Verbault Events: Read-Alongs, Challenges, and More

Why Community Events?

Learning vocabulary in isolation is slower and less enjoyable than learning alongside others. Community events create accountability, shared reference points ("we all read the same chapter"), and the low-stakes social context that makes vocabulary stick.

What We Are Planning

We are starting with three formats, each built around something Verbault already does well — reading, looking up words, and saving what matters:

Monthly Reading Challenge

Each month we will pick a public-domain book from the library. Every participant:

1. Reads the assigned chapters using the Reader.
2. Saves at least 20 new words to their Vocabulary Vault.
3. Shares a favourite sentence by bookmarking it and posting to the community thread.

The first challenge book will be announced in the announcements section.

Vocabulary Q&A Sessions

Live sessions where the Verbault team and guest linguists answer questions about specific words or phrases — their etymology, connotations, and usage across registers.

Historical Newspaper Read-Alongs

We pair a chapter from a classic novel with a contemporary newspaper article from the Chronicling America archive on a related historical event. Participants compare vocabulary, register, and perspective in both texts.

How to Join

Events are free and open to all registered users. Watch the blog tag page for announcements and sign-up links.

If you have not created an account yet, visit Verbault — it takes less than a minute to sign up with Google. If you want to prepare, try reading /word/eloquent and think about why oratory vocabulary is so well-represented in 19th-century literature.

External reference: The Reading Agency has excellent research on the social benefits of shared reading — well worth a look before our first event.