Anki for traditional char. (after learning simp.) - best config?

[joshuawbb]

Sorry for the mouthful of a thread title

I've gotten to the point where I want to start slowly learning traditional characters now alongside simplified, and feel a good way of doing this is with Anki, which I use every day. But I'm not really sure of a best way to configure Anki for it. What I've got in mind at the moment is to set up a basic flashcard model in which I can have the simplified character in one field, and the traditional one in the other. No English meaning, since I've got my other deck for that and will only be adding in characters I've already studied in simp.

The first little issue is that the traditional Hanzi Stats only seems to work when the Mandarin model is chosen - I might just be seeing things, but from experimenting I can't get it to recognise characters added into the deck in the "basic" model. I'd like to have the Hanzi Stats there as a measure for how many trad. characters I know, just like I do with simplified.

Secondly, could anyone share some ideas on how to structure my flashcard model? These are my main questions regarding this:

--Would you use both recognition and recall modes? Or just one of them? I want the deck to train both writing and reading. Is just using recall mode enough for both reading and writing?

--Would you include a short list of sample words in the card, or the character only? Just two or three words for example, no sentences.

--Should I just forget the Mandarin model and lose the Hanzi Stats, or keep to the Mandarin model for good measure? I guess I could count characters just by counting the fact total.

Many thanks! Sorry to be a bit of a pain. I would not be surprised if there's already something highly informative here on the subject, I just haven't had much luck with the search feature.

[feihong]

I've recently started doing this. But I just kept it simple: traditional character on the front, and simplified character on the back. I don't care about writing traditional characters, so I don't do anything with recall.

I don't assign much value to keeping track of how many traditional characters I know. I figure if I just keep reading traditional Chinese texts and inputting the unknown characters into Anki, I'll eventually learn the traditional equivalent of every simplified character I know. (For me, that's 3000+ characters.)

[Gleaves]

I did a simple deck as well - simp on one side, trad on the other. There are only about 500 differences betw simp and trad, so I did cards for both ways and had a deck of about 1000 cards. Have a read through this this thread and take a look at the 简化字总表, if you have not already.

I wouldn't worry about stat tracking or stocking your deck. But you'll probably want to follow up anki review sessions with some reading practice(in traditional) to help lodge things in.

Also, another thread on going from simp to trad.

[renzhe]

What I did is traditional prompt with a simplified answer (I also went from simplified to traditional). After a while, you simply recognise the traditional forms as variants of the stuff you already know.

I don't know how valuable it is to learn to write both traditional and simplified. Most people I know can write one set, but read both. Typically this is all you need to communicate. If writing traditional characters is not particularly important to you (and you can already write simplified), I'd suggest dropping it.

[joshuawbb]

Just a quick message to say thank you everyone for your help - I'll come back to this post very soon as I've been almost totally off the internet lately.

[oukemin]

I'm very interested in this decks. Are they available on anki online?

Do you have models, where i can enter the simplified char and the traditional is automatically completed?

[renzhe]

I don't see the deck on Anki online, but Anki can import comma-separated and tab-separated files, like the ones found in the thread Gleaves mentioned, post #30.

From Anki, go to File -> Import, and select "Text separated by semicolons or tabs", then click on the file. Then save the resulting deck as an Anki deck, and use it as you would any other deck.