Wow. Those are a lot of really neat ideas. I’d love to see them all implemented.

I’d like to add a proposal on how to implement all those different tests smoothly into the website and make sure that the right test is shown at the right time.

Now from my (so far admittedly limited) experience, learning Chinese words is split in two phases. The first phase is committing the word to memory and making sure that it sticks. This happens within the first few hours or days of meeting a new word. The second phase is reviewing the word to ensure it’s still present, reinforcing the memory and, if it was forgotten, learning it again. This is continuous and lasts forever.

To be able to deal with any situation, I think the following connections have to exist in memory:

- Hanzi character to English meaning (this is needed for reading and understanding a text)

- Hanzi character to Pinyin (or sound) (for seeing a character and knowing how to pronounce it)

- Pinyin (or sound) to Hanzi (for hearing a character and knowing how to write it)

- Pinyin (or sound) to English (for hearing a character and knowing what it means)

- English to Hanzi (to be able to write your own sentences)

- English to Pinyin (to be able to speak)

A lot of learning methods don’t consider the need to have all these connections, which leads to people being able to understand everything, but struggling to put together a sentence or being unable to read a text out loud, even though they understand what it says or some permutation of those problems.

I think Xiao Hu put in tests for every direction. And answering tests is certainly a better and more fun way to build those connections than endlessly reviewing flash cards. The question is which tests are easy enough to implement that David can actually find the time and how to integrate the tests into the website.

My proposal is this: As you can see in the settings, Popup Chinese (PC) is counting up SRS score for each word after each correct review. Failing a review resets the score back to 0.

I think it would make sense to use that score to determine which test to show. Maybe something like this:

Score 0-2: Show multiple choice Hanzi -> English

Score 2-4: Multiple choice Hanzi -> pinyin

Score 5-6: Multiple choice pinyin -> Hanzi

Score 6-8: Multiple choice English -> Hanzi

Score 8: Generative PinYin

Score 9: Generative English

And so on.

That ensures that the user really knows the character and the word and the sound before switching to harder, generative tests. I think it would make sense to put in all the other tests exactly like this: Bind each test to a certain SRS score. If you fail a test, reset the score.

This would be phase one, with a minimum of like 5 minutes and a maximum of 1 day between each review of the same word. After all the tests are exhausted, PC should count the word as “learned” and only then start the spaced repetition. This would be equal to a srs score of probably about 20-30.

The spaced repetition should then randomly select any test from the list and if the user fails the test, it goes back to SRS score 0 and the entire thing starts over. That might seem frustrating, but answering a dozen multiple choice questions is really, really quick and David could even add a button saying “I know this word. Stop bothering me” which instantly switches the status to “learned”.

I’m rather curious how other people use the site btw. Why do you come to the website instead of simply using iTunes to download everything? Where is the value for you? For me it’s the vocab review feature and the vocab management…

-- Noah