A 4-week vocabulary and pronunciation plan you can actually finish

30-second version: Four weeks, one focus per week: Week 1 builds the daily habit and diagnoses your weak sounds; Week 2 works a targeted vocabulary list; Week 3 shifts to context — reading, listening, dictation; Week 4 moves to fluency and longer speaking. Every day includes saying something out loud and checking it — the piece most vocabulary plans leave out.

Most vocabulary study plans are reading schedules with a pronunciation step bolted on as an afterthought, if at all. This one inverts that: every single day includes producing something out loud and getting it checked, because a plan that only tests recognition doesn't actually tell you whether the vocabulary is usable.

Week 1 — Foundations and diagnosis

The goal this week isn't volume, it's finding out where you actually stand.

• Days 1–2: Read a passage in Read & listen at a comfortable level. Check both your accuracy and fluency scores separately — see fluency vs. accuracy: which to train first to know what each number tells you.
• Days 3–4: Check today's word each day, say it, and get it scored. Start noticing your own recurring flagged sounds.
• Days 5–7: Read one passage a level above comfortable. Note which specific words or sounds get flagged — this is your real diagnosis, more useful than any generic weak-point guess.

Week 2 — Targeted vocabulary

Pick one list relevant to your actual goal and work it deliberately.

• Days 8–9: Choose a list — Academic Word List, IELTS, business English, or whichever matches your reason for studying — and read through the first third, out loud, checking IPA against your instinct on each word.
• Days 10–11: Continue the list. Flag anything that surprised you into a flashcard deck.
• Days 12–14: Clear your building review queue daily rather than letting it stack up — this is where spaced repetition either becomes a habit or gets abandoned, and week 2 is the critical window for making it stick.

Week 3 — Context and listening

Vocabulary drilled in isolation still needs to survive contact with real sentences and real listening.

• Days 15–16: Run listening exercises — comprehension questions built from real audio — to test whether your vocabulary transfers from reading to hearing.
• Days 17–18: Try dictation — type what you hear — as a stricter test of the same skill.
• Days 19–21: Paste a paragraph from something you're actually reading into custom passage practice and work through the vocabulary it surfaces — see building a personal word list from a book.

Week 4 — Fluency and production at length

The final week shifts from individual words to sustained, natural speech.

• Days 22–24: Practice full passages focusing on pace and pausing rather than individual words — see pace: words-per-minute targets and where fluent speakers pause.
• Days 25–26: Record freeform answers on a prompt using this month's new vocabulary deliberately, working up from one sentence to a longer answer — see speaking longer answers.
• Days 27–28: Review the month. Check Progress for your score trend across the four weeks, and note which flashcard words graduated to mastered versus which are still resurfacing.

What to do at the end

Don't stop the habit at day 28 — the plan is a structured on-ramp, not a finish line. Roll straight into a new list or a new book, keeping the daily "say it and check it" habit intact; that habit, not any specific word count, is what the whole plan was actually building.

Try it: start today with Week 1, Day 1 — read one passage in Read & listen and note your accuracy and fluency scores as your baseline.