About

I’m Alexei Vinidiktov. I study languages, test learning methods, and build tools around the way I actually learn.

This site is where I document that work: the books I read, the methods I test, the ideas I keep returning to, and the tools that grow out of the process.

What interests me most is how to make language learning work as a real system. Not as a loose mix of apps, vocabulary lists, grammar notes, and unfinished plans, but as something coherent, durable, and cumulative.

A lot of my thinking is shaped by one central goal: non-translational command of a language. I’m interested in approaches that help comprehension and speech grow on the basis of the language itself, rather than through constant reliance on the native language.

Reading remains central for me, but not as passive content consumption. I see it as one part of a larger learning system: something that helps build comprehension, grow vocabulary, support re-reading, and deepen a learner’s internal feel for the language over time.

Some of this work becomes software. Ember is the clearest example so far, shaped directly by my own reading practice and by my attempt to build better ways of working with texts. Other projects explore vocabulary building, review, and language-learning workflows more broadly.

This site is a public record of that ongoing search: not for shortcuts or hacks, but for a more serious, systematic, and lasting way of learning languages on your own.