Our Blog has launched!
The official Hack Chinese Blog is now live!
Whenever possible, we will bake learning best-practices into the Hack Chinese app itself.
But oftentimes, your learning outcomes are influenced by decisions you make outside the realm of software. These are the types of articles we will publish.
Which brings us to the first post: 6 questions to ask when choosing a Chinese language school
We are a small startup, so every share/like makes a difference!
Happy reading!
Revamped Focus View
The interface of Focuses has changed substantially. This is part one of a two-part change. The next change will enable you to see which words -- within a specific Focus -- are at which mastery levels & memory strength.
New Study Mode: Cramming
Spaced repetition is best for steadily increasing your knowledge while maintaining strong memories of everything you've studied.
But if you're about to sit for an examination, or discuss a specific case with a teacher, doubling-down on specific knowledge (even if none of your memories are predicted to be 'weak' yet) can be tremendously useful.
Here are the differences:
| SRS (Spaced Repetition) |
Cramming | ||
| When should I use? | Every day | Only when required | |
| What will I study in a single study session? | Words from your entire vocabulary and every Focus you have queued | Words from a single Focus only | |
| What is the priority of content I will see? | 1. Weak memories 2. New words |
1. Weak memories 2. New words 3. Strong memories (sorted: weakest first) |
To cram, navigate to a specific Focus and click 'Cram'.
Textbooks!
New Shortcut Key for "Pause"
For desktop users, 'spacebar' has been added as a shortcut key to pause study sessions.
As a reminder, desktop users should be forgetting about the mouse while studying, and getting into 'flow' with right arrow (positive response), left arrow (negative response), and down arrow (memorization confirmation).
Focus Navigation: Breadcrumbs
A new 'breadcrumb' navigation system has been introduced to Focuses which should hasten your search to find the Focuses you're interested in.
UI Polish
Certain interactions would cause the interface to "jump" several pixels while navigating on a desktop. We've eliminated these at most window sizes, but will continue to polish in the future.
Bugfix: Progress Widget
Progress bars have been visually under-representing the percentage of memories that were strong. This was a cosmetic bug only and has been fixed; all new daily progress bars on your dashboards should be accurate starting tomorrow. No memory calculations were affected.
Focus Completion
When you complete a Focus, it will be removed from your study queue. This has no effect on your learning, but will clean up your dashboard and show the next Focus you are making progress towards completing. This does not affect Personal or Teacher Focuses.
Pinyin-Only
For students who choose not to study characters (On mobile Settings > Learn Characters: Off), your dashboard widgets will also now show Pinyin instead of characters.
Tutorial Videos
We've begun a library of tutorial videos, to help users get the most out of Hack Chinese. On desktop, find these in the dropdown menu. On mobile, check out 'Settings > Tutorials'.
Happy studying!
Preparing to Launch!
On November 1, 2018, Hack Chinese will officially launch.
All of your accounts and learning history will be deleted.
Just kidding :)
We want to extend an enthusiastic THANK YOU to all of the beta testers who have helped us since early May to find bugs, and whose constant feedback and screenshots helped drive improvements. We quite literally could not have done this without you! Your accounts have been marked 'Free Forever'.
We've been overwhelmingly pleased by the user engagement we've seen -- with most students logging in and studying almost every day. Several users have learned well over 1,000 words in just three months -- just a little over 10 words per day on average! Bravo!
Again, thank you, and happy studying!
What's next?
The core of Hack Chinese was always meant to be a world-class spaced repetition system, tailor-made specifically for Mandarin Chinese.
We've now accomplished that goal. But as far as we are concerned, we are just getting started.
We have a very long list of value-added features to investigate, but as we head towards the end of the year, we have three major development focuses:
Stay tuned for more! Happy Halloween!
Algorithm Adjustments
Student Dashboard
Progress Chart on Dashboard
Each day, the number of words you know is recorded, as well as what percentage of those memories are strong.
The gray portion of each bar represents weak memories. When you study each day, you only have a chance to learn new words once you have refreshed all of your weak memories.
Many students are learning over 100 words per week (two students are learning over 200 per week!) while keeping their entire vocabulary strong. This is the power of spaced repetition!
If you are studying every day but the total number of words you know is not going up as fast as you thought -- rest assured your mastery of known words is increasing (check your memory quality widget). This means that your current vocabulary will require less and less time to maintain -- which will free you up to learn new words!
Happy studying!
Pinyin-only Mode
For students learning Pinyin only, an option to turn off learning characters is now available. On mobile, go to Settings and use the toggle at the bottom of the screen.
We will be listing major changes to hackchinese in this space from now on.
Students
Teachers
