[ChadNauseam]

One counterintuitive issue with spaced repetition is that the modern algorithms like FSRS are actually almost too good at scheduling. The effect is that each card is almost perfectly scheduled to be very difficult but still doable. Now, it's a bit weird to call it an issue considering it's the whole concept working exactly as designed. But it does cause one follow-up problem.

The problem is that in life, we are accustomed to things becoming easier as we get better at them. So you start drawing faces and it starts out feeling very difficult, but then as you practice more and more, it feels easier and easier. Of course, by the time it's feeling easy, it means that you're no longer actually getting effective practice. But nevertheless, it's the feeling that we are accustomed to. It's how we know we're getting better.

Because spaced repetition is so good at always giving you things that you will find difficult, it doesn't actually feel like you're getting better overall even though you are. The things that you are good at are hidden from you and the things that you are bad at are shown to you. The result is a constant level of difficulty, rather than the traditional decreasing level of difficulty.

I've encountered this problem myself. I built a language learning app for fun, and some of my users feel like they're not learning very much compared to alternatives that don't use spaced repetition. In fact, it's the exact opposite. They learn much more quickly with mine, but they don't have that satisfying feeling of the lessons becoming easy. (Because if I gave them easy challenges, it wouldn't be as productive!)

I'm not sure what the best way to solve this problem is. I would much appreciate any advice.

[sodality2]

The solution is to learn content that you actually use with some regularity in your life outside of the testing! If you're doing this for education, the payoff might be the exam; if you're doing it to learn things without some particular end goal, you'll have to make your own way to make it worth it.

The language learning app people could try scheduling monthly video chats with native speakers (swapping turns halfway through so it's mutually beneficial) and notice their proficiency improve.

[ChadNauseam]

haha, that's a great point. I need to find more ways to do that. Maybe I should put $targetlanguage songs on my playlists so I'll get happy as I'm able to recognize more and more

[djmips]

Some kind of game they get to play that uses the knowledge they are learning?

[zahlman]

Just have the program point out the size of the word pool it's drawing from. "Number go up" is objective and clearly motivates people in other disciplines (someone else mentioned lifting weights).

[ChadNauseam]

I've just added this yesterday. It now shows you how close you are to knowing 95% of the words of various movies. I think movies are a good goal, but I want earlier milestones too, so I need to think more. (Maybe spongebob episodes would be good actually)

[huhtenberg]

> knowing 95% of the words of various movies

Ah, that's what it's meant! I thought it was some sort of affiliate Amazon link or an ad, but it wasn't clickable and made little sense given the context.

[NiloCK]

I think what you're describing here is mostly a mindset / user education problem. SRS is for "serious learning", which by necessity will unconditionally feel difficult - if your training sessions aren't strenuous, then they don't drive adaptation.

It's hard to get around without marrying the SRS with something like a hierarchical skill tree whose traversal you can be made aware of, or some other visible progress metric (eg, climbing the ELO of encountered puzzles in a chess training engine).

Still: users have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable if they want to profit from these sorts of systems.

A different issue with SRS's lazer accuracy is the Pareto tradeoff between efficiency and robustness.

[Denzel]

‘Desirable difficulty’ is the research term. To solve your problem, first understand your users need a mindset change. We need to connect their action to a “satisfying feeling” as you said.

You want your users to be like weight lifters. No lifter comes out the gym saying, “Man that was the best workout, felt so easy,” to the contrary, lifters use progressive overload to induce difficulty because that difficulty connects to the results they want.

For your users, you need some way to measure the outcome, so that you can show them, “hey look, that mild discomfort lead to more progress on what you care about,” and then you need to consistently message that some difficulty is good.

Mindset change takes consistency and time. Won’t happen over night. You’ll know you succeeded when students become aware of “hey, I’m not learning as well if it doesn’t feel difficult”, and then react by increasing the challenge.

[watwut]

Weightlifters use weight they can lift and feel good after the session. Literally. They may feel tired, but they feel good. They see weights go up and feel like progressing (unless they are in fact stagnating).

That is literal opposite of what OP describes. What OP describes is weight lifter taking on weight they cant lift and conatantly feeling like a failure after each training.

[ChadNauseam]

That's a great analogy. I'll need to think about how to message that difficulty is good. It's a tricky proposition.

[bluGill]

If your only exposure to words is the spaced repititon why are you wasting your time learning? Use the language and soon you won't need the repitition at all. The app is good to start because you need a couple thousand words before you can do anything, but in a few months you should be switching from learning words to reading and listening (and soon after writting and talking). if you do it that way most words will occure far more often than the algorithm suggests and become easy

[victorbjorklund]

You kind of need enough knowledge to use it in a fun way. You only know 100 words of Spanish and no grammar etc? Well, that won’t be any fun stories to read, fun conversations to have etc.

Notice I use ”fun” on purpose. Because some people are able to enjoy the process of using the language even at that stage (but many do not).

[criley2]

I have a half dozen language learning apps on my phone and have vibe coded a few concepts as well and while spaced recognition is amazing, it still suffers from the duolingo "vocabulary is not a language" problem.

IMO the way around users feeling like spaced recognition isn't progression is by redefining progression away from memorizing vocabulary into into becoming proficient in conversation both listening and speaking. If spaced recognition vocab is just one feature of a holistic experience, users will judge their progression holistically.

I'm really waiting for that one app that finally connects ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode or Gemini Live to a context-aware and well trained language tutor. I can already have impromptu practice sessions with both in Mandarin and English but they quickly lose the plot regarding their role as a tutor. I'd love to have them available as part of a learning journey. I can study vocab and flash cards all day but the second that voice starts speaking sentences and I need to understand in real time, I freeze up. The real progress is conversing!

[vunderba]

I’ve pointed this out before on HN, but if you want to use ChatGPT as a language partner, you must provide a topic. Expecting it to behave as a proactive teacher is a recipe for disappointment.

Here’s what I typically do:

- Create a custom GPT (mine is called Polly the Glot) with a system prompt instructing it to act as a language partner that responds only in Chinese or your target language of choice. Further specify that the user will paste a story or topic before beginning practice, and that this should guide the discussion.

- Start a new chat.

- Paste in an article from AP/Reuters.

- Turn on Voice Chat.

At that point, I’ll head out to walk my dog and can usually get about 30 minutes to an hour of solid language practice in.

Fair warning, you'll likely need to be at least an intermediate student by this point otherwise it'll probably be too much over your head.

Caveat: You could including a markdown file of your known vocabulary as an knowledge attachment in the custom GPT but I've no idea how well that would work in practice.

[criley2]

I have played around pretty significantly with the markdown context idea but managing it by hand is pretty tough.

- I take chinese tutoring lessons on italki with a tutor who uses notion (copy paste in markdown)

- I copy/paste our notion notes in markdown into a repo for storage

- I use AI to summarize lessons and to keep general context on progress

- I use AI to generate a voice AI lesson plan, such as 10 words to focus on, reviewing a specific human tutoring session, or some conversational focus area.

- I start the advanced voice AI with the context

Unfortunately the AI still loses the plot pretty quickly and devolves into free form conversation. It struggles significantly to enforce any kind of structure that would be helpful for structured learning. I haven't tried this in a few months though, maybe newer models are improving.

[ChadNauseam]

If you've vibe coded a few language learning apps, maybe we should collab. Check my bio to see what I've done in this space. I'm trying to make the best free language-learning app on the planet

[CorrectHorseBat]

>but the second that voice starts speaking sentences and I need to understand in real time, I freeze up. The real progress is conversing!

What helped me a lot was doing a lot of listening exercises. Start with concentrating on what you can recognize, not on what you can't. Then listen again and and again and again trying to recognize more and more.

[criley2]

That's what I do and it helps and many apps let me do just that. Repeating it, reading the hanzi, reading the pinyin, and it all makes sense.

But there's something about the "conversation" between a real human or an AI voice mode where you're not on the rails. It's real time and you have to lock in and understand. That's where the magic happens!

[copperx]

How is spaced recognition different from spaced repetition? Recall is different from merely recognition, right?

[criley2]

Sorry, just a typo on my part, I meant spaced repetition.

[ben_w]

> I'm not sure what the best way to solve this problem is. I would much appreciate any advice.

Serious answer: All the dark patterns.

Loot boxes even if they only give users a digital hat, small animated bird (like the green one, but not) doing a silly dance when users get enough correct answers, some weird phrases sprinkled amongst the lessons which make the users laugh.

Just, please let them have an off switch for people like us :)

[ChadNauseam]

Something funny is that I watched someone use my app for the first time yesterday, and she specifically requested more dark patterns. She said "you should add something that makes you want to come back like the duolingo owl looking sad". I don't know if I can bring myself to do that, but I have a feeling that I can find a way to play to my strengths rather than copy duolingo. Specifically, my advantage is that my app will actually teach you the language, so I can maybe find a way to turn that into motivation rather than needing to rely on dark patterns.

[noahjk]

Trying your app from your profile, and the movie thing is a bit weird for two reasons - at first, I thought it was an ad when it popped up above the fold, and second, I'm seeing a bunch of horror posters, which I don't really want to see? The movie thing is 'neat' but my main reason for learning another language isn't to be able to tell people "I know 56% of the words in La Bruja"

[ChadNauseam]

Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback. I removed the horror movies from the database, so they shouldn't show up anymore. I also made some changes to make the poster it selects appear less like an ad. It was kind of over the top before

[ben_w]

I absolutely understand your reluctance; Duolingo isn't the only thing you can take inspiratiom from, you can have an XP/level system like Clozemaster, which has (had?) an animated celebration gif on level-up and also an option to switch it off.

[tomasGiden]

I just tried out your app for the first time. First time trying to learn Spanish. I feel exactly like the user you describe but it is because I have to click Don’t remember for 70-80% of the words.

I’ve always had difficulty remembering vocabulary. I remember cramming German in School 30 years back. We had 20 words we had to learn per week and I could sit a whole night repeating and repeating them just because they wouldn’t stick. And then in the morning they were all gone anyway. So I gather I am a bad language learner.

In your algorithm, do you assume everyone’s recall is the same or do you optimize for a recall rate which make everyone fail a certain percentage of the word? If so, knowing that I am supposed to not remember 70% would be a good reminder in the app to not feel bad.

[michaelcampbell]

FSRS has dials to tweak to show you cards either more or less often, so if it's feeling "too hard" you can tweak that dial to show you cards when "easier" (at the risk of seeing more cards per day since you're seeing them more often).

Failing to do that, one might consider that instead of focusing on how hard each card feels, but rather the size of the corpus that they have "under their belt". This is the case if you're constantly adding new cards - if you are and your cards/day is stable, then you have an ever increasing mound of memorized knowledge.

If you aren't adding new cards, then the cards/day will inevitably go down, barring some actual cognitive issue.

It's a matter of what you focus on as your measure of success.

[ChadNauseam]

True. Changing the recall rate would definitely make it easier. But like you said, it increases the workload. I'm not sure that's the optimal play.

I want to find a way to show people how much they're learning. And maybe make it more fun. But what I really want to do is change their mindset from "wow, that was easy, i'm learning so much" to "wow, that was hard, i'm learning so much".

[renewiltord]

Have you considered a “Challenge” mode where a user can simply see what “level” they’re at? The Pimsleur app has a more natural fixed progression and also a spaced repetition feature (I think) but running a challenge on an older class definitely gives me a feeling of “okay, I definitely know this material”.

And for what it’s worth, I’ve been able to sufficiently communicate some basics with my wife’s family in Mandarin that has them thrilled with me. So the learning in P is working somewhat.

[yogsototh]

I remember a documentary about learning things to kids, and in order to optimise learning efficiency the optimal ratio for difficult questions should be 1/4. So the children continue to feel good about themselves, while still improving.

So I guess this ratio about easy vs difficult question should be a parameter in such spaced repetition algorithms.

[SteveMqz]

Well the simplest thing would be to have test/benchmarks you do at the start and end of each “chapter” (however you define that).

You fail miserably at the test at the start of each chapter, and crush it at the end.

The difficult part is deciding how the tests are spread out.

[ChadNauseam]

I love that idea. Thanks. I'm going to try to implement that!

[throwaway7783]

What's the name of the app? I would like to try it out!

[fouc]

A lot of the responses seem to be blaming the user/learner and requiring them to change their mindset/attitude, which is actually an insane take.

As you pointed out, SRS isn't the full solution.

BTW, I would say that language classes often try to maintain a constant level of difficulty, but there is usually some kind of coverage of the previous material too.

[watwut]

Frankly, they are not at all good at that. At least for me, they just failed. Thr fact is, they have no idea about when I am about to forget this or that fact.