FAQ
The language I need is not in the list. Can you add it?
Absolutely! Just write us a note through “Feedback” in the left menu, we’ll add it!
Language XYZ is treated wrong!
We’re sorry! Our team speaks quite a few languages, but not all of them of course. Please write us a note through “Feedback” in the left menu with description of what’s wrong, we’ll be quick to fix it!
Do you have an app for iOS/Android?
Not yet, but we do plan to create them. Right now, TOFU Learn is designed to work pretty well on mobile devices as a responsive web app.
On Android, if you choose to “Add to Home Screen”, the app will look and feel just like a native application. It can even send you notifications.
I added the app to Home Screen on iPhone, but it keeps reloading every time I open it.
Unfortunately that’s how iOS handles web apps. No, it doesn’t make any sense at all, but that’s how it is. As a workaround we suggest that you use TOFU Learn in Safari rather than adding it to Home Screen, this way it will preserve its state and won’t be reloaded all the time.
Can I study offline?
Not yet, but we are planning to add such feature in the future.
Animations are lagging in my browser! What do I do?
You can disable the UI animations in Settings.
Also, please note that the website works best and fastest in Google Chrome browser. The reason being that we are using the cutting-edge web technology called Polymer (by Google), and as of now only Chrome has built in support for all of its features, in other browsers the support is emulated, which slows them down.
Can I add audio from Forvo to my word lists?
Yes! Although we offer automatic Forvo integration for Pro users, you can simply add audio from Forvo to your word lists and make them available for everyone, because Forvo licenses its pronunciation audio files under a Creative Commons license.
It’s just that TOFU Learn can’t do the same or help you by making this process automatic, because Forvo is free to use only for people, but not for software products or websites. Software and websites have to use paid API and are forbidden from caching audio files (which adding a file to a word list essentially is).
If you are using audio from Forvo in your word list, make sure to add the following line to your word list’s license for proper attribution:
[Forvo] This word list uses data from Forvo. This content is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
I really like TOFU Learn! How can I support the project?
Tell us what you like and dislike! Create and publish word lists, participate in discussions.
And of course spread the word, that’s what we need most!
Learning with TOFU Learn
What is TOFU Learn?
TOFU Learn helps you memorize vocabulary by using the modern advanced memorization techniques. We didn’t invent the thing, it’s the results of multiple researches on memory of the past decades.
The most prominent component we are using is Spaced Repetition technique. The basic (very simplified) principle is that once you remember a word, you are offered to review it at increasing intervals (a day, a week, two weeks, etc.). If at some point you forget the word or have difficulties recalling, you get back to the short intervals. It’s actually way more complicated under the Tofu’s hood: the intervals are adaptive, it doesn’t always reset the intervals, etc. But the general idea is the same.
The overall effect of the techniques employed is that learning is nearly effortless, and the retention rate (how many words stay in the memory) is around or over 90% (your mileage may vary of course). One of the peculiarities of the approach is that it develops instant recall for the words, which is especially useful for language learning.
There’s a book called “Fluent Forever” by Gabriel Wyner (which we highly recommend reading by the way!). It covers a lot of points on efficient language learning, and does a great job explaining how memory and memorization techniques work.
Can you tell me more about spaced repetition?
Sure, but better yet, here are a few Wikipedia articles on that:
What is the process of learning with Tofu?
Overall, the flow is:
- Create a word list: paste in the words you intend to learn, or pick one of the published ones (e.g. a frequency list for your target language, always a good start, and Mr. Wyner agrees).
- Create a deck based on the list: that’s just pressing a button.
- Learn new words: create custom cards as you go, and quickly get them into your short term memory by continuously taking a quiz.
- Review words when they come back for review.
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 daily until you have learned all the words.
- Keep reviewing the words when they come up for review, at ever longer and longer intervals.
For each word, the flow is:
- Tofu shows you the card with the word.
(Optional, recommended) Pick an image for the card.
(Optional) Write your notes on the card.
Choose what to do with the card:
- Learn it — you will be taking a quiz on the word, to make sure you memorize it for short term. Use this if it’s a completely new word for you or if in doubt.
- Skip learn — you want to know the word, but you already know it (more or less). You won’t take a quiz on it right now so that you don’t waste your time, but it will be coming up for reviews just like all other cards.
- Ignore word — you don’t want to learn this word at all, or you already know it pretty well.
- If you chose “Learn it”, you will take a quiz on the word until you get it into your short term memory.
- In around a day, the word will come back for review. If you forget it by the time, it will come back in a day again. If you remember it by then, it will come back in around a week, and so on.
Word lists
What are word lists?
Quite expectedly, it’s a list of words to learn. But TOFU Learn word lists are a bit more. It’s also their translations, notes, linguistic details (phonetics, part of speech, gender where applicable, etc.), notes (such as etymology), and most importantly audio records of pronunciations.
In fact, only words and their translations are mandatory, all other details are optional.
Note: images are not a part of the word list. Images are personal for each learner, they belong in the deck, not the word list.
Word lists consist of word sets, or just Sets. Sets may be used to group words by topic, or just to break word list down in smaller parts, so that they are easy to view and manage.
One set can contain up to 100 words. We recommend the size of 50 words per set.
One word list can have up to 100 sets. This effectively sets the limit of the word list to 10,000 words. We don’t recommend exceeding 5,000 words per word list though.
Public world lists
There is a number of public world lists. Those are word lists created and published by TOFU Learn users. All published lists are distributed under Creative Commons license, which (among other things) means they can be used for academic purposes with almost no limitations.
You can learn it. Create a deck based on it and learn away!
You can clone it. You believe the list requires just another layer of polishing? Or want to remove half of the words? Or add a thousand more? Just make your own copy and work with it. And then publish it too, if you choose to!
You can send feedback. Discuss the word list on its mini-forum, and send feedback right from the session screen.
If you are the owner of the word list, you can also un-publish or delete it. Un-publishing or deleting hides it in the public listings, but those who already are learning with them, will still be able to use it. Even if you delete it.
Private word lists
A private word list is what the word list is until you publish it. It behaves just the same as a public one, except nobody but you can see and use it.
We realize that a word list can be under construction, so we allow “draft words” in private lists: those with only the word added and missing translations. Such cards can’t be learned and otherwise used until they get a translation.
A public word list can’t have such “drafts”.
Word list editing
If you are the owner of the list, you can edit it and change the settings. “Owner” is the one created the list. If you want to edit somebody else’s public word list, you have to clone it first, to become the owner of the copy.
Note: word list editing is not available on mobile devices. You have to use a computer or a netbook, but not a phone and not a tablet.
Inside the word list editor, you can see some settings, and a list of Sets. Click a Set panel to expand it. Inside the set panel is a spreadsheet-like editor for the set.
The spreadsheet-like editor is indeed very spreadsheet-like, and behaves just like one. You can navigate it with keys, cut, copy, paste values, and so on. You can copy and paste to and from most popular spreadsheet applications, like Excel or Google Docs.
To add words, either click “Add word” to add a line, and enter them one by one, or just paste the whole list you had prepared elsewhere. If the data you paste exceeds the size, the editor will add the rows automatically.
To delete rows, click the (X) button in the left border. The button appears only when you hover the pointer there.
To add a set, use the “Add set” button under all the sets.
Tip: Unless you reserve sets for different word topics, you can add all the words in one set and re-arrange them later, see the Authoring tools section.
For details on “Auto-fill” buttons, see the Auto-fill section.
Word list settings
You can find the settings in “Settings” drop-down section in the word list editor.
Direction.
Normally if you are learning Spanish words, you want to be asked in English (or whatever is your base language), and answer in Spanish. However it’s not always the case. If you study for example Japanese Kanji or Chinese Hanzi, you may want to be presented the character or word, and answer the meaning in English. If you want such inversion, change the direction.
Phonetic tests (available for some languages)
If you are learning for example Mandarin Chinese or Cantonese, you may want to be presented the characters (i.e. in Chinese), but answer not in English, but in Chinese again, however in the phonetic script (e.g. pinyin for Mandarin). Use the “test against phonetics” for that purpose.
It’s not available for most languages because it doesn’t make sense there.
Challenge types
TOFU Learn supports two kinds of card reviews: automated and manual. With automated reviews, upon reviewing a card, the learner is presented with a challenge: pick what this means from options, type the word, type what you just heard, pick what the word you just heard means, etc. With manual reviews, the learner just flips the card and determines himself or herself if he or she was right or wrong, and how reliable the memory is.
Whether the learner wants to learn in automated or manual mode is the learner’s choice. But if they choose automated mode, this is where you control the available challenge types.
Commas and semicolons separate answer options
In case of automated testing, if the field against which the learner is tested (usually the “word” field), contains commas, semicolons, or slashes, two options are possible:
- the learner has to type the answer with the commas and/or semicolons, for it to be deemed correct (uncheck the box);
- the learner has to type any of the options separated by the commas, semicolons, or slashes (check the box).
Word list authoring tools
TOFU Learn provides you with auto-fill tools to populate the missing details in the word lists, see about them in their section below.
You can also re-arrange words evenly by sets in an automated way. Just click “Rearrange cards by sets”, choose how you want them rearranged, and the job is done.
Auto-fill
Since all word lists you are going to publish with TOFU Learn are to be licensed with a Creative Commons license, you can use Creative Commons Share-Alike licensed sources for it. Isn’t it awesome?
What’s even more awesome is that TOFU Learn will collect and insert the data for you automatically!
For English as the base language, we support import from Wiktionary and a few language-specific sources for some languages.
For Chinese, we have CC-CEDICT dictionary. For Chinese and Japanese, Unihan character dictionary (strictly speaking it’s not Creative Commons licensed, but is a part of the Unicode standard and is free to use, see its license in the word list editor for details).
Each source is listed with its license information in the word list editor. When you auto-fill the word list with a source, attribution information is added to the word list license, all in automated way.
Decks
What’s a deck?
When you learn words, we use the term “flashcard” or “card” as a metaphor for it. When you have many flashcards, it’s a deck.
A deck is your own set of your own flashcards, and it tracks your own progress of learning a word list. While a word list can be public a private, a deck is always private and personally yours, just as well as each card in it.
Learning and reviewing
The most usual thing you are going to be doing with a deck is learning new cards and reviewing learned cards.
- Learn new: that’s what you start with, and that’s what you do when you have no cards to review (or any time you want actually). Create new cards and learn them. You can set how many cards you want to learn in one session, in your personal settings.
- Review: if you have cards pending review (returned for review after an interval based on the spaced repetition principle), you will review those and just those cards. If there are no pending cards, you will review a random set of learned cards. The maximum number of cards per review session can be set in your personal settings.
- Audio review: a special kind of review session where you are served only audio-based challenges, to improve your listening skills.
- Hard words: the system tracks how hard each word is for you to remember based on successful and failed reviews; in this mode we pick the hardest words you have and offer you for review. Go get them!
Ignoring and auto-learning
If you open a set, you can select some cards and do bulk operations with them.
Ignore: if a card is ignored, it won’t ever appear for you in your session, like it never existed. Does the same as “Ignore” in a learn session.
Un-ignore: make the card normal again. You can ignore and un-ignore cards as many times you want and any time you want: before you learned them or after.
Auto-learn: encountered this word before and don’t want it to appear in your learning sessions, but want to keep it in reviews? Auto-learn it. Does the same as “Skip learn” in a learn session.
Flashcard styles
TOFU Learn supports two kinds of card reviews: automated and manual.
With automated reviews, upon reviewing a card, the learner is presented with a challenge: pick what this means from options, type the word, type what you just heard, pick what the word you just heard means, etc.
Pros:
- You can’t cheat it!
- You learn precise spelling.
- No thinking required, just memory work.
With manual reviews, the learner just flips the card and determines himself or herself if he or she was right or wrong, and how reliable the memory is. Much like paper flashcards.
Pros:
- You can indicate not only whether you remembered the word, but how well you remember it. This helps TOFU Learn to determine the optimum review intervals better.
- If you are learning for example Chinese characters, you don’t really need to exercise in writing their English interpretations.
But:
- You have to be critical to yourself and not allow yourself to cheat and pretend you knew what you didn’t know!
- You won’t be tested for precise spelling (unless you do that yourself, which is hard).
You can choose flashcard style (manual or automatic) for each deck.
Challenge types
If you choose flashcards with automated testing, you can choose what kinds of challenges you want.
You can’t choose challenge types that are disabled for the word list.
Daily goals
We highly recommend setting daily goals for decks, to keep your learning routine constant. You can choose how much you want to exercise daily, yourself. The setting is individual for each deck.
Each day you complete your daily goal on a deck, its streak counter grows. If you fail to complete the daily goal by midnight (your local time), the streak counter is reset.
During the learn and review session
Assigning images
If you assign an image to a card, the image will be used instead of the translation as the main clue when reviewing the card and not the translation. Translation will still appear below in smaller font.
Assigning an image is a good idea, so that you learn to speak and not translate. Here are some reasons why.
For example, you are learning word “phoque”, which is French for “seal” (the animal, not a sealant, not an emblem, and not a verb to seal). If your clue is just a translation, you have to specify that it’s about an animal. If your clue is an image, no comments are needed.
Image also allows you to build more personal associations with the word, eventually improving how well and how easily you remember it.
Finally, since you set the image, the memory of the process of choosing an image adds up to the set of memory links with the word, allowing you to retain it better.
Multiple choice challenges
There’s not much to discuss here. Just pick the right answers!
Typing challenges
In this challenge you are offered to type the answer. A hint on the text box will remind you what language the answer is expected.
Once you type the answer (or one of the possible answers) correctly, it will be accepted automatically.
If the language has some ligatures, it will accept both answers with them and with the characters that make them up (e.g. both “boeuf” and “bœuf” are accepted for “beef” in French). Same works with non-mandatory letter differences in other languages (e.g. in Russian, letter “е” can be used instead of “ё”, TOFU Learn will accept both “елка” and “ёлка” for “fir tree”).
If you have some diacritic (or other minor differences) missing (e.g. example “cancion” instead of “canción” for “song” in Spanish), TOFU Learn will notice it and offer you to fix spelling. If you submit the answer with wrong diacritics, it will count the answer as semi-correct and adjust the difficulty and review intervals accordingly.
If you are almost correct (didn’t finish typing yet, but are close, or have a typo or a minor mistake), TOFU Learn will notify you. If you submit the answer with a minor mistake, it will be counted semi-correct too, but less correct than an answer with just wrong diacritics.
If you don’t remember the word, you can submit an empty response or just press “No idea”.
Audio challenges
There are two types of audio challenges: typing where you answer what you just heard, and multiple choice where you choose the meaning of what you just heard. They very much resemble the two challenge types described above.
Sending feedback
If you notice a mistake in the word list, or want to suggest an improvement, use the Feedback button. There you can choose the suggestion type and write a short description of the problem or suggestion. This feedback is sent to the word list owner.
If you are a word list owner, you can see the feedback grouped by word under “Feedback” section in the word list editor.
If it’s your own private word list, the button is still handy to save notes to self.
Chinese stuff
Character writing
TOFU Learn can teach you to write Hanzi characters with correct stroke order. Our system will show you how to write a character, then ask you to write it using an outline once. Then, it will always ask you to write it without showing the outline.
If you have a problem remembering the next stroke, or write it in a wrong direction, and so on, the system will show the next stroke: where it is to be located and its direction. If you forget how the character is supposed to look, you can use the “Hint” button, and TOFU Learn will show you the complete character for a few seconds.
Every time you write a character, the system rates how well you did it. The grade is used by the spaced repetition system to calculate the optimal review timing. The grade depends on how many strokes you got not from the first attempt, or after a hint. If you use the “Hint” button (i.e. you forgot the character’s overall look), the system will not accept the answer and will re-schedule the character for review the next day.
Using dictionary lookup doesn't spoil your rating, so on one hand, feel free to check the character's details when you get curious, but on the other hand don't use it instead of “Hint” to just avoid spoiling your grade. Remember that by cheating the system you only cheat yourself by getting wrong review timings, your goal is not “thumbs up” every time but properly learned characters.
Dictionary lookup
TOFU Learn has its own Chinese dictionary. It's available as a standalone web app, but can also be accessed any time from within your cards. It's always on the back of your Chinese cards, and on the front if your character writing cards.
Use it to learn how words are composed from characters and what their parts mean, and how characters are composed from radicals and/or other characters. Knowing the story and logic behind a character helps memorizing it better. Understanding relations between similar characters or characters sharing the same phonetical component allows you to greatly speed up learning by remembering them in bunches.
Pinyin deluxe
Tone coloring. We color pinyin syllables and the characters by tone, to aid the memory. Colors are fully customizable in settings, and you can turn the whole thing off there, too.
Pinyin format. We parse and re-format pinyin. In your personal settings you can choose what you want pinyin to look like, and we will display it like that, regardless of what notation the word lists use.
Pinyin input. It may be hard to input “nǐhǎo” on a keyboard. So the system will accept any of the following: “nǐhǎo” (naturally), “ni3hao3” (numbered), “ni3 hao3” (with or without spaces), etc., and even mixed, like “nǐ hao3”. All notations are accepted regardless of preferred pinyin format selected in settings.