Coupling
Coupling is a cafe with a garden out back. Grow plants together by learning and teaching words.
Choose words you want to learn. Your partner tailors them for you with audio and sentences. Then you learn them in Sips, our one-minute study sessions.
Learning and teaching gives you water to grow plants in the Garden. Keep watering them, then harvest them for Beans!
Beans unlock new language tools and ways to learn at the Market. Adding new words and sentences spends a Bean as well.
1Learn in one-minute Sips
2Grow your garden
3Spend Beans at the Market
Coupling has its own words for things.
A Sip is a single language study session that takes about one minute.
There are different flavors of Sips in the form of different exercise types. To grow all facets of your language ability, you can practice vocabulary recall, fill in the blank, rearrange the sentence, and speaking pronunciation.
A Brew is a teaching session to prepare words for your partner.
When learners request words, sentences, or audio, the teacher makes tailored translations, sentences, and audio recordings.
The Market is where you trade your harvested plants for Beans and spend Beans on new app features.
Beans are the cafe's currency. Beans are earned by growing plants in the garden, and spent to unlock new features at the Market.
Each word or sentence costs one Bean to add for you or your partner. Beans are shared between partners and can be spent on each other.
You may also support us by purchasing Beans!
A Pack is a set of words centered on a topic such as greetings, ordering food, or past tense.
Learners select what topic of words they want to learn by opening a Pack, then partners can teach those words. Packs become more customizable with upgrades from the Market.
Learn with the people in your life. A friend can teach you their language, or you can learn one together.
Invite your partner with the same email they registered in Coupling Cafe with. They can then log in or sign up, accept, and then you're partnered.
Teaching works by the learner requesting Packs to learn, and then Coupling notifies the teacher to share words, audio, and sentences. The teacher can also teach any word or phrase directly, or verify words that the learner added.
1Emma opens a Pack. Wei will help her learn it
2Wei picks how to say each phrase
3He records himself saying it
4Brew complete, and Wei earns a seed
If you are both learning the same language, you can sync together. Any word or phrase you add, you can have it automatically added to your partner's collection, and vice-versa.
Add friends to your Cafe to see who studied today and cheer each other on. A friend who speaks your language can teach you too: they can Brew your requests and add words for you, and you can switch that off any time from their profile.
Browse a friend's words and pick the ones you want to learn into your own collection.
1Your partner and friends, and the days they studied
2Let a friend teach you from their profile
3Pick words from a friend's deck
If you don't have a partner, you can still use Coupling to learn a language. For most languages, Coupling comes with a default curated pack of starter words to learn. You can add words and phrases you want to learn, like a flashcard deck. And Coupling provides automatic audio and translations.
The garden is where you grow plants through studying or teaching effort. These plants can then be sold for Beans to unlock features at the Market or add new words and phrases.
Collect seeds by doing Sips (studying) or Brews (teaching). Tap an empty plot to plant a seed.
1Tap an empty plot, then your seeds
2Your seed sprouts
Almost anything you do fills your water : doing Sips (studying), Brews (teaching), or adding a word for your partner.
Tap a seed or plant to water it. Plants can be watered every 4 hours.
1Tap a plant, then the watering can
2The soil darkens and your water goes down
Once a plant is watered a few times, it'll be ready to harvest!
Tap a plant to harvest it. Then go to the Sell section of the Market to exchange it for Beans. Plus, Beans are shared between partners!
1Tap a grown plant, then the shears
2Find it at the Market's Sell stall
3Sold, for 3 more Beans
Beans are currency used to be able to add new words and phrases, as well as unlock new features at the Market. Tap a feature at the Buy section of the Market to learn more about it.
Support Coupling Cafe by becoming a member, which delivers 100 Beans per month as well as doubling your garden size so you can grow faster!
Learning is done through Sips, short language learning sessions. Tap the cup icon to start a Sip.
1Tap the cup
2Choose a flavor of Sip
The Sip New Words type of learning session introduces you to words you haven't studied yet. If you don't have any new words to learn, Coupling will show curated starter words.
1What does it mean?
2Pick an answer
3See it again tomorrow
Sip Learned Words is the most common type of Sip, and it's what makes words stick. After you learn a word for the first time, Coupling schedules it to be reviewed again at some point in the future so you don't forget it.
The more you learn a word, the less you have to review it again. And the more you struggle with a word, the more often you'll review it to have it stick.
1Words come back when they're due
2Finish a Sip, earn a seed
When a word is new, you'll study it with multiple choice exercises. With active recall, Coupling asks you what a word means or how to say a word, and you have to dig into your memory to try to remember. Active recall is harder than multiple choice, and a powerful way to make words stick.
Turn on Hard Mode in Settings to review with active recall.
1Recall the meaning yourself
2Check, then say how well you knew it
You choose what words and phrases you want to learn, and they can be any word or phrase you want! There are several ways to discover and add new words.
Open a Pack on a topic you want to learn. Your partner fills in each word with translations, audio and sentences, and each word costs a Bean.
1Browse Packs by topic
2Learn This Pack
3Your partner fills in the words
From the word collection screen, tap the Plus button to go to the Add Word screen. From here, you can add any word or phrase, and Coupling will fill in translations and romanizations so you don't have to do much work.
1Tap the plus on your words
2Type what you want to say
3Pick a translation
4It's in your collection
Learn words from your existing phrases if you unlock the Word-by-Word Breakdown feature from the Market. It breaks a phrase down into individual words and tells you what they mean.
From the Breakdown view, you can add words from a phrase that you don't know yet. And it'll also show you words that you already have in your collection!
1Words you have are outlined; tap + on a new one
2Check its meaning and add it
3Now it's yours too
It's powerful to learn words in context of sentences.
From a word's related tab , learners can request a sentence from partners.
1Open a word's related tab
2Ask your partner for a sentence
3Request sent
When the teaching partner adds a word during a Brew, they're suggested sentences that include that word. There are Market unlocks to provide more sentence suggestions, and to suggest sentences based on recently learned words.
1Wei sees Emma's request with suggestions
2He picks how to say it
3Sent to Emma's collection
When a sentence is added for a word, Coupling generates fill in the blank (cloze deletion) exercises, so you learn words in the context of sentences. A word can mean different things or take different forms depending on how it's used.
Coupling also generates Rearrange the Sentence exercises to practice syntax, structure, and grammar. Both are unlockable from the Market.
1Fill in the blank
2Rearrange the sentence
3Tap the pieces in order
4Correct!
If you have a phrase in your collection that you'd rather learn as a sentence than memorize, go to its settings tab and turn on Learn As Sentence. Then you can learn it with the Rearrange the Sentence exercise.
Teaching a friend is half of the cafe.
When someone you teach opens a Pack or asks for a word, Brew for them appears on your home screen. Tap it to start a Brew, a short teaching session that walks you through everything they asked for.
For each word, pick the translation that sounds like you, or type your own. Then record yourself saying it, so they learn it in your voice. Skip the recording any time with the arrows.
1Brew for Emma waits on Wei's home
2Pick how you'd say it, or type your own
3Record it in your voice
4Brew complete, with a seed for Wei
When your partner asks for a sentence, the Brew suggests a few that use their word. Pick one, choose how you'd say it, and it lands in their collection with fill in the blank and rearrange exercises ready to go.
1Emma asked for a sentence
2Wei picks how to say it
You don't have to wait to be asked. Open your learner's words and tap the Plus button to teach them any word or phrase you think they should know. Coupling suggests translations and fills in the pronunciation, and you can change anything before you add it.
1Open your partner's words
2Type what you want to teach
3Pick or adjust the translation
4Added, and Wei earns a seed
Every Brew and every word you teach earns you seeds and water, so teaching grows your garden as much as studying does. Beans are shared between partners, so the plants you sell help pay for the words your partner learns.
Teach the language the way you actually speak it. Casual phrases from your everyday life stick better than textbook ones.
Record audio whenever you can. Hearing your voice is what makes a word theirs.
Add a sentence for words that change meaning with context, so your partner sees how you'd really use them.
Ask the help desk from Settings › Help in the app, or come say hi on Discord.
