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FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

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What is spaced repetition?

Cramming before an exam is not as effective as studying material spaced out over a longer time span – this phenomenon is called the "spacing effect".

Spaced repetition or spaced rehearsal is a learning technique that takes advantage of the spacing effect by applying increasing time intervals between subsequent reviews of previously learned material.

If you use a computer to do spaced repetition, the study material will be organized into flashcards. A flashcard has a front side (a question) and a reverse side (an answer). The front side (the question) is shown to the user first, and the user thinks of the answer. After the user has thought of the answer, the reverse side is revealed and the user rates his answer (e.g. hard, easy, no clue). The time of next review for a flashcard is set by a spaced repetition algorithm based on this rating. Thus, flashcards (questions) with a high difficulty rating show up more frequently for review, whereas easy-to-answer flashcards (questions) come up less frequently.

What are the downsides of spaced repetition?

Spaced repetition algorithms are typically designed to deal with atomized and randomized study material. This is fine for those who focus on expanding their vocabulary, but might not be sufficient for those who hold that language learning is not necessarily about memorizing disconnected information.

Moreover, conventional spaced repetition deals with fairly static study material – the material goes unchanged throughout the study process, therefore the user might find repeating the same flashcards somewhat boring.

How is dynamic repetition different from regular spaced repetition?

DynaRep aims to address some problems related to spaced repetition. As to studying Chinese, our study material is organized into 3 modules:

The HSK courses module lets you memorize words and related example sentences that are given for each meaning of a given word. The HSK courses module utilizes dynamic repetition (cards are created in four card phases as described below). Cards in this module are word cards and sentence cards.
The Grammar module contains audio sentences grouped according to grammar patterns and utilizes conventional spaced repetition (that is, the course contains audio sentence cards only). Sentences in the corresponding HSK grammar levels are given using the corresponding HSK vocabulary. Ideally, the Grammar module should be studied after the corresponding HSK level vocabulary has been mastered. Moreover, this module is ideal for long-term HSK vocabulary review, for it covers both the relevant vocabulary and grammar patterns.
The Character writing module contains characters from the relevant HSK courses in the order of their appearance in the HSK courses module. The Character writing module offers character writing practice, but no word or sentence writing practice. As an exception to this rule, if a new word on the HSK vocabulary list introduces two or more new characters, the word itself is placed on the character card instead of splitting the characters into separate cards. This module is based on conventional spaced repetition, which we believe is an extremely powerful tool for studying character writing. Cards in this module are referred to as character cards.

The dynamic repetition technique comprises four card phases and consists of word-sentence strings:

first you study and review a word (e.g., the Chinese word 爱 – to love)
then you move on to the next card phase and try to recall what the word for "to love" in Chinese is
then by moving on to the third card phase you read sentences in Chinese for every meaning of the word 爱,
finally, in the fourth card phase you listen to the sentences from the third card phase.

As you move along the string onto the next card phase, the cards belonging to the previous card phase become inactive, therefore, by default, at the end of the string you will only have sentences left to review. We find it evident that repeatedly reviewing, passively or actively memorizing sentences rather than words is a more effective way to study a language. You will grasp the context, memorize set expressions and learn to construct sentences intuitively. In the HSK courses module the repetition intervals in each card phase are set by a spaced repetition algorithm. You can choose which card phases to study, so, for example, by turning off card phases (2)-(4), dynamic repetition is turned into conventional spaced repetition.

How is DynaRep’s study material organized?

Unlike a desktop-based spaced repetition software where you create your own flashcards or download courses shared by other users, our study material is created by us and continually improved and expanded by the user community. Please note that due to the dynamic repetition format, flashcards cannot be randomly added to the study material and, as a result, users are not able to create or add their own flashcards.

We have provided relevant and short example sentences for each word meaning. The number of word meanings are capped at five on every word card.

There are 150 words on the HSK1 and HSK2 vocabulary lists each, 300 words on the HSK3 vocabulary list and 600 words on the HSK4 vocabulary list, respectively. The HSK1 and HSK2 vocabulary is split into 4 courses: HSK1.1, HSK1.2, HSK2.1 and HSK2.2, each of which consist of 75 words and related sentences. The HSK3 vocabulary is split into 3 courses, 100 words each, HSK4 vocabulary is split into 4 courses, 150 words each. Each word meaning is accompanied by an example sentence and linked up with the word in dynamic repetition format.

There are around 1500 example sentences throughout all courses in the HSK courses module. All example sentences are built from the corresponding HSK vocabulary lists (e.g., example sentences in the HSK1.1 course are based on the HSK1 vocabulary list only – the HSK 1.1 course therefore uses words from the HSK 1.2 course as well). Occasionally, we took the liberty to use words from higher level courses, in these cases we have duly noted the meanings of these words.

What features are provided by DynaRep?

Each card in HSK and Grammar courses 1-4 contains audio, pinyin and translation.
Word cards in the first card phase provide a hint: the number of separate meanings of a given word.
Word meanings are displayed in random order.
The option to display either simplified or traditional characters or both.
The option to display/hide pinyin and translations on sentence cards.
The option to list the word-sentence strings of a given card and exclude these strings from repetition. You cannot exclude one word or one particular sentence from repetition, instead you should move on to the next card phase and the card will become inactive. However, you might check what sentences are linked to the word as example sentences in the word-sentence string and you might opt to exclude the whole string. Similarly, you cannot suspend individual cards unless they belong to the highest card phase (fourth card phase by default).
The option to list all words that contain a character the given word card or character card (card in the Character writing module) consists of. At some point you will likely feel overwhelmed by the number of Chinese characters popping up and have difficulties recalling which of the previously studied words contain the same character. This feature is a convenient way to get a quick review of these words.
Cards can be flagged and comments added. Comments, card notes do not clutter the screen, instead you will see an icon the next time the card is reviewed and will be able to check any comments you have made in a pop-up window. Comments are for your personal use, flagging is for marking cards which you want to ask questions about. You can view a list of your flagged cards and discuss them with someone else, or – if you are a holder of an account that is linked up to a teacher account – the teacher can read your flag’s notes and answer your questions.
Progress statistics can be viewed by clicking on the "My progress" button.
Mistakes can be reported to the admin. You can report translation mistakes, pinyin or note mistakes, suggest adding another word meaning or better example sentence, etc. via the "Report mistake" button. We appreciate your reports and will correct any mistakes.

The card listings view is currently under development. Users will be able to list commented, flagged, suspended cards, and unsuspend cards in the card listings view.

How to get started with DynaRep?

Find the course appropriate for your level! We suggest starting with "generating" and "resetting" courses in the fourth card phase in the HSK courses module in order to test your listening comprehension and see what level you are currently at. After you have found you level, feel free to experiment with "generating" and "resetting" courses with different card phase settings.

The first card phase focuses on Chinese word memorization, while the second card phase focuses on recalling these words in Chinese by showing their English translations on the front of the card. In the third card phase, you will read sentences containing the words from the previous card phases, while in the fourth card phase, you will improve your listening comprehension by listening to the sentences from the third card phase.

In our opinion, the most difficult card phase to study is the second, the most important is the fourth. If you think that four card phases are too much to cope with, reset the course with modified settings (for example, select the second and fourth card phase only). Note that by resetting the course you will lose all prior review data in the course (including your comments and flags).

You may choose to master the HSK1 vocabulary before you move on to sentence cards in the third and fourth card phases. In this case, you could, for instance, generate the HSK1.1 and HSK1.2 courses with word cards only (first and/or second card phase), then reset these two courses with sentence cards only (third and/or fourth card phase).

Please be aware that there is no "undo" button and moving onto the next card phase will inactivate the card, you will not be able to access it anymore. However, we suggest not waiting too long before moving on to the next card phase, you shouldn’t keep reviewing a card until you are perfectly familiar with it, as you will still be repeating the same information but in a different way. Clicking on the "next card phase" button brings up the related card in this next card phase after 1 hour has passed.

Resetting a course will also result in losing all review data in the course. Again, this data loss should not be a problem given that you have reset the course with different card phase settings - you will still be repeating the same information but in a different way.

Account and data deletion

User accounts that have not logged in for more than 90 days are deleted with all review data, as we have to keep the database size under control.

Why do cards need to be “generated” in our courses?

DynaRep is an extensively database-driven website, cards are not pre-made, instead they are custom-created when you click on the “generate” course button. Each card represents a row of data in our database and we must be data-conscious when it comes to the overall number of rows, as the database runs server-side. Therefore, we kindly ask you not to generate courses that are of no interest to you, or delete such courses, as the case may be. Currently, we do not impose limitations on the number of courses users can generate.

Teacher/student accounts

Teacher accounts are free as well but we will require teacher account holders to contribute to expanding DynaRep’s study material either by participating in creating HSK5 courses or by translating the existing material into other languages. What we have in mind is an overall contribution of 1.5-2 hours of work. Teacher account holders can link up with an unlimited number of student accounts and are valid for 1 year.

DynaRep in language teaching

We believe that spaced repetition - and more specifically: dynamic repetition – is a powerful tool that should be extensively utilized not only in language self-study, but language teaching as well. After all, a great deal of language studying is about memorization.

We are able to render the language study material of a language school or institution into DynaRep’s dynamic repetition or spaced repetition format. Naturally, study materials in any language can be processed in these formats and DynaRep can operate with modules other than our current three modules. Study materials need to be preprocessed before they can be uploaded to DynaRep. The uploaded material is protected from downloading and exporting, and can be accessed only by users that hold accounts handed out by the school or institution.

Technical notes

Please make sure that your browser is updated and responsive.

Each card’s audio is played back by your browser. Our audio files are in AAC (m4a) format. Apart from Opera Mini, all desktop and mobile browsers should support m4a audio playback without installing an additional plugin. However, iOS Safari browsers block audio auto-playback and require an explicit user input for audio files to be played back. This affects the fourth card phase in the HSK courses module (audio sentence listening) and all cards in the Grammar module. Therefore, iOS Safari users will have to press the “replay audio” button when reviewing these cards in order for the audio to be played back.

The average size of an audio file is ca. 10 Kb, therefore 100 reviews will amount to ca. 1 Mb of audio data transfer.

DynaRep is built using Bootstrap, therefore it is optimized for mobile and tablet devices. DynaRep mobile apps will be developed, until then you will have to make do with Bootstrap’s mobile optimization.