When you add a word to My Vocabulary, Wise Arabic turns it into review cards. Each card tests one kind of recall, and your rating decides when that card should return.
You are not trying to finish a fixed daily lesson. You are trying to see each card close to the point where you are likely to forget it.
What gets reviewed
Every saved word can produce more than one review card.
- Arabic → English: recognise the Arabic and recall the meaning.
- English → Arabic: recall the Arabic from the meaning.
- Singular → Plural: recall the plural for nouns where a plural is available.
Nouns usually have plural review. Verbs and Pieces are reviewed for meaning, not plural recall.
How to answer a review card
For each review card:
- Read the prompt.
- Recall the answer before revealing it.
- Show the answer.
- Rate the attempt honestly.
Use the ratings this way:
- Again: you did not remember it.
- Hard: you remembered, but only with effort or uncertainty.
- Good: you remembered normally.
- Easy: it was immediate and secure.
Do not use Easy as a reward. It lengthens the gap before the card returns, so using it too generously makes future reviews worse.
Rating a card moves you straight to the next one. There is nothing to wait for between cards, so the session moves as fast as you can recall.
Fixing a wrong rating
If your finger slips or you rate too generously, undo it. The undo control in the top bar (or Z) returns you to the card you just rated, with everything restored as it was. You can step back through several ratings in a row.
Use undo for mistakes, not for negotiating with yourself. If you honestly failed a card, let Again do its work.
Why one word may not appear in every direction today
Wise Arabic avoids testing the same word from several angles on the same review day. If you review a noun from Arabic to English, its English-to-Arabic or plural card may wait until another day.
Seeing one side of a word can give away the other side. Separating related cards gives a cleaner test of memory.
Why a card's timing changes over time
Wise Arabic treats cards differently depending on how much review history they have:
- New: not reviewed yet.
- Learning: still being introduced.
- Review: stable enough for longer intervals.
- Relearning: missed after previously becoming more stable.
These stages describe the card, not your ability as a learner. A difficult plural or confusing synonym may need several passes.
What happens after a mistake
A missed or uncertain card tells you what needs attention. A card rated Again returns later in the same session, so you relearn it while the session is still running; Hard keeps the next interval shorter. If the problem is more than forgetting, open word details and check:
- Is the gloss too broad?
- Is there a plural you did not know?
- Is the word similar to another one?
- Is the example sentence showing a usage you missed?
Review works best when mistakes lead to better understanding, not only more repetition.
Suspending a card
Sometimes a card is costing more than it teaches — a rare plural, a word you no longer need, or something you would rather come back to later. You can suspend it instead of pushing through.
A suspended card is skipped in reviews and does not count towards what is due. Nothing is lost: its history and progress stay intact, and it returns to the normal schedule when you unsuspend it.
You can suspend:
- During a review session: use the pause control in the top bar (or press S). The card leaves the session and the next one appears.
- From word details: open a word's details to see its review cards, and suspend a specific card or all of them at once.
Suspension is per card, not per word. If only the English-to-Arabic direction keeps failing, you can suspend just that card and keep the others in rotation.
To bring cards back, use the Suspended tab under Review Friction on your dashboard, or manage the full list on the Suspended page in My Vocabulary.
Keyboard shortcuts
On a keyboard, the whole session runs without the mouse:
- Space or Enter shows the answer;
- 1–4 rate Again, Hard, Good, Easy;
- Z undoes the last rating;
- S suspends the current card.
Where to go next
- Review groups: choose which kind of review to do.
- Your daily pace: how many new cards a session introduces.
- Spaced repetition explained: why intervals grow and shrink.
- Word details: what to read after a difficult card.