SRS should be a bit different in my opinion

[H_7]

So I just started using HanziHero about two weeks ago. I’ve been wanting to start learning Chinese alongside Japanese and Korean. I use WaniKani for Japanese and it’s amazing. I was having a hard time finding the right app/website for Chinese that works as well as WaniKani.

I did try Pandanese and it’s relativley okay but still not as good as it could be. Then I came across HanziHero and it is exactly like WaniKani which is amazing because WK works very well for me and I’m used to it and I think I can’t use anything else instead for that language.

However…

I realy don’t like the way the SRS is. So to make you understand what I mean, I’m gonna compare it to the one on WK.

So on WK the SRS works like this:

Apprentice 1 → 4 hours → Apprentice 2
Apprentice 2 → 8 hours → Apprentice 3
Apprentice 3 → 1 day → Apprentice 4
Apprentice 4 → 2 days → Guru 1
Guru 1 → 1 week → Guru 2
Guru 2 → 2 weeks → Master
Master → 1 months→ Enlightened
Enlightened → 4 months → Burned

So let’s say I learn a character for 人. I learn it today at any time of the day and the first review is gonna be after 4 hours. If i get it correct it’s gonna go to apprentice 2. If I don’t get it correct it stays as apprentice 1. So let’s say I get it correct and it levels up to apprentice 2, then the next time that character is gonna show up for reviewing is in 8 hours and it’s gonna level up to level 3. Now to get it to apprentice 4 from apprentice 3 I would need to wait 24 h or 1 day for it to show up in my reviews again and so on according to the table above.

I like how that works because it makes me remember the chracters/words/ readings/meanings better since it is nicely spaced out. Not too frequent but also not too far apart. On HH it’s not that way. I can only do my reviews once a day and if I learned a lot over tha past week that is gonna be a lot of reviews at the same time/hour of the day. I think it should be spaced hourly like on WK for beter memorization.

This is the SRS on HH:

Novice 1 - 1 day
Novice 2 - 4 days
Apprentice 1 - 1 week
Apprentice 2 - 2 weeks
Journeyman 1 - 1 month
Journeyman 2 - 2 months
Expert 1 - 4 months
Expert 2 - 8 months
Expert 3 - 1 year

Let’s take the same character from before, 人. So I learn it today and the first review for it is gonna be tomorrow/24 hours??? and then after 4 days/96 hours??? but only IF i get it correct. Okay that character is easier but what about the harder ones?? How in the world can anyone remember that?

That is a huge difference considering that Chinese is a bit harder to learn than Japanese and it’s gonna be a very slow process. It’s just way to streched and makes it harder for me to remember characters/words and their meaning and reading and not to mention the tones (the components are not hard to remeber tho since you only need to rember the meaning).

So how about we make the SRS like this:

Novice 1 → 4 hours → Novice 2
Novice 2 → 8 hours → Apprentice 1
Apprentice 1 → 1 day → Apprentice 2
Apprentice 2 → 2 days → Journeyman 1
Journeyman 1 → 1 week → Journeyman 2
Journeyman 2 → 2 weeks → Expert 1
Expert 1 → 1 month → Expert 2
Expert 2 → 2 months → Expert 3
Expert 3 → 4 months → Master

I mean if you’re gonna copy another website in pretty much everything, might as well make the SRS the same if not better (no hate intended I love that the layout is the same as WK and I wish I could find something like that for Korean mainly for aesthetics but also SRS).

Now I now somebody’s gonna say that I should use the extra study session where I can review the recent mistakes and recently learned things but WK has that same thing which I don’t use cause I don’t need it because of the great SRS. I do use the extra study on HH exactly before doing the actualy reviews because I know that I won’t remember any characters or words that are in reviews and therefore won’t advance. It’s cheating I know but I have no other option.

I find it better to have a more frequent reviews which will actually get me further on the SRS stages and help me remember better than to do reviews on the side and still be on novice 1 or 2 after 2 weeks. It’s more motivating and makes me actually do the reviews cause I know I would achieve something even if I fail it’s gonna come back in a few hours instead of 1 day so I can review it again and hopefully get it right because I’m gonna remember that I messed up and I’m gonna learn from my mistakes. I don’t even have time to do that extra study throughout the day but I CAN AND WOULD make time for actual reviews because it’s gonna get me somewhere. I ocasionally check on WK if I have any reviews due or not and do them if I have any.

I also have an extension on tampermonkey for my browser on PC that someone made for WK where it shows me a notification when I have the reviews (I don’t have it for phone tho). I wish someone would make the same for HH but only when the SRS gets fixed (I would make it myself but I’m dumb).

I really love this website and am very glad that I found it because of how similar it is to WK but that SRS NEEDS TO GET BETTER!!

Thank you!!

[akitak9821]

Personally, I understand this sentiment when you’re just starting out. That’s why I dropped Pandanese because their SRS was horrifically slow (like 2-3x slower than HZH). But the content here adds up pretty quickly once you’re a couple months in. If going with the SRS you propose, you’d eventually have 100s (plural) of reviews every single day, and it’d be overwhelming.

When I used Wanikani, I did like the fact that the immediately learned stuff had more frequent reviewing, but I think hitting master after 4 months kind of overstating the mastery of it. Granted after 4 months you didn’t have to worry about seeing it again and so it didn’t stack up as much, but imagine stepping away for just 3-4 days without putting on vacation mode. At the moment on HZH, I’m at around 1250 items (not counting added dictionary items) and getting about 50-100 items to review per day as-is. When I left Wanikani, I was at around 800 characters.

But with HZH, it’s probably for the best that you reencounter certain words and characters at the 8 month and 1 year mark, especially if they’re rarer words so that if you do forget it, it comes back up with more frequency (since imo if you don’t encounter a word in 8 months and you forgot it, which is likely, it should recirculate).

[kevin]

Hello, and thanks for the feedback.

Most of the feedback we get around our SRS usually goes in the opposite direction: leveraging the cutting-edge around memory and spaced repetition and integrating something like FSRS. Most of our current intervals are roughly based on “Low-Key Anki” settings which were and are popular in the language learning community, but even the originators of that have moved onto FSRS as well! I think in the long run, we will probably head in that direction, instead.

It must be remembered that HanziHero and WaniKani share a similarity in teaching characters through mnemonics, but on closer inspection the similarity sort of stops at that. This is to be expected as Chinese and Japanese are completely different languages. The best comparison is that the needs of one learning Latin and Modern English are similarly different, despite the fact that they share the same writing system!

Given that you are looking at things through a WK lens, I can point out some important differences that also show why we do things quite differently:

1. In HanziHero, by default one does not need to wait for all the components (radicals in WK parlance) to reach a certain SRS stage in order to learn the related characters. (However, this can be turned on if desired). Because of this, there is no need to rearrange one’s life around the SRS intervals in order for the system to work at a reasonable pace. (Their claim of someone being able to learn 2k in a year is from someone who hyper-optimized their life in this manner). Likewise, there is no need for shortened intervals in order to get around the limitations imposed by such restrictions.
2. We do not have a level system, as there is no pedagogical reason to prevent those who are having some trouble with character A from learning character B just because B is one level ahead. There is a reason to prevent someone to learn word AC if they are struggling with A, so we still have that sort of character-word guardrails in place, however. Since there is no artificial limiting of progress based on the SRS stage of certain items, we similarly avoid another need for shortened intervals that would allow only the dedicated to proceed at a reasonable pace.
3. One can also learn characters in any order, as we have a way of “prioritizing” characters and words to make them show up in the queue when you need them, instead of waiting around for them to show up many levels down the road. Since one does not need to speed through the system to learn what they want, we once again avoid the need for over-aggressive intervals.
4. Our mnemonics also include pronunciation information within them in a way that one can reliably get the full pronunciation from the mnemonic. This lessens the need for excessive reviews to force one to learn the pronunciation through brute force or through English-approximation “mnemonics” that are separate from the main “meaning mnemonic”.
5. The number of Chinese characters to learn - and words that use those characters - is much larger than Japanese. Having a SRS system that over-schedules something will make HanziHero too overwhelming, as we will be approaching 4k+ characters and ~10k words by the end of this year. Our earlier intervals were more aggressive with scheduling and was one of the major complaints we got from users until we adopted a more “standard” set of intervals (which as I mentioned, we may make even more spaced out, when possible, via FSRS in the future).

I hope that gives some better insight as to why things are the way they are. In my personal view, the SRS is less important than people think. One can have a hyper-optimized world-class SRS system attached to subpar material that teaches things poorly, and one would still fail to learn anything. This is because the mechanism of learning is through the material, not through the SRS. Similarly, one can have a less-optimized SRS system attached to a good collection of cards and actually make progress. The key is more in the pedagogy and less in the technology.

[H_7]

I think you kinda missed the point. I don’t mind having a lot of items to review in a day as long as they are spaced out throughout the day and not at the same damn time/hour as they currently are. I can learn pretty quickly and having over 200 things to review a day is not that bad as long as it’s not all at the same time. The more the merrier but evenly spaced out.

[H_7]

The only thing I’m asking for is this:

That’s my review forcast on WK.

And this one is on HH:

It doesn’t look like much throughout the week but I curently have 40 reviews which is fine but I don’t know how many I’m gonna get right because they are not frequent enough. The ones that I get wrong will only be available for reviewing again tomorrow instead a few hour later. Plus if I do lessons everyday it’s gonna pile up. While this probably works for some people, reviewing once a day just doesn’t work for me. You don’t have to change the entire thing, but maybe adding it as an option in settings to turn on more frequent reviews throughout the day. Everybody learns differently and we can’t all work in the same way.

Please consider it.

[pedrozurawski]

If you use your time wisely you will find the characters that you learn here in context in your study material. As great a resource as HH is, it is only one of many that should be used.

I believe that if you just start the system and manage to keep up you will find that what is bothering you now will soon become a non issue.

[KhalilK97]

Excited to hear that FSRS is being seriously considered. Ive been contemplating whether or not I want to continue my sub since I got migaku lifetime and am now using HH exclusively for unknown characters in mined sentences. Reduced review load via FSRS would make it a no-brainer for me

[H_7]

You’re all missing my point. Having a lot of reviews a day is not hard. I had a lot of reviews on WK (over 500 almost every day) but then I stopped studying for personal reasons and had to reset the progress because I didn’t study for half a year, so I’m on level 3 now and don’t have many reviews yet. I still remember most things because the SRS is made to make you remember easily. Those reviews were spaced out throughout the day and yeah sometimes I didn’t have time to do them throughout the day so they all pilled up together when I did them in the evening. But even tho I had 500 reviews I was able to remember a lot of them because when I just learned them they were coming up in my reviews frequently after 4 h, 8 h, 1 day, 2 days and so on (depending on how accurate I was during the reviews). After a few months or so, they would pile up with the newer items that’s why I had 500 or so of them. Did I get those older ones right? Yes, I did most of them because in the beginning when I just learned them the SRS system made me remember because of how frequently I was reviewing them.

It’s not about remembering it for a few days, but long term. On HH, I can’t even remember them short term (this only applies to characters and vocabulary) because every new item that I learn only comes up to review in 24 hours. If it would come up after 4 hours, 8 hours and then again after 24 hours that would be a different story and would be easier to remember them both short and long term. The frequency would however depend on the accuracy of the first review. If you get it right, the next review is after 8 hours. If you get it wrong it’s gonna come back after 4 hours so you can remember it better.

On Pandanese for example the SRS is actually quite similar to WK. When doing first lessons you get the first review 4 hours after learning and then 8 hours after your first correct review. The problem on there is that the character unlocking is a bit slow so you can go days without new lessons, that’s why I don’t like it.

On HH, if only the first review would be at least that same day that you learn an item and not 24 hours after you learn it. It would be so much easier to remember than having it to review 1 full day after the lesson. If somehow you get it right you won’t see that item in 4 full days. And after those 4 days when it comes up in the reviews let’s say you get it correct and it advances on the next SRS stage, the next time it comes up in the reviews is after 1 full week. So 1 full week of not seeing that characher and your supposed to remember it?? Both meaning and the pronunciation?? And them tones??

But okay let’s say you do the extra study throughout the week where you will have that character to “study”. So you have time to do the extra study but you don’t have time to do reviews a few times a day?? Make it make sense. By having the reviews more frequently you won’t even need the extra study. Maybe only for the harder characters but for most of them probably not. I know I don’t have time for extra study but for reviews I would make time. If I would have a lot of them I would do as much as I can at that time and the rest of them I would do later and by the end of the day I would make sure I did all of my reviews for that day. I’m sure you have brakes throughout the day that you probably use for scrolling through social media (if you don’t that’s amazing). But replacing that scrolling with doing reviews will get you somewhere. Scrolling won’t.

Like I said in the original post, the WK also has extra study and recent mistakes where you can review things but they won’t efect the SRS stages (won’t progress). I don’t use those features because I don’t need them. Some people might need them even tho the reviews are frequent enough to help you remeber. I might need them eventually when I get to harder characters. But for me they are useless and currently empty (the one with mistakes) cause I’m getting things correct. I do remember them from before yes but even if I wouldn’t remember, I wouldn’t do them. I would just wait for them to come up in the reviews. Even if they all come up at the same time in the evening, as long as I have the same characters at an appropriate frequency I can remember them, and after a few days I won’t have those anymore but in a few weeks instead. The people that say that they don’t have time to do reviews a few times a day probably then also don’t have time to do the extra study and recent mistakes as well. How do you remember then?? Okay maybe you have some other learning sources, but again you have time for THAT but don’t have time for reviews??

WK helped me learn a lot on its own with nothing else needed. I do watch animes cause that helps me too and I did buy some books and workbooks to practice writing and stuff and I do that in the evening before bed instead of mindlessly scrolling through social media (can’t do it throughout the day but I can do the reviews during small brakes I have).

HH could also be enough on its own with maybe some passive learning on the side, music or dramas for example. The brain would make the connections between the words that you learn on HH and the music that you listen while going to work or school. But if the brain doesn’t remember the words properly it’s not gonna progress.

Is it really easier for you to have 200 characters at let’s say 5 pm to review all at once, instead of having those 200 spaced out throughout the day?? Let’s say 25 at 8 am then 35 at 11 am and so on every few hours until the end of that day. If you don’t have enough time to do all those 25 reviews at 8 or 11 am, the ones that you don’t manage to do (both meaning and pronunciation) will come up later in the day. But at the end of the day, let’s say 8 pm, you won’t have all 200 anymore but less because you managed to do some of them earlier when you had time. This is when we talk about 200 which, speaking from personal experience, is nothing compared to 500. So let’s say you don’t have time to do them at all throughout the day, but only in the evening when you have some time. You’re gonna have 500 reviews at once. If you had done at least 50 of them earlier in the day, you would have less to review at 8 pm. So you’ll have 450 of them but that is still less than 500. Considering the fact that you’re already tired from whatever you do throughout the day. And you probably just want to go to sleep but you can’t because you have 500 reviews to do. If you don’t do them they will be transferred to tomorrow and if for tomorrow you have scheduled 200 of them, adding these 500 would be 700 reviews all at once. And again if you don’t have time throughout the day, you’ll have to do them in the evening. Are you really able to do all of them at the same time? And get them correct? The ones that you don’t do will get transferred to the next day again. And so on. But having them spaced throughout the day would be easier. You just need to pick your easy. Is it easier to make time for reviews throughout the day or is it easier to do all 700 of them at 8 pm?

The thing is, YOU HAVE TIME. But yeah, I guess it’s easier to say that you don’t.

[kaysik]

@H_7

The thing is, YOU HAVE TIME. But yeah, I guess it’s easier to say that you don’t.

I have time to do more reviews, it’s just not worth my time (and it’s probably not worth yours either). I’m also not seeing anyone say they don’t have time for more reviews, they (and myself) are saying we don’t WANT to do more reviews. Reviews aren’t the goal, they’re a necessary evil on the way to the gaol. If I could learn more with less reviews (which seems likely with FSRS) I would 100% take that option every day of the week.

Personally I actually do spread reviews out exactly like your explaining. A few in the mornings, a few at lunch, then a few later that night. I just don’t feel the need to have HH schedule it for me. I have 100 due today, I can just do 4 sittings of ~25 just fine (or whatever makes sense on the day).

There is also data from the FSRS creators where they analysed millions of reviews, that found that same day reviews made so little difference long term it wasn’t even worth taking into considering in their SRS calculations. Reviewing a card once vs twice vs eight times on the same day has virtually no impact long term. Instead you’re better off looking at a card in-depth any time you don’t remember it - if you get it wrong, review it properly, and if you get it right don’t worry about it. The fact new cards you get right don’t come back in 4 hours in a strength not failing - the data says that extra review is just a waste of everyone’s time and will have made no difference a month+ from now.

Personally I think HH should be just one very tiny part of a good study routine. For me there is no point learning characters if you’re not seeing them in context. So again I’m only speaking for myself here, extra reviews on HH aren’t a big deal if I see it 3x times later that day a story on DuChinese or youtube subtitles etc. Getting more input helps vastly more than spamming more reviews. So I could very easily do more HH reviews, but it’s much more helpful overall to get more input than do more HH than I already do. You clearly feel differently and that’s fine, but just trying to explain why we have vastly differing opinions on the merits of more reviews for new items.

[KhalilK97]

@H_7

The thing is, YOU HAVE TIME.

Sure. Id just rather not waste it doing unnecessary reviews.
Good thing theres an algorithm thats really good at predicting when I’ll forget something!

[akitak9821]

Oo what’s your take on Migaku? I found a free chrome extension that just does the basic subtitle paralleling, and if I wanted to make an account, I could save vocab. Someone plugged Migaku in one of their videos, but given you got a lifetime account it must be worth it? Also, if you don’t mind sharing, what’s your current level with Mandarin in general (just for a reference in considering HZH and migaku).

[KhalilK97]

I think migaku is incredible and it is the only thing I have ever purchased a lifetime subscription for. Insanely dedicated and passionate dev team. The whisper subtitle gen out for youtube on extension/mobile right now is incredible and crazy fast. Local video player with subgen coming to extension and mobile Q1 this year. Reader after that.

Been using it for around 2 months for spanish and mandarin. Been learning spanish since april and still had to watch “late beginner” input videos when i started. I now binge latam dubbed anime and only need reveal the subs every couple minutes or so when I dont understand something. Been doing mandarin since september, my level is lower than my character count implies (thanks to HH) and I didnt take migakus academy courses seriously when I bought lifetime but they’re AMAZING

They have half a dozen full time staff making working on education stuff and their course basically takes the best parts of an anki most common words deck, a grammer deck, and a structured course and blend them together. Also, the dev team is AWESOME. Here’s a screenshot of them replying to a requested feature I made earlier today:

Ik I probably sounds like such a shill but these are my genuine thoughts lol

[bmeri]

I’m not asking for overhauled SRS like you are, but this is one thing I would really enjoy: finer tuned time intervals.

Not just for reviews but for new lessons. Instead of 5 lessons per day, I’d like to do 3 lessons every 12 hours.

[KhalilK97]

You can do effectively the same with the current options.

Set daily limit to 10, set lesson batches to 3, do one batch every 12 hours

[bmeri]

Good point, it definitely works. But for me, it’s a little weird, but I can’t stop myself from doing the lessons. The reason I chose HanziHero over other products is because it is rigid and didactic. You have to answer things correctly, or they don’t advance in SRS. You get served a certain number of lessons every day; no more, no less. I like the rigidity and I’d like a feature that could serve me lessons every X hours and disallow me from doing more.

[KhalilK97]

Yeah I totally agree that more customization would be good. As someone who uses the options in an atypical way myself, it was weird for a few days.