After 5 month break - should I start again from scratch or set a review limit?

HanziHero
1

I started using HanziHero last November and kept at it pretty much everyday (10 items / day daily lesson limit) until March this year when I went on holiday for a fortnight. I really enjoyed HanziHero and unlike earlier attempts at learning Chinese characters, I could feel myself learning more than I’ve ever learnt before.

I thought I would continue studying whilst on holiday so I didn’t set vacation mode but I ended up doing absoutely nothing on holiday. (I learnt my lesson - bring a laptop rather than a tablet next time!) When I came back, I didn’t know how to get back into it and I haven’t done anything for almost 5-6 months since I came back in March.

Looking at the dashboard, I currently have 869 reviews waiting; I’m at level 9 (68 sounds, 247 components, 259 characters and 295 words); my SRS stage distribution consists of 1 novice, 20 apprentice, 181 journeyman and 667 expert; and I’ve covered 259 out of 300 for HSK 1.

I was wondering if anyone has any ideas of how best to pick this up again ? Given that I haven’t touched HanziHero since March (and presumably forgotten a lot), should I simply start everything again so as to ensure that I’m not progressing even though I’ve forgotten things ? Or should I set a daily review limit in the settings and just trust that the algorithmn will work out by itself what I still know and what I have forgotten ?

Many thanks in advance for any advice!

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Welcome back!

We’ve since updated our SRS algorithm to handle situations like this :slight_smile: the time you’ve been away is accounted for if you get it correct, otherwise it’ll be handled as if you picked it up yesterday when you get it wrong.

There are a few threads on others tackling mountains of reviews when coming back. What seems to work best is as you suggest, setting a daily review limit and getting back into the habit. If you ever feel you have more energy after you do your limit of, say, 100 reviews, then you can click on the greyed out Reviews button in the dashboard to jump into another session.

Generally the roughest part about starting again is getting through the items you were just learning before you took a break, as those are likely forgotten :grimacing: If you feel you even forgot most of your expert items, then a reset could be an option. But for now I think your best bet is to set the review limit and go from there :+1:

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Great! Thank you very much! I’ll give it a go and fall back on a reset only if required. :smiling_face:

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Oh yeah, by the way I heavily recommend taking advantage of the “Recent Mistakes” for extra exposure to the ones that aren’t sticking :slight_smile:

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