Ninchanese Blog

Following our last update (Missed our last beta update? Read up on it here! ), this week’s beta update was focused on one important element, that is key to your Chinese learning: how you learn and review Chinese vocabulary. We’ve worked hard on making our learning smoother, adaptive and way more pleasant to use, as you’ll soon see. So read this, and then, please, take Ninchanese for a spin and let us know what you think of the changes!

Improved Vocabulary learning

Some of you Nincha Learners had complained about the repetitive aspect of unlocking new words to learn new vocabulary. Well, guess what? It’s been improved. Dramatically improved.

The way you unlock words is now super personal to you.

We’ve carefully taken apart our learning algorithm – which is based on the Spaced Repetition System by the way. We tell you all about the SRS here – and put it back together in a way that will make your vocabulary learning a lot smoother.

Know that word already really well? The Great Nincha Machine will notice that and quickly move on to the next word to learn.
Having a little trouble memorizing this word? Our Cat-in-the Machine system will give you a little more time with that word, to ensure you fully get acquainted with it.

Ain’t that cool? The Great Nincha Machine now fully adapts to your learning speed and to your memorization skills, so the way you learn new words corresponds exactly to you.
Your needs, your speed. You’re the one learning so that’s only normal.

Waaaaayyy better reviews

A few of you Nincha Learners wrote to me to share their sorrow in having a seemingly endless number of reviews to do each day and no relief in sight. I felt their pain. Our learning system worked but it just wasn’t good enough yet.
Well, this is all in the past, now. Thanks to the Beta, and your numerous feedback, we carefully looked and analysed the data to see where we could improve the system. The Great Nincha Machine’s review system has been completely overhauled and boy, does it rock now!

Now, you review a mix of words you’ve learned. Sometimes it’ll be easy and sometimes it won’t be as easy. Just to keep you on your toes. Don’t worry, though you won’t stay stuck – quite the opposite in fact! The whole process of reviewing the words you’ve learned is now wayyy better and you won’t see your reviews fly by.

Memory levels

Learning vocabulary is all fine and dandy but how do you know whether you really know something? By taking those words out for a spin of course.

Before you do, how about checking if you know that word a little, a lot or really really well? That’s what our new memory level stars are for. They’ll show you where you’re at when learning a word. And if you haven’t practiced this word in a while and it’s starting to slip your memory, your stars will decrease to reflect that.

Ooooh 4 and 5 stars!

Your goal now is to get each word up to 5 stars; which’ll show that you know that word really well. Don’t you love stars? I do. And there’s nothing I love more than keeping them topped up.

My Ninchanese review routine is now the following:

1. Do my reviews. 152 to do today. Woot! They’ll be finished in no time.
2. Play my Ninchallenges. I’ve reviewed all the words I needed, so I’m all revved up to play.
3. Look at the leaderboard: not that I’m gloating, but being in the top 3 is meowsomely pleasant.
4. Browse the words I’ve unlocked and stare at all my beautiful stars. It’s so satisfying to get 5 stars out of 5.
5. Do a cycle of 3 stages: vocabulary, grammar and speaking.

More changes

These changes are not related to vocab learning but here are a few other things we’ve improved:

• Yocha is now the one teaching you how to build sentences  and Baimei the one you’ll purr in Chinese with – Nincha tried to pull one on us and become the master of all the different modes. Nice try, Nincha! We therefore restored Yocha and Baimei to their rightful places. Phew!

• The leaderboards have been completely redone, so you can see in a glance what rank you’re at and who’s the top cat to overpass. They also look a little nicer, don’tcha think?

We hope these changes will help you progress even more on your Chinese learning journey!

Be sure to let us know what you think of them 🙂

Sarah and The Nincha Team

Ninchanese combines addictive game mechanics, cute cats and efficient Chinese learning techniques to make learning Chinese a lot of fun! The app is now in beta so sign up now for early access to the beta! Check out our trailer and stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google + and Pinterest.

Related posts:

Voice and stroke order animation update Beta update: better voice recognition in Chinese Ready for some serious Chinese learning? World 4 is here! More Chinese Words for Ninchanese