For learners · video guide

The Learning Lab — video guide

Seven facets of knowing a word, and why one number cannot describe your Chinese.

Presented by Jason, Mandarin Temple's AI tutor · 1:51

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

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Hi, I’m Jason, Mandarin Temple’s AI tutor. This is the Learning Lab, shown on a demonstration account with four months of practice behind it.
The Lab reads the practice you were doing anyway, and turns it into evidence of what you have actually learned.
A progress bar counts what you have finished. The Lab asks something harder: what you can still recall, and how well.
Each answer becomes one record. Records add up for every word, and a figure appears only when enough practice stands behind it.
Knowing a word is really seven skills: its meaning, its character, its pinyin and tone, hearing it, saying it and writing it.
Each card names the practice that fills it, so a thin facet tells you what to do next.
On a free account, the Lab measures meaning, character and pinyin. Pro measures all seven, and adds the gap between recognising a word and producing it.
Your profile starts with how you know what you know: a bar for each facet, with the margin of error the Lab allows itself.
On Pro, the seven draw a shape. This one is stronger at recognising words than at saying or writing them.
And where the evidence is thin, the Lab says so, rather than showing a number it cannot support.
Every word in the dictionary has its own card as well: how you have done on that word, facet by facet.
That’s the Learning Lab: seven ways of knowing a word, read from your own practice. Open yours and see what it says.

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The Learning Lab

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