English · six steps · one path

The English immersion system

one path, six steps

Whether English is your first language or your second: a six-step path through survival and out the other side of mastery. Two steps ship free with the game. Four are the Roots packs. Every card is English, taught in English.

the packs word lists steam

The ladder

One path, six steps

The base game holds the floor and the ceiling of a normal immersion course. Two Roots packs sit inside it, two sit beyond it. Read the ladder top to bottom.

English Advance→German Roots→Norman Roots→English Adept→Latin Roots→Greek Roots

Floor — base game

1 English Advance 500 cards · 500 words · 25 clusters · 15 lessons · ships with the game The English of everyday tasks — forms, notices, instructions, offices. Read a form and fill it, follow written directions, hold the words that officialdom uses about you. The one optional door on the path. Optional

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Inside the course — DLC

2 German Roots 1,000 cards · 47 clusters · 48 lessons The Germanic half of English: the plain words, the compounds whose seam has gone invisible, and the native prefixes — be-, fore-, out-, over-, under-, mis-, un-, up-. Inside

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3 Norman Roots 1,000 cards · 48 clusters · 49 lessons The Old French layer that settled on top of the Germanic one. Every card names the twins: catch / Germanic grab / Latin capture, and the pack teaches the typical French spellings you learn to spot. Inside

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Ceiling — base game

4 English Adept 1,000 cards · 56 clusters · 12 lessons · synonyms on all 1,000 cards · ships with the game The articulate vocabulary of an adult reader, grouped by what it does. Read adult prose without stalling; have the word you actually meant, not the nearest one. Just to the end of Adept is a valuable resource for a high-schooler. Ceiling

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Beyond the course — DLC, elective

5 Latin Roots 500 cards = 1,000 words (a paired cousin on every card) · 30 clusters · 31 lessons Famous Latin, everyday Latin, the prefixes, the great root families — port/mit, dict/scrib, duc/tract — and the suffixes. aquarium teaches aquatic in the same breath. Beyond

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6 Greek Roots 1,000 cards · 56 clusters · 62 lessons · the Greek script on all 1,000 τῆλε, βίος, γράφειν, μικρός — the roots, the number and size prefixes, the -ology / -mania / -phone / -meter suffixes, hybrids flagged as hybrids. An unfamiliar technical word stops being unfamiliar. Beyond

Start at Advance if school let you down or English is new to you. Otherwise start at German Roots.

If your first language is a Romance one, take Norman Roots before German Roots.

The base game has the floor and the ceiling. German Roots and Norman Roots sit inside the course. Latin Roots and Greek Roots sit beyond it. English Advance is elective if you had a standard education. Latin Roots and Greek Roots are elective in full. There is no requirement to take the packs in order; the ladder is the recommendation.

Inside the course

The two layers English is made of

German Roots and Norman Roots are the pair inside the course. They are the two layers English is stitched from — the one it kept from before 1066, and the one that landed with the Conquest — and they sit between English Advance and English Adept.

They are the reason English has begin and commence, ask and demand. At the end of German Roots you see the seam in a compound word and read the meaning off it. At the end of Norman Roots you read the second layer of English as a layer, not as a list of hard words.

German Roots

Step 2 · 1,000 cards · 47 clusters · 48 lessons

The Germanic backbone of everyday English — the words you already half-know. Where a Germanic speaker begins, and the default for everyone else.

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Norman Roots

Step 3 · 1,000 cards · 48 clusters · 49 lessons

The second English — 1066 and the French that came with it. Where a Romance speaker begins.

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Beyond the course

Past the ceiling, for the curious

Latin Roots and Greek Roots are the pair beyond the course. They come after English Adept, for readers who want the scholarly layer and the vocabulary of the sciences. A hobby for the linguistically curious, and none the worse for it.

Part of the course, and past the point where anyone needs them. At the end of the pair an unfamiliar technical or literary word is not unfamiliar: you take it apart on sight, and the boundaries between European languages have started to look like dialect boundaries.

Latin Roots

Step 5 · 500 cards = 1,000 words · 30 clusters · 31 lessons

English built from its parts — the classical and scientific layer, assembled. Every card teaches a paired cousin word beside the headword.

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Greek Roots

Step 6 · 1,000 cards · 56 clusters · 62 lessons

The vocabulary of science, medicine, and abstraction — the layer above Latin, with the Greek script on the card.

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Latin Roots and Greek Roots come after Adept, in whichever order you like.

Step by step

What you get

Counted from the pack trees, not from copy. Five tiers in every pack. A boss fight at the end of every cluster.

Step	Cards	Words	Clusters	Lessons	Ships as
English Advance	500	500	25	15	base game
German Roots	1,000	1,000	47	48	DLC
Norman Roots	1,000	1,000	48	49	DLC
English Adept	1,000	1,000	56	12	base game
Latin Roots	500	1,000	30	31	DLC
Greek Roots	1,000	1,000	56	62	DLC

Latin Roots is 500 cards because every one of the 500 teaches a paired cousin word beside the headword: 1,000 words. Where a step shows fewer lessons than clusters (Advance, Adept), its lessons are chapter openings rather than a door on every cluster; the four Roots packs have a lesson at every cluster door, and lessons there are mandatory.

On every card, in every step

The same card anatomy from the floor to the last Greek root.

The card

the headword, in English
a definition, in English — never a translation
an example sentence
a second example — the same word again, or a related word, the cousin or twin that the notes go on to explain
a Notes line: part of speech, the parts the word is built from, the etymon
synonyms on every card of Adept, German Roots, Norman Roots and Greek Roots; antonyms where a true one exists
the British/American spelling split, as a layer — see below

The play

a boss fight at the end of every cluster — eight headwords on the grid, answered on the numberpad
Fibonacci spaced repetition between the fights
a lesson at every cluster door in all four Roots packs
three revision drills per pack: the roots rack, antonyms and cloze in German, Latin and Greek Roots; dictation in place of the rack for Norman Roots (its cards are single Old French words, not sums) and for Adept

The gate

Every cluster ends in a fight

Eight headwords on the grid, answered on the numberpad. A right answer moves you one step along the track.

A wrong one puts you two steps back, and the cards you are worst at are the ones waiting at positions three and four — so a cluster cannot be beaten until its hardest words are.

Beat it and those cards leave your daily deck for good.

Fight one yourself →

Three boss fights from the Roots series in the real game, each behind its own title card: German Roots, Norman Roots and Greek Roots. The cards are English at every step. Each fight reaches the killstroke position, loses it to a wrong answer and is pushed two steps back, then climbs again and wins.

try the demo

The immersion law

English, whatever the menus say

Card text is English whatever the interface language. The interface, the cluster names and the Advance lessons are translated into German, Spanish, Japanese, Russian and Chinese. The cards never are — not one card in any of the six packs carries a foreign-language field. That is what the word immersion is doing here.

Every pack carries the British/American spelling split as a layer: a British twin of the headword, both example sentences, the definition and the notes, wherever the British text differs from the American, chosen by your spelling preference or your English voice.

The full immersion series

Six steps, one series

The six steps are one series: the four Roots DLCs — German and Norman inside the course, Latin and Greek beyond it — together with the base game that carries English Advance and English Adept. Taken as the series, the floor, the two layers of English, the ceiling and the two Roots past it arrive as a single course rather than six separate packs. Available on Steam.

FlashBoss Roots — The Complete Series is the five items in one: the base game, which carries English Advance and English Adept inside it free, and the four Roots packs. Already own part of it? Steam charges you only for the rest.

The Complete Series → FlashBoss · base game German Roots Norman Roots Latin Roots Greek Roots

Start where the ladder says.

The floor and the ceiling ship free with the game. The four Roots packs are on Steam, together or one at a time.

FlashBoss Roots — The Complete Series →

Scientia est Potentia.Knowledge is power