Most progress tracking answers "how much have you done". The Learning Lab answers "what do you actually know, and how do you know it" — by splitting a word into seven separate skills and reporting each one from what you have already done, rather than from a test.
Knowing a word seven ways
"I know 谢谢" hides seven different abilities, and most learners are strong in some and hollow in others without realising it. The Lab measures them separately:
- Meaning 义 — You know what it means. Built from reveal-mode flashcards and reading practice.
- Character 字 — You can pick the character out from meaning and sound. From lesson practice.
- Pinyin 拼 — You can produce the romanisation. From write mode on a flashcard, and the write step in a lesson.
- Tone 声 — You know which tone. From tones typed alongside pinyin, and tone drills on dictionary entries.
- Listening 听 — You recognise it spoken. From listening exercises and the listen step of a lesson.
- Speaking 说 — You can say it. From speak mode and pronunciation practice.
- Writing 写 — You can write it by hand. From handwriting practice, drawn and graded.
The other panels
- Retention — What is holding and what is slipping, over time rather than as a snapshot.
- Errors — The mistakes you actually make, grouped — which is more useful than a list of things you got wrong.
- Gap — Where the distance is between what you have covered and what your level expects.
- Focus — Where your attention has actually gone, which is often not where you think.
- Calibration — Whether your confidence matches your accuracy. Over-confidence and under-confidence are different problems with different fixes.
It is built from what you did
Nothing in the Lab is a separate test. Every figure comes from work you were doing anyway — flashcard grades, lesson practice, listening exercises, pronunciation attempts.
That is what makes it honest and also what makes it slow to fill. A brand-new account has an empty Lab, and the only way to populate it is to study across all seven kinds of activity.
How much of it you see
Three tiers: signed out shows none, a free account shows three facets, and a paid plan shows all seven. Group figures — cohort medians and the like — are withheld below five learners, so a small class cannot be used to work out an individual.
One thing that catches people out: facet access follows the learner, not the viewer. A tutor on a paid plan looking at a learner on a free one sees that learner’s three facets, not seven. The Lab reports what the subject has paid for, which is the only version that does not sell someone else’s data.
What it never contains
The Lab is built from outcomes — right, wrong, how long, how confident. It does not store or show what you typed. Nothing you wrote to the AI tutor, no free-text answer and no message appears in any Lab panel, for you or for anyone looking at your profile.
And a teacher’s view of a learner is built from the learner’s own panels. There is nothing on a tutor’s screen about you that you cannot see about yourself.
Common questions
Because it is built from evidence and a new account has none. Do some flashcard review, a lesson’s practice section and a listening exercise, and the first facets appear.