Advice for using Anki

[Friday]

Do you have any advice for beginning study with Anki?

I've been using Lingt for nearly a year, but now the site recently posted a notice that it will be closing down, so I'm frantically searching for an alternative SRS study method. I'm looking at Anki. I don't want to invest a huge amount of time creating word lists and setting up the software, I'd prefer using existing lists.

Most of the vocabulary I'm studying comes from New Practical Chinese Reader (NPCR). I downloaded the shared deck that included books 1-5.

I intend to study it in this manner:

I.

1. Show the hanzi for a card.

2. On paper, write the pinyin and think of the meaning.

3. Click "show card".

This should help me to continue studying pinyin. (1) Can I use these lists to also practice writing the hanzi or must I make a new list?

E.g.

II.

1. Show the pinyin and English definition.

2. On paper, write the hanzi.

3. Click "show card."

(2) Is that a good way to remember how to write the hanzi? (3) How can I get Anki to let me show the pinyin and English definition first?

(4) How do I add audio from the Pinyin Toolkit to the deck? Is this automatic, or must I go through and edit the entire deck manually?

(5) Is this software smart enough to recognize when a term is shared between two decks?

[Hugh]

Rather than writing out the pinyin by hand, install the "allow numbers to match pinyin tone marks" plugin. Then go to the model settings, and set it to "compare answer to field 'Pinyin'", or whatever your pinyin field is called. Then you can type in the pinyin and have Anki check it for you automatically. This should be faster than writing it out by hand.

As for your other questions:

(1) If the lists you've downloaded include fields for hanzi, definition, pinyin etc, you can create cards to test them in any way you want, so yes. You'll need to go into model properties and go to card templates, where you can set up flashcards in the way that you want, You'll then need to go into the deck browser and go actions -> 'generate cards' to fill in the templates you've created.

(2) I think what you've described is a very good way to learn hanzi, especially the writing them out on paper then checking. It'll be fairly slow but very effective. You might also want to have a look at Skritter, although that has a subscription charge.

(3) what happened to question three? :-P

(4) To get the pinyin toolkit to automatically add audio, you have to have an audio field in your model, and you need to have 'Mandarin' in the model properties dialogue. That's explained in the pinyin toolkit documentation. You then need a source of recordings for the toolkit to use, which I think it can download automatically from within Anki. Then you go to settings -> pinyin toolkit -> fill missing fields, or something to that effect. It might take quite a while.

A word of advice here: I'd recommend that you only use the toolkit-generated audio for single hanzi. Don't use it for words, phrases etc. as it's extremely disjointed and unnatural, so it won't help your listening or speaking skills. For single characters though it is pretty good.

(5) Duplicate detection is something that Anki has been lacking for a long time. There's a lot of demand for it, but so far it hasn't been implemented as far as I know. Just got to wait on this one, I'm afraid, unless anyone knows different.

Good luck with your Anki progress!

[Friday]

Thank you very much for the help!

Anki is behaving very strangely with many shared decks I tried. The audio seems to be repeating previous words mixed with the current card. So, by the time I get to the tenth card in a study session, the audio plays a whole bunch of sounds (much of it things I've already heard).

[c_redman]

Personally, I would skip your I.2, writing the pinyin. Just saying it out loud or in your head will make the sessions go a lot faster. Just be strict with having correct tone--don't give yourself a free pass for being close or pure guessing.

[jbradfor]

I use ZDT, and personally I like having to type in the pinyin and have it ensure I'm correct. So I recommend trying it both ways, and see which way works better for you.

[Hugh]

I think it's worth spending the extra time typing in the pinyin with tones in the early stages, as you're memorising something more concrete than your own idea of what each tone should sound like. It doesn't take that long and will pay dividends later. Be aware, though, that the pinyin toolkit is often very dodgy when it fills in pinyin - it makes a best guess, which is often wrong. Make sure you check your cards against a dictionary, as it's awful to realise you've spent time memorising something that's wrong.