The Extreme series: Powerful learner’s dictionaries

One of the first SuperMemo courses to be offered at is the highly popular and extensive Extreme series. With 25,000 items in each of the 4 languages available in the series, the Extreme courses comprise a massive set for building and mastering your vocabulary in English, Spanish, German and French.

Extreme English Español Extremo Extremes Deutsch Français Extrême
Basic 2,200 3,300 3,200 3,000
Intermediate 9,800 7,000 7,200 7,000
Advanced 9,800 10,000 10,000 10,000
Proficiency 5,500 5,000 5,000 5,000
Total 27,300 25,300 25,400 25,000

Resembling learner’s dictionaries, the courses come in four levels: basic, intermediate, advanced and proficiency, each of them containing vocabulary according to its frequency of use in the language. At each level, you will find the following components for every item: definition in the target language, two sample sentences that show you how the word or expression is typically used in context, information about the part of speech, synonyms, collocations, and native speakers’ recordings for the definitions and items. To make your learning even more effective, photos have been added to entries; there is a photo for each item at the basic and intermediate levels, and selected items are equipped with pictures at the advanced and proficiency levels. What is more, for basic-level learners, there are also native speakers’ recordings for every sample sentence. To sum up, the learner is provided with all the crucial information for their level to be able to remember and internalize the new vocabulary.

Figure 1. A sample screenshot from the Español Extremo course.

Extreme English is a monolingual course with all the texts in English from the very start. When it comes to Español Extremo, Extremes Deutsch and Français Extrême, the courses are provided with English translations for key words that are displayed on the screen at the basic and intermediate levels, and available only when you tap or move your mouse cursor over the definition at the advanced and proficiency levels.

To use these extensive collections, you can simply subscribe to the course of your choice, depending on the language you would like to study and your current language skills and learn according to the default frequency order. Yet, the Extreme vocabulary sets are also available for you when you want to create your own courses at You are free to access our dictionary in the service, type in a word in the language you want to browse, and create a memocard with this word that will be automatically added to the “My MemoCards” list with your personal selection of items. From these items, you can build and publish your own courses for your individual needs and purposes.

Don’t hesitate to go to any extreme to achieve spectacular results in vocabulary learning! :-) The Extreme series is here to help you.

Alicja Jankowiak