I Learned 200 German Words by Tilting My Phone

I've been learning languages for over a decade. I've used flashcard apps, grammar textbooks, conversation partners, italki tutors, and enough spaced repetition systems to know my Anki settings by heart. I have a PhD in computer science and I built a language learning app myself.

And yet, I clearly remember times where I couldn't reliably produce basic German vocabulary in conversation. I could recognize words. I could pass review sessions. But when I needed to say "forward" or "darkness" or "emergency" in the moment, my mind went blank.

So I tried something different. I stopped reviewing. I started doing.

The experiment

I committed to learning German vocabulary through physical interaction only. No flashcards. No SRS. No drilling. Instead, every word would be tied to a physical action I performed with my phone.

The rules were simple:

1. Each word gets learned through a specific sensor interaction (tilt, shake, cover camera, speak, walk, etc.)
2. The interaction has to mean something related to the word
3. I only count a word as "learned" if I can recall it in context a week later without review

I tracked everything. Here's what happened.

Week 1: The skeptic phase

I started with directional words. German has some tricky ones—vorwärts (forward), rückwärts (backward), links(left), rechts(right).

For vorwärts, I tilted my phone forward while navigating a character through a dark corridor. The scene required me to lean in, physically commit to the direction. I said the word out loud as I tilted.

For rückwärts, I tilted back to retreat from danger. My body actually pulled away from the screen.

Honestly? I felt ridiculous. I was a grown man tilting my phone around my apartment, muttering German words. My kids asked what I was doing. I didn't have a good answer.

But something strange happened at the grocery store a few days later. I was trying to direct someone to the milk section and rückwärts came out of my mouth before I could think. Not because I'd reviewed it. Because my body remembered the sensation of pulling back.

One data point. I kept going.

Week 2-3: The patterns emerge

I expanded to more abstract vocabulary, which is where flashcards usually fail me completely.

Dunkelheit (darkness): I dimmed my phone's screen brightness to plunge a scene into blackness to reveal a secret message. The word became linked to the physical act of reducing light and the slight tension of hiding.

Notfall (emergency): I shook my phone frantically to trigger an alarm in a story. The word now carries the physical memory of urgency, of shaking something to make noise.

Verbindung (connection): I rotated my phone to find a signal, like tuning an old radio. The searching motion, the moment of lock-on—that's what Verbindung feels like now.

I started noticing a pattern in my recall. Words learned through movement came back with the movement. When I tried to remember Dunkelheit, my thumb would subtly start to slide, as if to dim a screen. The motor memory was triggering the verbal memory.

This matched what I'd read about embodied cognition, but experiencing it was different from knowing it theoretically.

The hard numbers

After 8 weeks:

• Words attempted: 247
• Words retained at 1-week check: 203 (82%)
• Words retained at 4-week check: 187 (76%)

For comparison, my historical retention rate with Anki (based on my own tracking): about 60% at one week if I kept up with reviews, dropping to maybe 40% if I skipped a few days.

The difference wasn't subtle. And I wasn't reviewing. These words were just... there.

What surprised me

Physical context transfers to verbal context. I expected to remember words when I was holding my phone. But I remembered them everywhere. Vorwärts at the grocery store. Notfall when I heard an ambulance. The physical encoding created a richer memory that activated across contexts.

Fewer words felt like more progress. With flashcards, I'd "learn" 30 words in a session and feel productive. With this method, I'd learn maybe 8-10 words in the same time. But a month later, I still had those 8-10 words. The ROI per word was dramatically higher.

The forgetting curve flattened. Normally, vocabulary fades fast without review. These words didn't. At the 4-week check, I'd only lost 16 words from my 1-week total. Some words felt as fresh as day one.

Stories mattered more than I expected. The words that stuck best weren't just tied to actions—they were tied to moments. I remember Gefahr (danger) because I was trying to warn a character. I remember Schlüssel (key) because I was desperately searching for one while something approached. The emotional stakes of the narrative created additional encoding.

What didn't work

Not every interaction worked equally well.

Generic actions didn't stick. "Tap to continue" taught me nothing. The action has to be meaningfully connected to the word. Arbitrary gestures are just flashcards with extra steps.

Too many words too fast caused interference. Early on, I tried to learn 5 directional words in one session. They blurred together. Spacing them across different story moments worked better.

Abstract concepts need creative mapping. Concrete nouns and action verbs were easy to embody. Abstract concepts like Möglichkeit (possibility) or Bedeutung (meaning) required more creative physical metaphors. Not impossible, but harder.

Why I'm writing this

I built an app around this method. It's called Sensonym. So yes, I'm biased.

But I wrote this post because I spent years assuming I was bad at vocabulary retention. I blamed my memory, my consistency, my discipline. It turns out I was just using the wrong encoding strategy for how my brain works.

If you've ever felt like flashcards should work but don't—if you can pass review sessions but blank in conversation—you might not have a memory problem. You might have a method problem.

The science on embodied cognition is solid. The research on Total Physical Response goes back to the 1960s. This isn't new. It's just hard to implement in an app, so most apps don't bother.

I bothered. And it worked for me.

Try it yourself (no app required)

Before you download anything, test the principle:

1. Pick 5 German words (or any language) with physical associations
2. For each word, create a gesture that means what the word means
3. Say the word while performing the gesture, in 3 different locations over 2 days
4. Check your recall after a week—no review in between

If it works, you're probably a kinesthetic learner who's been fighting against the wrong method. If it doesn't work, flashcards might genuinely be your thing, and that's fine too.

But at least you'll know.

Sensonym uses your phone's 15+ sensors to create physical vocabulary anchors inside immersive stories. Try it free

About the author: I'm Paras, a computer scientist and language learning nerd. I previously built Sylby, a pronunciation training app. I've been learning languages for over 10 years and still can't say the German R properly. I live in Germany with my family.