SRS strategies

[renzhe]

In your case, you could already speak Chinese before the SRS bandwagon had started rolling. So it's a slightly different case. There's little reason for you to jump in now.

I don't use SRS for German or English. But I found it very useful for acquiring and retaining Chinese vocabulary.

You might want to consider using SRS if you decide to learn the 500 most common chengyu, though, or something similar.

[chrix]

in which case you could use my "most frequent chengyu list"

[imron]

I actually tried getting on the SRS bandwagon way before it was even a bandwagon (circa 2003 or so) with SuperMemo and Memaid (the precursor to Mnemosyne). My Chinese wasn't nearly so good then. Maybe you could put it down to SuperMemo's amazingly complex interface and poor support for Chinese, but ultimately for me I think the problem was still mostly with the reasons I mentioned above.

[chrix]

I posted this in another thread, but I think it's relevant here too:

I'm of two minds regarding the issue raised by imron. I didn't use SRS until after joining the forum, so I have studied stuff the traditional way all my life (the 填鴨 method, and of course by reading and looking up things on the fly).

So in that method, reinforcement would just happen by reading other texts (I could never read texts several times, unless needed for work, this would be too boring for me) and coming across words I had read before. For many words I actually remember where I read them, so in a way each word would have its own little history for me.

However, the problem with the on the fly method is that sometimes in a conversation I would remember there being a certain word but just not be able to come up with it. Flashcarding has changed this immensely, not only because it has made the remembering process easier, but also because it creates some kind of record for you to look up if you run into this kind of situation again.

I should probably discuss this on the other thread on SRS strategies, but I do think that principally speaking learning words in context will be more efficient than learning them out of context. But I'm still learning the HSK vocab and the basic chengyu because being exposed to primary vocab out of context will help you later when you do encounter them in context.

As far as characters go, I have decks for these because of the nature of the Chinese writing system - reading texts alone will not necessarily reinforce the readings of characters, and for an error-free pronunciation you'd have to be absolutely clear about the exact tones....

[chrix]

Trying to round up some more related threads here:

How many flashcards can you review in one session?

recognition and production

SRS and learning new characters

characters and words

minimum info vs. larger chunks

[Unfadeable]

Hey all,

Couldn't find a thread like this in the past so thought I'd start one. For the longest time I've been following a very simple, and probably somewhat ineffective, approach to my flashcards, namely 90% simple word recognition (I look at the Chinese word and think of what it means in English as well as the pinyin). However after reading a bit of Khatzumoto's work on AJATT, and that of some his devotees, I've begun trying to branch out. <admin edit: removed link to random blog in first post>

Anyway, I was wondering what some of you are using. Has anyone had any particular success with a particular format? For advanced students, are you still SRSing religiously or does it become less necessary? Has anyone found any gold mine decks recently?

I thought I'd also post my own regime and open it up to critique. By the way, I use Ankimobile with 5 minute timeboxing, spend about 45 min a day on SRS, and I'm at lower-intermediate level.

1. Main deck - my original deck, mostly HSK and NPCR 1-5 (New Practical Chinese Reader) vocab, straight up recognition
   
2. Heisig - still doing it 1 year or so after completing the book, I've heard many people find it less effective as time goes on; I'm just more forgiving with myself now since most of the time the keyword throws me off rather than not knowing how to write the character or knowing it what it means (needless to say, the template here is production/recall i.e. English keyword --> Hanzi)
   
3. 22k Mandarin Sentences - shared Anki deck, I deleted duplicates and the bottom levels so there's 17k now; just started this a few weeks ago, it's low priority for me
   
4. Traditional to simplified - recently moved to Taiwan, I'm primarily interested in recognizing the traditional equivalents (writing them will come more naturally), this deck has the 500 or so totally different characters. I think I got the deck off this site...
   
5. Tatoeba audio deck - shared anki deck with audio sentence, I started this recently. This I test by listening to audio, making sure I get the full meaning of the sentence and ideally can repeat every word. Reverse is Hanzi, pinyin and English meaning
   
6. New deck - I've been developing this since I came to Taiwan. For a while, in accordance with the AJATT method, I was taking every new word I came across and finding a sentence for it (including inputting sentences from native material like manga), but it's a lot of trouble, so recently I bought Pleco complete and started making recognition cards with Chinese definitions on reverse wherever possible (about 40% of the time the definitions are too complex and I just choose an english one with an example sentence). Almost all these definitions have a sample sentence or two. Finally, I have about 1000 recall cards for words I'm learning related to school, drawn from the Practical Audio Visual Chinese series. This will eventually build up to 3000 as I work through PAVC 3, 4 and 5.
   

Some things I'm wondering: How many people out there are experimenting with cloze deletion? My listening is terrible, is there other audio material out there? Or do I need to start ripping audio from movies/tv and generating my own cards--anyone doing that? Am I doing too much recognition not enough recall? How many facts is too much? Presently I do 10 HSK sentences, 10 audio sentences, and 10 recall and 20 recognition cards for basic vocab each day. Lastly, am I focusing too much on SRS? There seems to be a lot of conflicting opinion out there on the merits of SRS, but I just can't see any other way to ensure I actually learn what I come across.

Looking forward to hearing from all of you.

[imron]

Merged. There have also been plenty of related threads discussing SRS and flashcards recently. Many can be revealed with a quick search.

[creamyhorror]

SRS is good for solidifying and maintaining vocabulary, and allows you to progress relatively quickly at the early and intermediate stages, but many people recommend switching over to extensive reading gradually as you become more and more proficient. Extensive reading involves absorbing words through context/exposure and keeps exposing you to both new and old words. It's not a "natural SRS" in that it doesn't optimise your recall of a particular set of words, but it tends to expose you to the words you care about at their exact frequency

Personally I'd advise de-emphasising your Heisig deck over time and focusing on vocab decks if your vocab is still relatively weak, with some time on sentence decks. Over time, start doing more sentence decks to gain exposure to a wide range of sentence structures. Then start reading articles and books suited to your level, to learn to skim and read at higher speeds. You can then decide whether to reduce or maintain your dependence on SRS.

[Guest realmayo]

What's a Heisig deck? One testing you on your ability to write characters that you've learned with Heisig mnemonics? My experience with writing characters + mnemonics + SRS is that after a while I forget the stories behind the mnemonics but still remember how to write the character.

[renzhe]

SRS is good for solidifying and maintaining vocabulary, and allows you to progress relatively quickly at the early and intermediate stages, but many people recommend switching over to extensive reading gradually as you become more and more proficient.

Based on my experience, traditional flashcards break down at about 1000 entries, and SRS flash cards at about 10,000.

Which is OK. if you know 10,000 words, it's time to read real native materials, and read lot of them.

[Unfadeable]

Imron, I totally searched! I searched SRS and Anki, don't now how I overlooked this thread, sorry about that. Maybe I was only searching in the "Resources Forum"

Thanks to you all for the advice. I am trying to read but it's a huge pain because I have stop every sentence and look up words--and I'm reading simple stuff (Dragonball). It's faster now that I have pleco but it just frustrates the reading process, whereas with SRS I feel like I'm actually learning things (as opposed to just seeing them once and moving on). I see that there are pitfalls to it and I try to take a balanced approach--SRS is definitely not the bulk of my studying (maybe 1/6). My vocab is still nowhere near 10000 (more like 4000, and that includes a lot of words that are spinoffs from one root so it's probably like 20% less than that) so I will continue the SRS grind until I get there, and reevaluate at that time. However I do like the idea of SRS as a way to make a database of what you know so I will probably keep it up in perpetuity (or at least until I'm happy with my progress and ready to tackle another language).

I also feel like practicing listening is really aided by SRS. I mean, for me listening to a podcast or watching a movie (without Chinese subs) is almost pointless. It just washes over me and I understand maybe 10% (which is hugely depressing btw). Whereas with SRS I ensure that I can clearly distinguish the words and repeat them and know what's going on. I'm trying to emulate the approach I've heard was taken by some expert speakers of Chinese whereby they spend a lot of time imitating people.

And realmayo, my Heisig deck is just the Heisig keyword on front, character and pinyin on the back. I definitely have forgotten many of the stories, and as you said most of the time I see the keyword and instantly know what to write. I could probably ditch this deck now but it only takes a minute or two each day and I figure I might as well keep it up until after I'm done with the next Heisig book (when it comes out in February 2012).

On another note, does anyone have any experience with laddering (a term popularized, I believe, by Khatz meaning you use your L2 to learn L3). Regardless of my Chinese progress, I have to being learning French next year and I was planning to use Chinese on the reverse of all my French cards. Anyone have any input on whether that has been helpful to them?

Btw, I straight up cannot figure out how to quote in reply on this board ??

[imron]

Maybe I was only searching in the "Resources Forum"

Maybe, because this thread is currently the top result when searching for SRS in the search bar at the top-right corner of the page

To quote a reply, copy and paste the part you want to quote, and then click the 'quote' button on the post toolbar. Either that or manually surround the text of interest with [ quote ] [/ quote ] tags.

[Silent]

On another note, does anyone have any experience with laddering (a term popularized, I believe, by Khatz meaning you use your L2 to learn L3). Regardless of my Chinese progress, I have to being learning French next year and I was planning to use Chinese on the reverse of all my French cards. Anyone have any input on whether that has been helpful to them?

Nothing wrong with the concept. I think many people do so if only because of the quality/quantity of study material in their native tongue is limited. In small language area's it's quite normal that studybooks for higher education are in a foreign language as appropriate material is not available in L1. It's definately good for L2. It has however some side effects. For example, I sometimes have a hard time to discuss some of the subjects I studied in my native language while I've no problem discussing it in English. Also, after learning a little Thai from an English phrasebook I noticed that I often in my mind translated first to English and then to Dutch when telling about a 'conversation', in Thai.

Depending on your native language, L3 and (level of) L2 there are some potential pitfalls. Pronunciation will be compared and approached from L2, if your pronunciation of L2 is only moderate you'll have a hard time to get the L3 pronunciation right. If L1 and L3 are closely related and hugely different from L2 it may be highly inefficient. If Chinese is L2 and used to learn L3 Italian the learning material will focus on issue's that are often quite irrelevant for someone with L1 Spanish.