Recognition and recall are different tasks
Seeing a word and knowing its meaning is recognition. Producing the word without seeing it is recall. Both are useful, but one does not automatically prove the other. You may recognise 猫 in a list and still pause when you want to say cat in Chinese.
A story asks you to follow meaning across sentences. A writing check asks you to retrieve a written form. Use them for different purposes: read to understand a situation, then hide the answer to check what you can produce. Neither activity needs to be long.
Use a tiny story to notice context
Try this beginner practice text: 我有一只猫。它喜欢睡觉。今天，我看见一只狗。 (Wǒ yǒu yì zhī māo. Tā xǐhuān shuìjiào. Jīntiān, wǒ kànjiàn yì zhī gǒu.) It means: I have a cat. It likes to sleep. Today, I saw a dog. This example introduces a few words beyond the animal names, so read the translation if you need it.
Ask yourself: Which animal belongs to the speaker? What does it like to do? Which animal did the speaker see today? Answers: the cat; sleep; a dog. These questions check whether you understood the story, rather than whether you merely spotted familiar characters.
Check writing in the form you want to learn
For English, a spelling check can mean writing the letters from an image or meaning prompt. For Chinese, decide whether you are checking character recognition, character writing, or pinyin with tones. They are related skills, but a correct pinyin answer does not show that you can write 猫.
On paper, write cat and dog as prompts. Close this guide, write the Chinese words or pinyin, and then compare: 猫 / māo; 狗 / gǒu. If a tone is missing, practise that part and try again later. You can do this exercise even when the website does not offer a dedicated writing mode for your language pair.
A review that fits into five minutes
Spend two minutes rereading a short passage, one minute answering a meaning question, and two minutes recalling three words without looking. On the next day, use the same prompts in a different order. If every answer depends on remembering the order of the list, mix in a word from another theme.
Keep the story readable. When too many words are unfamiliar, choose a shorter passage or check the translations first. A difficult paragraph is not automatically better practice; you need enough understanding to notice how the target vocabulary is used.