How many new words per day?

[Address7]

Is there any perceived wisdom on what an appropriate number of new words is to memorize each day?

I've been studying Chinese on and off for several years, but I'm still at a very basic level. (About 600 characters, if that's any indication.) For the past two months I've been working with several learning sources, plus Anki to memorize the vocabulary.

Anki's default setting introduces 20 new cards per day. (That's actually only 10 new words per day, if you do both English-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-English.) What I do right now is feed new words (and sometimes phrases) into Anki as I come across them. In practice, that means that I usually add about 50 new words at a time into Anki, start learning them over the next few days, and then go a few days without new words before adding a new batch.

So far it's working pretty well, but I'm wondering if 10 words per day is too fast -- if I'd be able to memorize them more quickly if I added fewer new ones per day. Or, conversely, if it would be possible to add a higher number, and still retain everything.

I also don't know whether it is a waste to have gaps of a few days at a time without learning new words, or whether taking short breaks like that helps consolidate the learned words.

What do other Chinese learners do? And is there any consensus on what a good number of words per day would be?

[renzhe]

If you're using an SRS program like Anki, simply monitor how much load you have each day and how many older words you are forgetting. If reviewing becomes a chore (because you have 200 cards scheduled each day), then it's a good time to take a break from new cards and concentrate on reviewing the old ones. If you have very few cards to review each day, and they are easy, it's time to add new ones.

Remember -- if it's fun, you learn better. If flashcards become something you hate doing, you will not memorise things well. Adjust your load accordingly.

[daofeishi]

My experience, for what it's worth, is that in the early phases of learning the language (in my experience, before I had a vocabulary of ~2000 words and could recognize ~1000 characters) it's wise not to bite off more than you can chew.

When I got over-enthusiastic, trying to learn 10-20 words or more a day, I found that a lot of the words would just disappear from memory and a lot of my work would be in vain. I found that by lowering the pace to 5-10 words a day, I would retain much more and overall learn faster. After a while, I could pick up the speed naturally as memorization got easier. Now I learn new words mostly through osmosis, and can pick up a lot without having to put in too much effort. My advise would just be finding a comfortable pace that won't demand too much of you. Don't get stressed if you miss a day or two of Chinese, try and make the learning experience fun and not guilt-based. Then you will reach a stage where picking up new words becomes natural soon enough.

Also, what has worked the best for me is learning new words through context, i.e. through reading proper Chinese material such as children's books, pamphlets, blogs, etc.I've never been into flashcards or SRS because I find that learning words through them only gives me a one-one mapping of a Chinese word onto an English one. That might work for a lot of proper nouns, but for most words, e.g. abstract nouns, verbs and adjectives, the Chinese collocations are often completely different from what you would expect from English. I felt that I lost an essential component of the language by using flashcards, so I stopped using them after I had built a basic vocabulary.

Edited March 7, 2010 at 11:44 PM by daofeishi

[Address7]

That's a fair point about trying non-flashcard methods of learning, and about flashcards teaching only one-on-one mapping of words. I agree that flashcards are not ideal. Right now, however, I'm still in the phase of acquisition of basic vocabulary. I recognize maybe 70% of the characters in simple texts, but that is not enough to read them and understand them. In previous language studies I have never studied with flashcards before, but with Chinese I feel that if I don't do regular review, I just forget everything.

Studying by reading will be the next step, I think, but I think I should probably get to a somewhat higher level (1000 characters? 1500? Who knows . . .) before being able to do that.

Renzhe's advice is also well taken. Thanks!

[renzhe]

Vocabulary acquisition is an extremely controversial topic with many opinions. Different things work for different people.

For me, flashcard work was essential for getting a basic vocabulary down. As long as you don't overvalue the flashcards (i.e. see them as a part of a whole program, rather than all you need to do), they are really useful. Flashcards simply make you keep a character (or word) fresh, and let you remember one basic association. The understanding of what the words mean and how they are used will come through the exposure to real speech and real texts.

What I did is work my way through the HSK vocabulary list using flashcards, while reading many books at the same time. The combination was really helpful.

[Shi Tong]

I'm just working on getting between 5 and 10 words in a day at the moment, but it depends on your mood, how tired you are, how hard the words are, etc, etc.

I find that if a word that's new is related to an old one, it's easy to learn, and if it's completely new, than that's a lot harder, so I try to stick to half completely new ones and half of those I think I will almost definately remember.

I am also doing a thing where-- if I know I remember a word, I will not rewrite it every day, but I will rewrite my new word list once a day at least. If there are any which are getting harder to remember again, I simply review that word. It also helps to keep it in subject- for instance, I have trouble remembering the chang in yundong chang, so I will write the whole phrase and the single character over again a few times so I dont forget it again (hopefully)!!

Maybe you should take some time to list down the words you know you wont forget, and revise those once a week or something, then write down the ones you have trouble with and revise those until they reach your remembered list?

[crazillo]

I can tell you I'm not remembering 百分之百 from my courses I now take at Beida. We got so many classes per week and lots of 听写 as well... Therefore, I have to learn a massive amount, but only very few words will be remembered longterm. Research has shown you can only properly learn 7 生词 a day. Thus, I always try to extract the words that I feel are useful and literally soak them in. E.g. for tomorrow's 听写, I got the words 集中 and 开销, guess which one will be on my mind in 3 weeks. ;)

[xifbk]

I am curious where you read about the 7生词 limit/average? I personally don't find it to work like that. I am up to 500 words, and I am finding that the more I study the more words I am able to take in, ie initially a few words a day were a struggle to take in, and now I am up to about 5 per day.

But of course as the other poster says this is all dependent on how awake/alert you are when it is time to study.

[imron]

Research has shown you can only properly learn 7 生词 a day.

Which research? Do you have any relevant links?

[wushijiao]

I have a theory that it's best to push the limits of how many words you can learn per day to the highest number your mind can possibly absorb -- ie. 50-200+.

I found that when I was first learning Chinese in 2001 (mainly using "Fast and Fun Chinese", "Rapid Literacy", zhongwen.com, children's stories, and other random stuff with my notebook in hand), some days I would spend 20-30 minutes and try to do 10 words. Other days I would study for a few hours and try to learn hundreds of words.

I found that, paradoxically, the overall efficiency of the huge effort was better than the more focused smaller effort. Why is that?

1) When learning Chinese words, and especially characters, the more cross-referencing you can do, the easier it will be to remember things. In other words, if you study banana 香蕉 and Hong Kong 香港 in the same session, you might remember them because they both have the fragrant character. Also, perhaps just as importantly, when cross-referencing goes awry, when something seems like it should work and it doesn't, that also tends to stick in the memory.

2) I think you (or at least me) can only remember a word once we've seen it several times. Therefore, in large studying sessions, it's possible to come across a word, and re-study it many times. This is well summed up by the grazing philosophy.

So, in general, I think in a large studying session aiming to learn many words (say, 50-200) is perhaps better than smaller more focused sessions aimed around getting 100% accuracy. It's a bit like running vs. walking, as far as burning fat. Sure, walking almost exclusively burns calories from fat, while running burns a fairly low percentage of calories from fat, but because you burn so many total calories while running, the total amount of calories burnt from fat while running will be higher than a similar session of walking. (Although maybe that's comparing apples and oranges).

Anyway, like renzhe said, this is a controversial subject, and different things work for different people.

[crazillo]

Well are you guys able to read German? We have a "bring Chinese to schools" programme at my school and quite frequently invite experts to hold lectures about education, learning languages etc. In one of them, a lady mentioned that although you could learn a lot of words for a short time (like for a test), only seven of them can really settle in on a daily basis. I can try to figure our her sources. According to my personal experiences, I tend to agree. If I look at 生词 two weeks after a 听写 I will still recognize most of them, but using them in conversations etc. will be a different story. I guess those 7 words must refer to active and passive knowledge. Do you want me to figure out more detailed information?

[imron]

There are bunch of German readers on the forums however I'm not one of them. Based on my own personal experience I also tend to generally agree with that statement, but I'd still be interested in seeing research on the subject if you can find something more concrete. Even if it's only in German, I'm sure some of the other German speakers here might find it useful too.

[daofeishi]

I think quite a few of us here are able to read German, actually, so if you do have some good sources, bring them on.

What wushijiao is saying is making a lot of sense to me. I find that I will usually not remember a new word after having seen it once or twice, but after enough repetitions it sticks, and that seems to work irrespective of how much effort I'm putting into learning it. I.e. I could sit down for 10 minutes, rewriting the word over and over and put massive mental effort into learning just that one word. Then I will invariably forget it, and do the same the next time I encounter the word, and repeat this painful process until the word sticks, but it actually seems as if just reviewing the words once before moving on, and doing THAT every time until it sticks will take me only slightly longer (in terms of the time passed between when I first see the word and when it sticks of course, not total time spent on learning the word). I haven't actually measured whether it's true, but the effect seems to be there.

My guess is that the effect might have something to do with the difference between short term and long term memory, and that concentrated repetitions will stimulate the short-term memory, but not the long term one. I wonder if any studies have been made on this. I wouldn't be surprised if theres an optimum spacing/repetition ratio that will maximize the number of words you can learn in a given interval.

I'm not trying to contradict what I said above here, I still don't think it's wise to try to learn too many words at a time, It's easy to get discouraged by going to fast, and I think it's easier to work consistently if you learn the material in bite-size chunks. The above might be an effect that is wise to take into account when devising a good study method, though, and going by wushijiaos method might be a good idea when you have the basic vocab down.

Edited March 29, 2010 at 05:34 AM by daofeishi

[wushijiao]

I'm not trying to contradict what I said above here, I still don't think it's wise to try to learn too many words at a time, It's easy to get discouraged by going to fast, and I think it's easier to work consistently if you learn the material in bite-size chunks. The above might be an effect that is wise to take into account when devising a good study method, though, and going by wushijiaos method might be a good idea when you have the basic vocab down.

Yeah, I think I agree with you daofeishi.

If you look at the link to my other post, I recommend listening to dialogues quite literally hundreds of times. For example, in my Hindi dialogues, I cut out all the English, then copied and pasted one's person's lines three times, and in the 2nd time, slowed it down (all using Audacity). Then, I'd listen to the dialogue a few times a day, sometimes with the book, sometimes while walking. This way, if you listen to a five minutes dialogue three times per day, you are hearing someones lines nine times. Then over the course of a week or two, you can listen to it hundreds of times.

So, you could see this method as the slowest of all slow attempts at memorization. I think the key is, however, to do the main memorization via audio, especially in the first year or two. If one simply makes flashcards and tries to review that, sure, one may know a character and its supposed pinyin equivalent, but my guess is that when spoken, a person may not be good at recognizing the words as spoken, or how it sounds in a sentence.

So, I guess what I'm saying is there are different vocab acquisition strategies that are appropriate from when one is a beginner/intermediate/ or advanced, and there are different strategies for aural vs. written memorization (especially with Chinese, because of the character system). Add to that, there's always the intensive vs extensive divide as well!

The key factor in navigating these contradictions is to put in a decent amount of effort. You try one strategy for a while, assess the results, and then continue it or change it. Or at least that's been my experience.

Edited March 29, 2010 at 06:37 AM by wushijiao

[crazillo]

Also, in contrast to English, it is not enough to look up a word once. When I don't know how to say something and my 语伴 tells me, I will definitely forget it very quickly. That's why I always ask him to write down those kind of words. When I used to learn English, I would check the meaning once and pretty much knew it from that point. Quite not alike with Chinese. Have you guys made similair experiences?

[creamyhorror]

My guess is that the effect might have something to do with the difference between short term and long term memory, and that concentrated repetitions will stimulate the short-term memory, but not the long term one. I wonder if any studies have been made on this. I wouldn't be surprised if theres an optimum spacing/repetition ratio that will maximize the number of words you can learn in a given interval.

Isn't that what Spaced Repetition Systems like the ones used by Anki and Mnemosyne are intended to do?

[Scoobyqueen]

Research has shown you can only properly learn 7 生词 a day

I once came across the following piece of academic research in the context of designing a quesionnaire. Link. The number of of items a person can contain in their working memory is about seven. I wonder if this is the research your teacher is quoting.

[renzhe]

Regardless of our respective learning philosophy, I think that we can all agree that there is a difference between passive knowledge and active knowledge, and that there are many levels of knowing a word. Even as native speakers, we often discover familiar words in new contexts and new meanings.

I think that it is wrong to expect to sit down, learn 10 words, and then you're finished. Perhaps this is why many people have a problem with intensive vocabulary study, as this quite clearly does not work.

I see vocabulary acquisition as a first step. Then you need lots of exposure and active usage, in a wide range of contexts. The requirements for the first step are not big -- just remember the best fitting translation. This can be done in large quantities, daily, with a flashcard program, etc. The rest will be the same for all learners (and all native speakers to a certain extent): lots of listening, using things in speech, reading, etc. This is what will cement things in your brain and give you an intuitive understanding of what to use when.

I also believe that such intuitive understanding simply takes time, measured not in minutes of study summed together, but in months and years of exposure and use. So I don't like trying to learn the context and nuances and all possible meanings of a word in 5 different sentences the first time I see it. But, as I said, it is a controversial topic, and different things work for different people.

For my part, I go through the important vocab daily using an SRS program (it doesn't take more then 10-20 minutes on most days), and leave the rest to reading and listening, which gives me those same words in many different contexts.

[Shi Tong]

I'd say reading and speaking/ listening go hand in hand because it helps if you've learned something like: 大家好 that these are three seperate words with their own meanings, and you can gleen a lot of information from breaking that down, also, it doesn't then just sound like one long word, meaning "hello everyone".. dajiahao.

I also think cross referencing works too, but you have to have already learned a lot of characters for it to start happening. I also find sometimes it can be confusing, like recently, since my Chinese is basic, I learned 2 characters which I can cross ref:

机 and 几. However, I made a mistake when writing 司机 because my brain assumed that the ji part of 司机 must be different, so I started writing it wrong, (I put an extra stroke across the top of the left radical). It was only a while later I realised that I'd made the mistake and had to put my brain back in place.

[SunDaYu]

After about a year of study in China I have accumulated around 2000 new words in 4 different decks in Anki. At the moment I review around 200 words per day and add between 5-30 depending on the day.

This works for me and I like having a huge vocabulary base. Because I'm in China having such a large base is great for listening and for eventually soaking up the words when they are used in context, but I think that there is some merit to studying fewer words but knowing exactly how to use them.