Spaced repetition and flashcards
Spaced repetition has one honest promise and one hidden cost. The promise is that you can hold a large vocabulary with a small daily effort, because the interval between reviews grows every time you pass a card. The cost is that the daily effort is not the number you chose — you choose new cards per day, and what you get is reviews per day, a figure that keeps climbing long after the habit feels established.
The gap between those two numbers is where most abandoned decks come from. Twenty new cards a day sounds modest, and for the first week it is: about 56 reviews a day. By three months it is 119, by a year 153, and it keeps creeping up for years after that toward roughly 220. The workload a learner quits over is never the one they signed up for, and it arrives slowly enough that nothing feels like the moment it went wrong.
These posts cover the scheduling itself, the trade-off between a higher retention target and the review count it costs, what makes a card answerable in five seconds instead of thirty, and how a deck built from something you actually read differs from one built from a word list.
16 posts on this
- Chinese Word Games for Daily Vocabulary Practice
Daily Chinese word games are a genuinely good habit anchor — and a genuinely bad primary study method. Here's how to use them for retrieval practice without fooling yourself.
- Flashcard Apps That Work Offline in a Browser (What 'Offline' Really Means)
A browser flashcard app can work with no connection — up to a point. Here's what actually caches, what silently breaks, and how to test it before you rely on it.
- How to Share a Flashcard Deck by Link
Four ways to hand someone a flashcard deck — a share URL, an exported file, a platform share, or a plain spreadsheet — and which one survives contact with a study group.
- How to Make Vocabulary Flashcards That Actually Work
Build vocabulary flashcards that are clear, memorable, and easy to review with spaced repetition—without turning every card into a miniature textbook.
- How Much Time Per Day Do You Need to Learn Chinese? (2026)
A number-driven look at daily Chinese study time — what 15, 30, and 60 minutes a day actually buy you, why consistency beats duration, and how to build a session that fits.
- HSK 2 Vocabulary: What to Learn and How (2026)
What HSK 2 vocabulary actually covers, roughly how many words to expect, the grammar that comes with it, and a context-first way to make it stick in 2026.
- HSK 4 Vocabulary: What to Learn and How (2026)
What HSK 4 vocabulary covers, roughly how many words to expect, why it's the level most learners stall on, and a reading-first method that actually scales to 1,200 words.
- How to Remember Chinese Characters (Without Endless Drilling) (2026)
How to remember Chinese characters in 2026: break them into components, meet them in real sentences, and review the ones you keep with spaced repetition instead of brute-force drilling.
- HSK 3 Vocabulary: What to Learn and How (2026)
What HSK 3 vocabulary covers, roughly how many words to expect, and a practical, context-first way to actually retain them in 2026.
- FSRS vs SM-2: Which Spaced Repetition Algorithm Wins in 2026?
FSRS vs SM-2 compared plainly: how each algorithm models memory, which one schedules fewer reviews at equal retention, and which to actually pick in 2026.
- How Many Flashcards Should You Study Per Day? (Realistic 2026 Guide)
How many revision cards should you make and study each day? 10-20 new cards is the sustainable answer — here's the arithmetic behind it, why review debt breaks people, and how to pick your number.
- Extract Chinese Vocabulary Into Flashcards With AI
Paste any Chinese text and get AI-extracted vocabulary with pinyin, definitions, and examples — turned into a reviewable SRS flashcard deck in seconds.
- 6 Ways to Use Example Sentences to Learn Chinese Faster (2026)
Word lists teach you a translation; sentences teach you the word. Six concrete techniques for using example sentences to learn Chinese vocabulary faster and forget it less.
- 8 Best Apps to Learn Vocabulary From Chinese Content (2026)
The best apps to learn vocabulary from Chinese native content in 2026, compared honestly — including the one I built and when the others win instead.
- Spaced Repetition for Chinese: An SRS System That Sticks
The best SRS method for Chinese in 2026: the Reveal, Pass, Again loop, a realistic review cadence, and a daily new-word cap that actually holds up.
- How Spaced Repetition Scheduling Works — the Algorithm Behind Fulin Flashcard
A plain-language look at spaced repetition — how it decides when to show you a flashcard again, and why that beats reviewing cards in a fixed order.