and the Lexicon, Cambridge University Press

6. Practise the way you will use it

   Memory works best when the way you practise matches the way you will need the information later. Reading a word list prepares you to read word lists.

   What we do: drills play what the cashier says and ask you to pick your reply, the same task you face at the till.

   Morris, Bransford and Franks (1977), Levels of processing versus transfer appropriate processing, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 16(5)

7. Testing yourself beats re-reading

   61% vs 40%

   In one well-known study, students who practised recalling a passage remembered 61% of it a week later. Students who re-read it remembered 40%.

   What we do: flashcards ask you to say the word before you mark it, and drills make you pull it from memory.

   Roediger and Karpicke (2006), Test-enhanced learning, Psychological Science 17(3)

8. You forget fast, so review little and often

   up to 150%

   Ebbinghaus showed in 1885 that new material fades fastest in the first days, and that each review slows the fall. Modern studies agree: spreading practice across days instead of cramming improved final recall by up to 150% in tests up to six months later.

   What we do: eight words a day for two weeks before you fly, and the words you get wrong come back more often.

   Ebbinghaus (1885), Über das Gedächtnis, translated as Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology (1913) · Cepeda et al. (2009), Optimizing distributed practice, Experimental Psychology 56(4)