LexiCycle

“Lexi” represents language and words, while “Cycle” alludes to the cyclical process of memory retention. Just like the natural rhythm of forgetting and remembering, LexiCycle optimizes your vocabulary learning journey. It leverages the spacing effect — gradually increasing intervals for review — to ensure words stick in your long-term memory. See more on Space repetition page.

Intro

I am a language learner and I watch tons of educational videos, read books and articles and participate in conversations. Here and there I come across with new words and phrases that I am unfamiliar with. This is how I came up with a spreadsheet in which I wrote down such words and phrases.

Obviously it doesn't work on a big scale. As soon as the document got hundreds rows in it, it became impossible to work with it. A big deal of automation is required in order to memorize you dictionary properly.

LexiCycle is designed to solve such chellenges. This tool allows you to create unlimited dictionary and apply Space repetition technique to memerize the best way.

Features

Import and export

It is nice to have a common document format in order to exchange vocabulary between different applications. This how I can easily switch from one to another which makes the competition more fair.

Links to external resources

A vocabulary isn't about words only. It is also about the context, about usage practices and pronounciation. This is why it is vital to have links on the original word source (where you heard it the first time), Youglish, Cambrige dictionary, etc.

Spaced Repetition technique

Newly introduced and more difficult words are shown more frequently, while older and less difficult words are shown less frequently in order to exploit the psychological spacing effect.

States

Each Record can move through a number of predefined states. It can move either forward or backward depending on the check result.

flowchart LR
    State0 --> State1
    State1 --> State7
    State1 -.-> State1
    State7 --> State30
    State7 -.-> State1
    State30 --> State90
    State30 -.-> State1
    State90 --> State360
    State90 -.-> State1
    State360 -.-> State1

Each of the States represents the amount of days after which the record will be offered for studying again. If

Implementation detail

Database schema

erDiagram
    USER {
        INTEGER id
        VARCHAR(255) email
        VARCHAR(255) password
        VARCHAR(255) firstname
        VARCHAR(255) lastname
        VARCHAR(64) timezone
    }
    DICTIONARY {
        INTEGER record_id
        VARCHAR(255) key
        VARCHAR(255) picture
        TEXT meaning
        JSON links
    }
    USER-DICTIONARY {
        INTEGER user_id
        INTEGER record_id
        VARCHAR(255) picture
        TEXT meaning
        JSON links
        DATETIME due
        INTEGER state
    }
    USER ||--o{ USER-DICTIONARY : uuid
    DICTIONARY ||--o{ USER-DICTIONARY : id

Terminology

Dictionary - a knowledge storage which contains Items
Record - a unique pair of Key + Meaning from the Dictionary
Key - a single Record identifier; might be either a word or a phrase.
Meaning - detailed description of an appropriate Key

np25071984/lexi-cycle