Express mode or classic — when to grade yourself and when not to
Mullawo has two ways through a session. One asks you to judge every card; the other just shows and moves on. They are for different days, and the choice changes what the schedule learns about you.
Open a review in Mullawo and you are in one of two modes. Classic shows the front, you flip, and you answer Don't know, Almost or I know it. Express shows the front, you tap, you see the answer, you tap again — no buttons, no verdict. Switch with the chip above the card.
They look like a big and a small version of the same thing. They are not; they feed the schedule differently, and it is worth knowing when each one is right.
What classic does
Every grade in classic is a message to the spaced-repetition scheduler. I know it pushes the word further out — three days become a week, a week becomes a month. Almost holds it close. Don't know pulls it back to tomorrow and shortens its future intervals. Over a few sessions the deck sorts itself: the words you find easy stop appearing, the words you find hard appear more.
Classic is also the only mode that counts. Accuracy, the leaderboard, the "learned" tally — all of it is built from graded answers, because a grade is a claim about what you know and a tap-through is not.
The cost is honesty. Classic works exactly as well as your grading is truthful. I know it on a word you half-guessed puts it a month away, and you meet it again having forgotten it entirely.
What express does
Express records each card as seen — the equivalent of a good answer, which moves the word forward on its schedule — but it never asks you, never records a Don't know, and never touches accuracy or the leaderboard. It is a pass through the deck, not a test of it.
That makes it fast: twenty cards in a minute and a half. It also makes it blind. A word you do not know at all will move forward the same as one you know cold, because you never said otherwise.
When express is right
- Reading a new deck for the first time. Twenty brand-new words, none of them known. Grading Don't know twenty times tells the scheduler nothing it did not assume. Express lets you meet the words; classic can grade them tomorrow.
- A tired day. Five minutes of express keeps the streak, keeps the words in circulation, and asks nothing. Better than skipping.
- Warming up. Some people run express once through the day's due cards, then classic. The first pass primes, the second measures.
- Listening practice. With the speaker on every card, express is a way to hear the whole deck aloud without stopping.
When classic is right
- Whenever you want the schedule to learn. Express gives it nothing to learn from. If a word keeps slipping and never comes back sooner, it is because it has only ever been tapped through.
- Once the words are familiar. Grading a word you have seen three times is a real judgement; grading one you have seen zero times is not.
- When the numbers matter to you. The streak survives express; accuracy and the leaderboard do not see it.
The mistake to avoid
Living in express. It feels like progress — cards fly, the counter climbs — and the deck quietly rots, because every word keeps advancing whether or not you know it. A week later a review is full of cards a month out that you have never actually retrieved.
The rule that works for most people: express to meet words, classic to keep them. New words get one or two express passes. Then every session is classic, graded honestly, and Don't know is the most useful button on the screen.