Oh should Lex the Lion remind you about taking Flexi Classes?
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Good idea, some Lex push notifications might be a really cool addition to Flexi.
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We are a web app not an app so we can’t send push notifications 
You can send push notifications through a browser (we’ve done it before for ltl-school.com) but just general ones. Personalised is a lot more difficult and I’d imagine not an easy project.
One for the future we can look into perhaps.
It was much easier than I thought to bring down my 1100 or so. A little patience (two weeks) and a longer session now and then.
“Weak” doesn’t necessarily mean you really don’t know the words. And there were so many which I only needed to meet them once again to feel safe again. It was a real pleasure to click through the big bunch of safe words.
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Yes, let’s give Lex some personality and a sense of humour. What do we know about Lex? How old is he? Is he cute or sarcastic? What are his favourite foods and colours? Does he have alternative outfits to buy, like Duo has for supercharged subscribers? (seriously, people pay points to change Duo’s outfit). Maybe Lex changes outfit when a new badge is earnt or a test is completed (there’s another idea, for LTL Flexiclasses to have tests or exams).
LTL subscribers could choose to be sent a reminder email every day at a certain time, like 8 p.m. with a reminder to take a class, or a weekly one. The reminders could be randomly selected from things like：
- "Check out your annotated PDF from the last class”
- "Here’s the list of lessons still to complete in Chapter X”
- "Don’t forget to review your past LTL classes’ vocabulary list on HackChinese”
- "Lex is starving for your attention and will fade away without a bit of study TLC. When is your next class?”
etc.
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I just wish the app had a reverse mode. I find that I often know the words from chinese to english but am slow or forget when going from english to chinese
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I don’t even know where to start with my praise for the recent update!
- the relearned word list after the review!!
- I can choose another font (nearly the one of the Standard Course book)
- choose word amount instead of time
- automatic copy of a word for further quick research somewhere else
- the new buttons and design
- clear instructions/recommendations what I can do if the amount of reviews becomes too big
and of course now there is an audio also for all added words
and the performance in general on mobiles became reliable and fast
It’s fun to discover all possibilities
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Thanks @Sonja-Mandarin-HSK_3 ! We are thrilled to finally have this out there, and are now slowly but surely working down our list of bugs that have been reported since launch.
Once that is done, I’ll make a short post here explaining all the updates!
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Hi all! Our huge summer update is finally here.
Here’s what changed:
- Study sessions now load almost instantly
- Audio is reliable and has been added for 100% of our words and sentences
- Interface lag on mobile devices has been eliminated
- A new (but familiar) design on both mobile and desktop devices
- End-of-study-session “results” screens have been updated to show more information and load instantly
- You can now choose from ten Chinese fonts
- You can now study simplified & traditional characters together
- You can now auto-copy words to your clipboard if you like to pause your study sessions and do word research elsewhere
- You can now mark words ‘memorized’ if you never want to see them again (but want them to be counted as ‘known’ words)
- You can now limit your study sessions by # of words (not just # of minutes)
- We’ve redesigned our settings screen
- You can now color characters or pinyin by tone
- You can limit the number of words you learn each day (setting you up for long-term success)
- We have a brand new marketing website!
You can read all the juicy details (with screenshots) here: Summer '22 MEGA UPDATE
Our top development priorities right now are:
- A new search experience that provides better results and lets you construct word lists with far fewer clicks
- Bi-directional quizzing (English → Chinese, Audio → English)
- Improving our sentence database (this will be our first “social” feature)
Thanks for all your support, LTL students mean the world to us!
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I’m right back into the groove now @Hack-Chinese-Daniel - funny what a new push like that can do to a student.
Absolutely love the updates, sterling work and well done on listening to your community. Big thumbs up from where I’m sitting 
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Looks very cool and great to see so many suggestions integrated!
After a hiatus of about 2 months I have quite a large problem on my hands… looking forward to exploring the new settings that will help cut some of these down!! 
Scary stuff! A few thoughts for you…
- I’m sure you wouldn’t dare explore this thought, but you definitely don’t want to try to power through all these reviews in just a few sittings! Recipe for disaster!
- Updated intervals are calculated based on the actual amount of time that has elapsed between reviews, not the previous interval we had assigned. This is important because, for words you review late but still remember, you’ll get a nice boost to the newly-calculated interval, pushing their next reviews further into the future.
- I recommend taking a look at the reset options, particularly ‘convert-to-assumed’ from this page: Hack Chinese - Professional software to grow your Chinese language ability .
Remember, with SRS tools like Hack Chinese, statistics can be fun to view (and can be motivation-generating), but at the end of the day, what matters is your language ability, not some stat in an app.
In that light, if thinking about using any particular tool or study method starts to feel bad, it’s time to change things up (or do something to make that study method feel good again).
In your case, with almost 5,000 reviews due, maybe wiping the slate clean (or somewhat clean!) with a convert-to-assumed (or one of the other resets) will feel bad for a day, but then leave you in a better place where you feel happy to make progress each day (focused on whatever matters to you now with your Mandarin learning).
Of course, this is just pre-empting a common (but not ubiquitous) issue. I’ve seen many students slow and steadily recover from situations like this without feeling overwhelmed, and that is actually the “mathematically optimal” way to progress forward… so long as your psychology doesn’t take a hit!
加油!
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Good words Daniel. I used to “stress” when my list went over 200 weak memories a couple of years ago.
After a couple of breaks this year, now my list is around 3,000 but I just chip away, bit by bit. It is just a number as you say and it’s important to remember it doesn’t define your ability.
Really enjoying the updates though. Studying by words instead of minutes is a great addition. Sometimes I am drawn towards the clock and it can effect my decision making. Now I relax a bit more and enjoy studying 100 words at a time.
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Thanks Daniel! I am not actually too worried about them to be honest. I might be in a different place after a few weeks of trudging away at the list, but I’m more in a “review” stage for Chinese learning right now as I am pretty busy at work. I only really get frustrated with lots of reviews when I’m learning lots of new words and really want to add them in ASAP!
First study session in a while and remarks so far:
- The shortcut buttons have changed which is weird! I guess I’ll get used to that
- Size adjustments is great! One of the reasons I had a hiatus was that I had an eye infection and didn’t want to look at too small writing on a screen. This is perfect
- Has the word counter disappeared? I really liked seeing the dots and the fire dots when you have a lot right. Bit demotivating to not know how many words you have got through
- Really like the full list of forgotten words at the end, awesome to be able to run through and remind yourself.
- I can’t find the temporary block button? I don’t want to fully block some words but maybe temporarily
P.s. The reset option for “convert to assumed” sounds great. I am gonna try and tackle these bit by bit, but if i do need a “quick fix” and want to add more new words again, I will try that out. Amazing to have so many new features!
More feedback - it automatically plays the audio for the first word (randomly) before I have a chance to guess it - not sure if that is on purpose?
Edit - this is actually quite annoying cos it spoils my guess for the first word!
Hello Daniel, amazing update I’m quite fond of all the new stuff. Especially the review by word mode !
Just a small request on my side, do you think it’s possible to give us the choice about the colors that are displayed for the different tones ?
Not sure if someone else is also encountering the issue, but I’m struggling to see the blue color displayed for the third tone as I have bad eyes.
- Shortcut changes - Maybe turn on the shortcut legend for a while to get used to the changes.
- Performance Pixels (word counter) - Temporarily gone, but definitely will return. (Honestly shocked at how many people bemoaned their disappearance! Happy about that!)
- Hide (temporarily block) - We are testing removing this. This was very infrequently used, and in the never-ending battle to fight software bloat (which requires UX elements and a steeper learning curve), we temporarily removed it (to make way for ‘memorize’). I’ll take your missing ‘hide’ as at least one vote that it should come back!
- Audio playing automatically - It sounds like you have your ‘Review Mode’ set to ‘Excel’. You might want to change to “4-click” or “2-click”.
Thanks for all your notes Chloe!
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@Antoine-Mandarin-Intro Antoine,
We should have different colors for both light mode and dark mode, but right now they appear not to consistently display the correct colors. Time to dig into the CSS and solve this.
Once we have this solved, let me know if you still have issue. We can certainly add a new color scheme if it helps.
Thanks for the note!
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Thanks Daniel.
Just to be a bit more specific, here is a screen of my problem :
I only use dark mode and the 3rd tone characters are shining like neon lights for me.
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