Don’t pick the word. Type it.

Try typing your first answers

Recognition is not recall

Most flashcard apps show you four translations and ask you to pick one. You can get those right while being unable to say the word yourself — the right option looks familiar, and familiar is enough. Typing removes that crutch. Either the word comes back to you, letter by letter, or it does not, and both outcomes tell the scheduler something true.

It also trains spelling for free. The accents, the double consonants, the silent letters: you cannot type a word without deciding on each of them.

What gets checked

• The word. When a card shows you the translation, you type the word in the language you are learning — with its article, if your deck uses articles.
• The plural and the verb forms. If the card has them, there is a box for each, and each is marked on its own.
• Answers you have accepted. A card can hold alternative answers, and any of them counts as right.

Before comparing, case, punctuation and repeated spaces are set aside. Letters are not — in any script — so an accent you left off is a spelling mistake, not noise.

What counts, and what the diff shows

The card asks for the Spanish word for is (as in “where is it?”). The answer on the card is está.

The diff works letter by letter: extra letters are struck through, missing ones are shown where they belong, a wrong letter shows both, and a wrong or missing accent is marked on the letter it belongs to. The correction is exactly as big as the mistake.

When your answer is right but different

Languages have synonyms, and a card can only list the answers someone thought of. If what you typed does not match, press Check my answer: AI looks at the card and your answer and tells you whether it is also correct, with a short explanation either way. When it is, one more tap adds it to the card’s accepted answers, so the next time it simply counts.

Then the schedule takes over

After the answer is checked you rate how hard the card felt, and FSRS spaced repetition schedules it for the moment you are about to forget it. The two directions of a card are scheduled separately: typing está from is and understanding está when you see it are different skills, and each gets its own timing. In the direction that shows you the word, you recall its meaning, turn the card and rate yourself.