Plan Research And Standards

Plan: a Research and standards page, with the sources

Source of truth: this wiki page.

Written 2026-10-06. After FSRS (done: ADR-0033) and the B1 plans (b1-plans.md), the owner's order, since the page cites both.

What the owner asked

all the research should be called out in the app and readme. users should know what all standards this follows so that they can trust it better. this is also a plan with the details of the research, since this has to land after FSRS and B1 targeting is done.

a Research and standards page in the app: this can actually club well with the sources section. we also need a lot more sources.

What exists

• Sources (Settings > Sources, #197): the books the decks quote, from each deck's source field: Sahaj Path, Abol Tabol, Panch Parmeshwar, Diddubatu, and the Bengali spelling rules. The README's Sources section lists the same.
• The README explains ISO 15919 and the IPA. Nothing in the app or the README names the research behind the design.
• The research for the skill model (ADR-0034; summarised in docs/research/skill-evidence.md) was gathered from abstracts and summaries; the full texts were not read (the network blocked the publishers).

The page

Research and standards, in place of Settings' Sources row, with three sections:

1. Standards the app follows or is based on, each with a line on where:

   Standard	Where
   CEFR (Council of Europe 2001; Companion Volume 2020)	Levels A1–B1, the B1 target, the themes of each level
   ISO 15919	Readings in Latin letters, based on its letters, with deliberate departures (README)
   IPA	How a word is said
   ISO 639 and BCP 47	Language codes, and the voices and recognisers asked for
   Unicode	Every script
   FSRS	Scheduling

2. Research behind the design, grouped by what it decided, each with a plain line on what the app does because of it, then the citation:

   Group	What the app does	Research
   Spacing	Reviews spread out, further apart as you remember	Cepeda et al. 2006, 2008; Kim & Webb 2022
   Testing	You recall rather than reread	Roediger & Karpicke 2006; Karpicke & Roediger 2008; Kang et al. 2007
   Skills	Hear, Say and Write kept apart	Nation 2022; Laufer & Goldstein 2004; González-Fernández & Schmitt 2020; Steinel et al. 2007; DeKeyser 1997
   Listening for meaning	Hear asks what a word means	Hayes-Harb & Masuda 2008; Cook et al. 2016; Ota et al. 2009
   Phonemic contrasts	The sounds your languages lack, with feedback	Werker & Tees 1984; Logan et al. 1991; Thomson 2018; Uchihara et al. 2025
   Accents	Several voices where the phone has them	Bradlow & Bent 2008; Baese-Berk et al. 2013
   Latin letters	Letters based on ISO 15919, marking every contrast	Hayes-Harb & Cheng 2016; Bassetti 2017; Escudero et al. 2008
   Grammar	Understanding and producing apart, timed	DeKeyser 1997; Ellis 2005; Shintani et al. 2013
   Your strengths	FSRS per word, an Elo ability per skill	Pelánek 2016; Choffin et al. 2019; Settles & Meeder 2016

   A group shows only once the app does what it says. The skill model is done (ADR-0034), so Skills and Listening for meaning can show. Your strengths: the owner removed that section from Progress (2026-10-09; ADR-0035), so reword the group for what the app shows.

3. Sources of the decks' texts, as the Sources page shows them now.

A citation opens its DOI or the publisher's page in the browser. Nothing is fetched to show the page.

One list, in two places

• The entries live in one file in the repository, read by the app and checked against the README's section by a test, so that the two never disagree.
• Each entry: id, group, the plain line, authors, year, title, venue, DOI or ISBN, and the link.
• Checked before it ships: every citation against the publisher's record, with its DOI resolving. Entries from the research so far are marked unchecked until then.

The README

A Research and standards section after "What it does": the standards, then the research by group, one line each, with links. The Sources section moves under it.

What it takes

1. The file and its parser, in lib/core.
2. The page, and the Settings row in place of Sources.
3. The README section, and a test that keeps it in step with the file.
4. Checking every citation.
5. Tests: the parser; a group hidden until its feature exists; the page's sections; a citation opening its link; twice the text size, both themes, screen-reader labels.

To decide

• Which sources first: the owner wants both more research and standards, and more sources for the decks' content (dictionaries, frequency lists, Wiktionary, public-domain books). Which ones, per language, is still open.
• The file: a new file kind, which needs the owner's answer (AGENTS.md), or a section of an existing one.
• Whether the page shows how sure each line is, as the plans do.

Estimate

Part	Hours
File, parser, page, README test	4–6
Checking the citations, about 60	3–5

Confidence: medium.

See also: Roadmap · Plans-Index · Home