I am wondering what people consider "forgotten" or "incorrect"?

I am currently allowing myself up to maybe 15 seconds until i consider it forgotten, even if in some cases if I think for 30 seconds I would remember it.

I am beginning to think 15 seconds is too long. ie If I can't recall it within 5 second the word is as good as useless to me.

I don't mark wrong depending on how long it takes me to answer it. This is because I think even if it takes you a long time to answer, it is good for your recall to sit and try to think about it, even if it takes you a minute.

Here is a belabored explanation: When I see the prompt, I have a few reactions: "I don't know this"; "Oh I know this"; or "hmmm... I think I know this."

If I feel I don't know it, I immediately reveal the pinyin of the first character, then see if I can write it. If that doesn't work, I start to reveal strokes. These tend to jog my memory. Either way, I end up marking the whole thing wrong.

If I think I know it, I wait until I can answer it. Sometime I will space out maybe for a minute or two, until it comes to me. I think the struggle of trying to recall the word actually helps you learn it, even if it takes a relatively long time. In this case, I will mark it either a 3 , or a 2 (I know it, or I kind of know it). If I can't answer it then I reveal pinyin and strokes until I know it. At that point it gets marked wrong.

And if I have the "hmmm... I think I know this," my reaction is pretty much the same, although I'm not as patient to wait a minute to recall it because I'm not as sure.

Sometimes though, even if I have to reveal the pinyin, I will still mark a word as correct. This is because there are too many words with similar meanings. For example, "违反 wéifǎn: violate (a law)" and "犯法 fàn fǎ: break the law".

When it comes to synonyms like this, I am much more tolerant about revealing the pinyin of the first character.

I agree with atdlouis. However if you do get it quickly then you can give urself a 4 and I wouldn't wait for more than a minute unless it was on the tip of my tounge.

If you think about it the definition exercise is quite similar to the clues in a crossword (esp. if you have the definitions in Chinese)...so for example the answer to

动词 用刀刮去毛发：～头。～刀。～度 is 剃.

But even in my native tongue it's still difficult to do such an exercise (for example this one took me a while the other day:

Cook in liquid (6) - R - I - -

In fact maybe a crossword is easier since you get some letters :P

Why try to do something quickly in Chinese that you would find (relatively) hard to do even in your native language?

Currently I feel that the process of taking 30 seconds to force my brain to recall the word but I don't have any objective evidence that this is true.

I have decided I should start an experiment now, where if I cant recall in 5 seconds, it is wrong and I move on. I am curious to see how this will affect my stats/progress. I think doing it for one month might be long enough to test it out.

@Antimacassar is it "braise"?

As for the original question, I find that if it takes me 30 seconds to remember something and I then mark it wrong, the next time it comes up it'll be too easy. I don't mind that, as I figure it'll just get scheduled out into the future quickly enough.

@jww1066: 对!

I definitely agree that if you take the time to stop and try and recall the word, it seems to be really good at "burning" it in, so to speak. That definitely is consistent with my experience.

However I am wondering if instead of taking that extended time to do the recall, if using the time for extra reps may be more effective in the long run.