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Flashcards and spaced repetition

rì jī yuè lěi — “Day by day, month by month, it accumulates”

How the review schedule decides what you see today, and why skipping days costs more than it saves.

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October 9, 2026

Written and maintained by the Mandarin Temple Editorial Team.

Spaced repetition is the difference between having met a word and knowing it. The deck here schedules each card for the moment you are about to forget it, which is both the least work and the most durable result. This article is how to use it without fighting it.

Without a plan: 20 reviews a day

Pro adds: No daily ceiling

Watch: Flashcards and spaced repetition

1 min 30 s · presented by Jason, Mandarin Temple's AI tutor

Captions are part of the picture, under Jason. The full transcript is below.

Captions file (WebVTT)
Read the transcript
  1. Hi, I’m Jason, Mandarin Temple’s AI tutor. Here’s how flashcards work: you save a word, and it comes back just as your memory of it starts to fade.
  2. Your deck lives on the flashcards page. It shows how many cards are due today, and how many you have in all.
  3. Reviewing is free with an account, up to twenty cards a day. Pro, like this account, has no daily limit.
  4. Words come from the dictionary, from a lesson’s new words, or from a deck you import from Pleco or Anki.
  5. To add one, open the word in the dictionary and select Add to Flashcard Practice.
  6. When a card is due, you see the word on its own. Try to recall it first, then reveal the answer.
  7. Then grade yourself honestly: Again, Hard, Good or Easy. Your grade decides when the card comes back.
  8. If you miss one, reveal it and choose Again, and it comes back later in this same session.
  9. And a word you no longer want can be taken out of your deck, once its answer is showing.
  10. That’s your deck: a few minutes a day, and reviewing never costs a credit. Open your flashcards and see what’s due.

Open the video guide on its own page, with its key moments

How it works

  1. Add a word — From a dictionary entry, from a lesson’s vocabulary section, or from the popup that opens when you tap any character on the site — or bring a whole deck from Pleco, Anki or a list (import your deck).
  2. See it when it is due — The deck shows you what is scheduled for today. Not everything you know — only what is close to slipping.
  3. Grade your memory honestly — Again, Hard, Good or Easy. Your rating sets when the card returns, so an inflated grade only hides the word until you have genuinely lost it.
  4. Let the interval grow — A word you keep getting right comes back in days, then weeks, then months. One you keep missing comes back tomorrow.
A three-column row on the flashcards page. Column 01, ‘Add Words’: browse the dictionary and tap any word to add it to your flashcard deck, words tagged with HSK level and frequency. Column 02, ‘Review Daily’: each day the FSRS algorithm surfaces the cards you are most likely to forget. Column 03, ‘Master & Grow’: as you answer correctly intervals grow longer, difficult cards appear more often. Each column has a small red icon above its heading.
The page states the loop in three stages rather than four. Grading gets no column of its own, but it is the input behind everything the third one describes — intervals only move when you grade a card; nothing lengthens on its own.
The front of a flashcard on a white panel: the single character 比, a small round white button with a red speaker icon beneath it, then three buttons in a row — Speak with a microphone icon and Write with a pencil icon, both dimmed, and Reveal with an eye icon. Under the card, a grey line reads ‘Speak, write, or reveal — then grade your recall. The algorithm adapts.’ No pinyin, meaning or rating buttons are on screen.
The landing page’s demo card: the character alone, with Speak and Write greyed out and only Reveal live. In the real deck all three work — two are attempts, the third is a surrender. Again, Hard, Good and Easy are not drawn until you reveal, so you never grade a card whose answer is still hidden.

Why the intervals look odd

The scheduling uses FSRS, which models how memory for a specific card decays for a specific person, rather than applying a fixed multiplier to everyone.

The practical effect is that two words you learned on the same day can end up weeks apart, and that is correct — one of them is a word you find easy and the other is not. Do not try to even them out.

Fitting it into a day

  • Review before new material, not after — Review is the part that decays if postponed. New words will still be there in twenty minutes; a lapsed card will have cost you the interval.
  • Finish the queue — A short complete session beats a long partial one — cards left undone roll into tomorrow and the pile grows.
  • Do not add fifty words at once — Every card you add today is a review you owe tomorrow, and the day after. Adding a lesson’s worth is sustainable; adding a wordlist in one go is not — which is why an import lets you choose how many new words arrive each day.
  • Come back after a gap without clearing the backlog — If you have been away, do a normal-sized session rather than the whole pile. The schedule recovers on its own.

What it costs

Flashcards cost no credits on any plan — scheduling is arithmetic, not AI, so reviewing never touches your balance.

A free account reviews 20 cards a day, which resets at your own midnight rather than at some server's. Pro and Pro Plus remove the ceiling. The daily count is of distinct cards, so a word you rate *Again* and drill a second time in the same session only costs you one.

The number of cards due is always the true one, whatever your plan — if forty are waiting and you can start twenty, the page says both rather than quietly showing you the smaller figure.

Common questions

No. No AI is involved in scheduling or grading a card — the whole deck is free to use as often as you like once your plan includes it.

Continue learning

Import your deck from Anki or PlecoBring the words you already study — from Pleco, Anki or a list — into your flashcards, and take them out again.Your study planHow the calendar builds a week around your goals and available time, and how to change it.The Learning LabSeven facets of knowing a word, and why one number cannot describe your Chinese.Using the dictionarySearch 21,000+ entries by character, pinyin or meaning, and read everything a single entry holds.