January 2025 Update

By Felipe / Last updated February 4, 2025

I know I wished you a happy New Year last month, but I'll do it again: Happy New Year! 🎉 That's the cool thing about exploring the Chinese culture - you get to celebrate New Year's twice! May the Year of the Snake bring you lots of joy and success. If you want to learn some more about Chinese New Year, check out last year's blog post.

January was a busy month of very intense technical work for us. But it was worth it, because we are now able to present you with a new feature that we are really excited about: Flashcards! Let's check out the details!

Spaced repetition flashcards

You've probably seen or used physical flashcards before. You write a question on one side and the answer on the other. Then you shuffle the cards and go through them, trying to remember the answers.

As the things you learn become a part of your long-term memory, you need to review your flashcards less frequently. This is where spaced repetition systems come in. It's a learning technique that is based on the idea that you should review things just before you forget them. This way, you can optimize your learning time and remember things better.

Doing this manually with your physical flashcards is a bit tricky and that's where digital flashcards come in. They track your progress and show you the cards you need to review next, just at the right time. That means you can focus on the things you need to learn and don't waste time on things you already know.

What we have built

Guess what? The Chill Chinese app now comes with the most advanced science-based spaced repetition flashcard system you can find! And it's available for all users, even on the free plan.

I know this sounds like some big marketing bla bla, but it's actually true. We have implemented the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler (FSRS) algorithm that powers the worlds most popular flashcard app, Anki.

Now you are probably thinking, "Why wouldn't I use Anki instead?" Well, if you are learning for a med school exam, you probably should. But Anki is a general-purpose flashcard app, not specifically designed for learning Chinese.

The Chill Chinese app on the other hand brings together the best tools available, all with the goal of making you get good at Chinese.

How to use the flashcards

Getting started with flashcards is super easy. You can create new flashcards from any dictionary entry by clicking a little button right in the search results. Once you have created a few flashcards, you can switch to the "Flashcards" tab at the bottom to start reviewing them.

Next, you will need to create a test profile, which lets you set up what you want to learn. For example, you can create one test profile to study Chinese -> English and another one to study English -> Chinese. Or English -> Pinyin, or Chinese -> Pinyin, or any other combination you can think of.

That's it, you are ready to start learning! The app will show you the flashcards you need to review next and you can go through them whenever you have a couple of minutes to spare.

When answering a flashcard, you can rate how well you remembered the answer. Based on your rating, the app will decide when to show you the flashcard again. Just make sure to be honest with yourself when rating your answers, so you can get the most out of the system.

That's it. Easy, isn't it?

What's next?

With the basic flashcard functionality available, there are a whole bunch of cool features we want to add.

Extensions to the flashcard system

Here are some of the things we are planning to add:

• Synchronization: Right now, your flashcards are stored locally on your device. We want to add synchronization so you can access your flashcards from any device.

• Stroke order quizzes: We already have stroke order animations and quizzes inside the dictionary. The logical next step is to make the same functionality available in the flashcards. That is going to make you good at writing Chinese characters in no time!

• More test modes: Want to specifically study tones? Or listening comprehension? There are a lot of different ways to learn Chinese and we want to support all of them.

iOS support

Besides these extensions to the flashcard system, there is one more big feature in the works: iOS support! We know that many of you are using iPhones and iPads and we want to make Chill Chinese available to you as well.

Together with the mentioned extensions to the flashcard system, this is going to be super cool. Imagine creating flashcards on your computer during an online tutor lesson, reviewing the pinyin and definitions on your phone late on while waiting for the bus, and at night you practice writing the characters on your iPad.

So we have got some exciting stuff going on. Stay tuned!

Get involved

Are you encountering any issues with the app? Or is there some functionality that you would like to see? It is really important to get feedback from our users, so please let us know!

If you are enjoying the app, we would be thrilled to see your review on the Google Play Store. And of course tell your friends about it 😊

See you next time!