My Vocabulary List
The words you set aside as you learn are all here, and you review them by spaced repetition: a card you know comes back at a longer and longer interval, and one you miss goes straight back to the front.
No sign-up: your list and your progress are kept in this browser, on this device. They are never sent to us — and they will not follow you to another screen. Export them to take them with you.
This browser does not allow local storage: your list cannot be kept here. It works as soon as the site data is allowed, or in an ordinary window.
This list and your progress are saved in this browser only. Nothing goes to our servers and nothing is tied to an account: it all lives in the local memory of the device you are using right now.
Clearing the cache or the site data erases it for good, and it will follow you neither to another browser, nor to another device. Export it regularly — the CSV file is the only backup there is, and it is also what lets you pick your list up elsewhere.
Your list is empty. Look a word up in the dictionary and click the star at the end of its line to add it.
My review deck
Your cards and your progress stay in this browser, with no account and no sign-up. Come back to them: spacing them out is what makes them stick.
Card 0 of 0
Session over: 0 card(s) reviewed.
0 card(s) still due — a session serves 20 at a time.
How spaced repetition works
We forget most of what we have just learnt within a month. But every time a word is recalled at the moment it was about to fade, it holds on longer. Spaced repetition does nothing else: it places each review just before you would forget, and pushes the following ones further apart as the word settles in.
Here a card climbs seven steps. You knew it: it moves up one step and comes back later — the next day, then after three days, a week, sixteen days, a month and a half, finally four months. You missed it: it drops back to the first step and returns in the next session. A word you have truly learnt ends up asking almost nothing of you, which is the whole point.
A session serves at most 20 cards; the rest waits for the next one. Three minutes a day beats an hour once a month — it is the spacing that makes things stick, not the sitting.
Cards are added from the vocabulary lists, with the “add to my cards” button. They stay in this browser, and so does your progress: no account, no sign-up, nothing sent to the server — and clearing the site data clears both. My vocabulary list shows them all, with their due dates, and knows how to export them together with their progress.
How it works
Each card climbs seven steps. You knew it: it moves up one step and only comes back later — the next day, then after three days, then a week, sixteen days, a month and a half, finally four months. You missed it: it drops back to the first step and returns in the next session. That is the whole point of spacing — seeing a word again just before you forget it costs a second, learning it over again costs ten. And a word you have truly learnt ends up asking almost nothing of you: that is what keeps the list workable as it grows.
A session serves twenty cards at most, and the rest waits for the next one. Three hundred cards shown at once after a holiday do not get reviewed: they get closed. Run one session after another if you have the time — the “review some more” button picks them up in turn.
To add a word, look it up in the dictionary and click the star at the end of its line. The HSK flashcards and the vocabulary lists carry the same button.
Your list lives in this browser, on this device, and so does your progress. Clearing the site data clears both, and neither will follow you to another screen: that is what the CSV export is for — it carries the words together with their progress, opens in a spreadsheet and imports into Anki.
Taking your list with you, or putting it back
Export saves a CSV file of six columns: the Chinese word, its reading and meaning, its reading alone, its review step, its next due date and the date it was added. The first two are the ones Anki expects, and the file opens in any spreadsheet.
Import reads that same file back — on another device, in another browser, or after clearing the site data — and gives each word the step and the due date it had: your progress starts again where it stopped. A file exported back when progress was not in it still imports; its words simply come in at the first step, as before. Words already here are not duplicated and keep the progress they have in this browser: your current list has the last word, never the file. The file is read inside your browser: it is sent nowhere.
The same file opens elsewhere — in a spreadsheet, and in Anki, which takes the first column as the front of the card and the second as the back. Your progress, however, only comes back by importing the file here again: Anki schedules its own reviews and has nowhere to put our steps and due dates.