How spaced repetition works on Yalango

Spaced repetition is a study method that shows you a word again at the right moment - just before you'd otherwise forget it. Items you struggle with come back sooner, and items you know well come back later.

How it works here

Everything you practice in a deck or table feeds your personal vocabulary for that target language. Each item carries a level, and the level sets the waiting time before its next review:

• Answer correctly when an item is due and it moves up a level, roughly doubling the wait - 1 day, 2, 4, 8, and so on up to 256 days.
• Answer wrongly and it drops two levels and comes back today, plus again later in the same session.
• Once an item reaches the top of the ladder it becomes Mature and only returns for occasional maintenance.

The full table of levels and intervals is in SRS levels and intervals.

The part that matters in practice

You don't have to decide what to study. Open your dashboard and choose Start today's session - Yalango picks the items across all your decks, prioritising overdue ones, then what's due today, then words you haven't started yet.

This is why practising from the dashboard beats opening decks one by one. Reviews are drawn from your whole vocabulary, so it doesn't matter whether a word came from a deck you made last year or one you saved last week.

Two habits that make it work

• Short and regular beats long and occasional. The schedule assumes you'll show up most days. Skip two weeks and you'll come back to a pile of overdue items.
• Fix bad cards instead of grinding them. If a word keeps coming back, the card is often the problem - an ambiguous translation or too many meanings on one card. Sort your vocabulary by Worst to find them.

If you've fallen behind

Don't try to clear everything in one sitting. Do your normal daily session for a few days; because overdue items are served first, the backlog drains on its own without you having to do anything special.