10 AI tools to help you learn English faster (and actually remember it)

I spent two years learning Spanish before I realized I was doing it wrong. I watched videos. I listened to podcasts on my commute. I even read children’s books in Spanish. But when someone asked me a simple question at a restaurant in Madrid, my mind went completely blank. Two years of study, and I couldn’t order water.

The problem wasn’t my study time. It was that almost everything I did was passive. I was taking in content without ever forcing my brain to produce anything on its own.

If you’re learning English right now, you might be doing the same thing. You watch YouTube, scroll through posts in English, maybe listen to English music. That helps a little, but it only takes you so far. Let me explain why, and then share the tools that actually made a difference for me and my students.

Why passive learning stops working

Your brain is lazy. I mean that in the nicest way. It picks the path that uses the least energy. When you watch a video in English, your brain is recognizing things. “Oh yeah, I know that word.” That feels productive, but recognition is much easier than recall.

Recall is when you pull a word out of your memory with no help. No subtitles. No word bank. That’s the hard part, and that’s where you actually learn.

Researchers call this the “testing effect.” A [2022 meta-analysis] reviewed 48 experiments with over 3,400 language learners and found that testing yourself regularly led to much better long-term retention than studying the same material all at once. A [separate study]  found spaced repetition helped ESL learners recall about 80% of target words after 10 days.

So how do you build more recall into your routine? Here are the tools that helped me.

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1. Anki for vocabulary that actually sticks

Anki is a free flashcard app built around spaced repetition. Get a card right and it shows up less often. Get it wrong and it comes back sooner. You end up spending most of your time on words you’re actually struggling with.

I add every new word I come across, with an example sentence. Five minutes a day with Anki has done more for my vocabulary than hours of word lists ever did. The interface looks like it was designed in 2005, but it works.

2. Google Translate for quick checks (but be careful)

Google Translate gets a bad reputation, and some of it is deserved. It’s not great for long paragraphs. But for quick word lookups, it’s useful.

I tell my students to use it as a dictionary, not a translator. Look up a word, then put your phone away and try to use it in a sentence. The lookup is the easy part. Using it yourself is what builds memory.

3. ChatGPT for conversation practice when nobody is around

If you live somewhere where English isn’t spoken much, finding practice partners is hard. ChatGPT is surprisingly good for this. You can ask it to correct your grammar as you go, or play a role like a job interviewer. It’s not a real person, but it’s available at 2 AM.

Tip: type “explain that more simply” and it rephrases in easier English.

4. BBC Learning English for listening practice with structure

If you haven’t found [BBC Learning English] yet, go look at it today. It’s completely free. They have short videos, podcasts, grammar lessons, and quizzes organized by level.

The speakers talk at a pace you can actually follow, and each lesson teaches you specific vocabulary or grammar points. So you’re not just passively listening. Try their “6 Minute English” series if you’re at an intermediate level.

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5. YouTube with English subtitles for real-world listening

YouTube is obvious, I know. But how you use it matters. Turn on English subtitles, not subtitles in your own language. This forces your brain to connect the sounds to the English words instead of a translation.

Start with channels where people speak clearly and work your way up. At some point you stop watching “learn English” videos and start watching videos that just happen to be in English. That shift feels great when it happens.

6. An AI quiz generator for testing yourself on anything

This is the one I wish I’d found earlier. Testing yourself is one of the best ways to learn, but writing your own quiz questions is boring and takes forever. An AI quiz generator fixes that. You paste in a vocabulary list, a grammar explanation, or a paragraph from something you just read, and it creates questions for you. Quizgecko does this well and takes about 30 seconds.

I use it mostly with reading passages. I read an article in English, paste the text in, and answer questions about what I just read. It’s completely different from just reading and moving on. You have to actually retrieve the vocabulary from memory.

It works for grammar too. Paste in your notes about the present perfect tense and get questions that test whether you understand the difference between “I have eaten” and “I ate.”

7. Grammarly for writing feedback you can trust

Grammarly catches writing mistakes you’d otherwise miss, and it explains why something is wrong. That explanation part is what makes it useful for learning, not just editing.

I find it most useful for prepositions and articles. If your first language doesn’t use “the” and “a” the way English does (and many don’t), Grammarly shows you the pattern over time. The free version covers most of what you need.

8. News in Levels for reading practice at your speed

News in Levels takes real news stories and rewrites them at three difficulty levels. Pick the level that feels comfortable, read the story, then try the next level up.

You’re reading about actual events, not textbook dialogues about booking hotel rooms. It also gives you something to talk about in English, which is a bonus.

9. Notion for organizing everything in one place

Not a language tool, but I recommend it to every student. Notion lets you build a simple vocabulary tracker where you log new words, example sentences, and where you first saw them.

Keeping everything in one place sounds minor, but it matters. When your study materials are scattered across five apps and a notebook you keep losing, you waste time just looking for things.

10. A simple weekly routine that ties it all together

Tools are only useful if you actually use them. Here’s a rough weekly plan I give my students.

Monday and Wednesday: Listen to a BBC Learning English episode or YouTube with subtitles. Write down new words and add them to Anki.

Tuesday and Thursday: Paste your notes or a reading passage into a quiz generator and test yourself. Review Anki flashcards.

Friday: Write a short paragraph in English about your week. Run it through Grammarly.

Weekend: Chat with ChatGPT about something you’re interested in. Or just rest.

The one thing that matters more than any tool

I’ve watched students try every app on this list and still feel stuck. The difference between those who improve and those who don’t almost always comes down to showing up most days. Not every day. Just most days.

Fifteen minutes daily beats two hours on Saturday. Your brain needs regular contact with the language to form strong memories.

Pick two or three tools from this list and try them for a month. And when you make mistakes, good. That means you’re practicing, not just watching someone else do it.