MaruMori Knowledge Base

SRS (1) - What is SRS?

What is an SRS? (spaced repetition system)

SRS, or "spaced repetition system"s, are essentially designed to help you remember information by prompting you to review it at the correct intervals . And as it turns out, the "right interval" is actually right when you're about to forget something!

So, for instance, let's say you just learned the word 「こんにちは」 (konnichiwa), or "hello". Right now, the word is fresh in your mind; you remember it.

However, in a few hours, your brain will start to lose grip on the info. Check in again tomorrow, and it's a toss-up as to whether you still remember it or not.

An SRS system will prompt you to review 「こんにちは」 (konichiwa) juuuust as you're starting to forget it (which is usually a few hours after you first learn it). This reinforces it in your brain and extends your memory a bit further. The next review interval will generally be in 8 hours, then the next day, then in two days, then in several days, a week, etc.

How does SRS work on MaruMori?

On MaruMori, you can unlock items to study in various ways, but we'll assume you're going through the MaruMori Adventure track. Through Adventure, you'll unlock large batches of kanji and vocabulary to study with our SRS system! Unlock them by reaching a "Study Item Unlocks" tile (colored purple with a lock icon) and hitting this button at the bottom:

Note : the introduction island does not have any SRS unlocks until after you've learned all hiragana and katakana, and grammar SRS only starts on the N5 (elementary) island.

First, you'll do the "lesson" of a given item, whether it be kanji, vocabulary, or grammar. After that, it will move into your "review queue".

Access your lessons and reviews from these buttons on your home page:

From the review queue, you can, well, review what you've learned. The key is that with SRS, items will only show up here when it's time to review them , so you can rest assured that you won't be wasting time since you will only be reviewing each item when needed.

Most resources that use SRS have flashcard-type items for their lessons/reviews, and MaruMori is no exception. In the next onboarding article, we'll take a look at these so-called "items"!