How do sayit's flashcards and spaced repetition actually work?

sayit's flashcards use spaced repetition — every card you review gets graded again, hard, good, or easy, and that grade sets how long until the card comes back. A word you knew instantly gets pushed weeks out; one you fumbled comes back in a day, or sooner. Nobody has to manually decide what to review next, because the schedule is built from how well you actually knew each card the last time you saw it.

30-second version: Cards live in decks, and each has its own due date driven by SM-2, a well-established spaced-repetition algorithm. Grade a card honestly and its next appearance adjusts automatically — better grades stretch the interval, worse ones shrink it. Cards can be added manually, generated from vocabulary with definitions and IPA attached, or built automatically from words that were actually flagged in your pronunciation takes.

How does the scheduling actually decide when I see a card again?

Every card tracks its own "ease" and interval, and both update based on the grade you give it. Grading a card easy lengthens the gap before it reappears; good lengthens it more modestly; hard shortens the growth; again — meaning you genuinely didn't know it — resets the card to reappear very soon, typically within a minute or two, so you get another shot at it right away rather than losing it for days. Over repeated honest reviews, cards you consistently know drift toward long intervals and mostly leave your daily queue, while cards you keep missing stay in frequent rotation until they stick.

Where do the cards actually come from?

Three ways. You can add a card manually. sayit can generate one from a word, pulling in its definition and IPA automatically so you're not typing that out by hand. And — the one that ties flashcards directly back to your pronunciation practice — cards get built automatically from words that were actually flagged during a take, landing in a deck built specifically around your real mistakes rather than a generic word list. That last path is what connects flashcards to the 44-sound mastery map: a sound you keep mis-hitting doesn't just lower a score, it turns into cards you'll actually see again.

What does "due" mean for a card?

Simply that its scheduled interval has elapsed — the card is ready to be reviewed again. Your due queue at any moment is every card across your decks whose time has come, sorted so the ones waiting longest surface first. This is the same "due" concept the sound mastery map refers back to when it points you toward reviewing a specific weak sound.

Can I organize cards into separate decks?

Yes — cards belong to named decks, and you can filter your review queue to a specific one rather than always pulling from everything at once. A deck auto-built from your actual mistakes sits alongside any decks you create yourself, so you can choose to focus a session narrowly (just the mistakes deck) or broadly (everything due).

What do the stats actually track?

Your total card count, how many are currently due, how many you've effectively mastered (long, stable intervals from consistently good grades), and your total review count over time — a quick read on whether you're keeping up with the queue or letting it build up.

Flashcards at a glance

Try it

Open Flashcards in sayit — if you've already taken a few scored passages, check whether a "mistakes" deck has started building itself from words that were actually flagged in your own recordings.