How do you study on the go?

[Friday]

Do you study when on the move? (i.e. walking, riding the train) What study tools or materials do you use on the go?

[renzhe]

MP3 podcasts, easy reading (preferably comics).

I don't do much studying this way, I'm sure other will have better suggestions. You could look into a mobile phone version of Anki, for example, and do your flashcards on the go.

I did transcode some episodes of 奋斗 for watching on my mobile phone while riding the train, but it's too much work to do it regularly.

[Scoobyqueen]

I have three hours on the train every day so that makes 15 hours a week so that's where I do most of my studying.

I mostly use mp3 (I listen to a lot of news like radio australia) and then write out the script by hand. I take my laptop with me twice a week and use mnemosyne as well.

I prepare in advance what I am going to study on the train.

I also have one hour (50 min to be exact) bike ride but I have found it too dangerous to learn using mp3 whilst riding the bike. I usually memorise a chengyu or another expression and may make some sentences up during the bike ride if there is no one else around.

[imron]

I read on the tram to and from work.

Pleco is also good for study on the go if you are a passenger.

[aristotle1990]

AnkiMobile. I use it so much that it's almost replaced the desktop version of Anki for me -- pretty much wherever you are, you can just whip out your iPhone/iPod and start cranking out reviews. Turn your otherwise wasted time into studying.

[Pearl River]

I listen to audio books on my CD Walkman. These days, I'm listening to the audiobook version of 窝居("Dwelling Narrowness"), which I bought from a bookshop in Beijing last year.

[Gleaves]

I've gotten into the habit of constantly having a bag with my ipod (with pleco/anki) and a comic and a book.

I do ankimobile reviews on my walk to/from the train everyday. (the cards are audio on the front, so easy to do on the move). On the train, I read - comics and books. I have Pleco at the ready for whenever I need to look something up.

[imron]

Out of curiosity, is there a reason you use Ankimobile for flashcards when you have Pleco?

For me, not having to maintain flashcards, and having Pleco handle the card creation and maintenance automatically is one of its big drawcards. I don't really use the SRS features though, so perhaps there's something I'm missing?

[fritz]

Pleco with flashcards is great. Also wondering about Ankimobile, the iphone version is a bit pricey - you guys using it for SRS? Much more effective than just going through cards?

On the metro I read book or the newspaper, but unless you have a seat it may not always be convenient.

Best is to listen to broadcasts like Radio Australia with the text downloaded into the phone. Lately I've been downloading audiofiles from 锵锵三人行 from 新浪 ishare (http://ishare.iask.sina.com.cn/f/9809521.html) and the text from the website (http://phtv.ifeng.com/program/qqsrx/list_0/0.shtml). Then I listen while reading simultaneously, or listen and look up words I didn't understand afterwards. Helps me start thinking in characters when I speak Chinese.

[aristotle1990]

Out of curiosity, is there a reason you use Ankimobile for flashcards when you have Pleco?

The main thing for me is that I review sentences, audio phrases, and images, not just words (many of which are not in any dictionary, or at least not in the free Pleco dictionaries -- besides, I often use more relevant custom definitions I make myself/find on the internet). I also frequently add, edit, and search for cards on the go. Can Pleco do this? (This is a genuine question.)

Also, there's desktop Anki, which is still important -- when you want to add some 50 custom cards to your database, I imagine doing it on Pleco would be rather annoying. Syncing with desktop Anki is such a breeze that the $25 you pay for the mobile app is well worth it.

Finally, I use Anki for things other than Chinese, and AnkiMobile can do it all.

[Gleaves]

Agreed that the Pleco flashcard system is terrific (very powerful card creation/management), but it lacks custom audio. Recently, I've been using flashcards to work on my listening (and to a lesser extent practice pronunciation and grammar). So I have a sentence of audio on the front of the card, Chinese/pinyin/English on the back. Pleco doesn't work well for that at the moment. I have a growing word list on Pleco that I need to get back to studying at some point.

fritz - I'm a big fan of SRS, but opinions vary and it does have its limitations. Pleco can do SRS pretty well.

Edit: Just saw Aristotle's response. Adding cards on the go with Pleco is very easy. It is just a matter of looking up a word, hitting a button, then that adds a card to whatever deck you would like. This doesn't work as well if not int the dictionary, but between ABC and cedict, I get pretty good coverage (I figure if it is not in those two, I don't really need to know it). I don't think I've edited cards in Pleco, but it might be an option.

[creamyhorror]

I've been listening to the 蜗居 audiobook and simultaneously skimming the text on my iPhone in Stanza, but I have trouble with many unfamiliar words because I can't quickly check them up in a dictionary (have to laboriously copy them to my dictionary app). I know Pleco has an ebook reader, possibly with dictionary lookup, but I'm wondering how much it'd cost and if there's anything more affordable around. Preferably with wordlist creation ability (so I can enter words into Anki).

(I used to do AnkiMobile on the train religiously (with the 20,000 Mandarin sentences deck) and it helped a lot, because I spend an hour or two travelling each day. I've slacked off on that and do the audiobook listening now, though.)

edit: Oh the irony. I went looking for an app which allowed exporting words from an ebook to a wordlist, and tried iFlow Reader after some investigation. Its annotation function turned out to work for this purpose, but then it didn't allow loading books from Calibre (afaik). Then I realised Stanza, my original reader, might have annotation too, and went to try it - lo and behold, it does. So I'm back to Stanza except with annotations now. Still got to Anki the words later on, though.

[aristotle1990]

This doesn't work as well if not int the dictionary, but between ABC and cedict, I get pretty good coverage (I figure if it is not in those two, I don't really need to know it).

See, this is what bothers me about Chinese. Have a look at this article; totally mainstream, non-literary words like 悖反, 逆势, and 治堵 are not in the dictionary. You might be able to figure out the meanings if you look at the characters and the context, but you might not. There are a lot of non-dictionary words we do need to know, unfortunately.

[gato]

You are pointing out the fact that it's easy to construct new words in Chinese.

[aristotle1990]

Yeah, which is not a great thing from the learner's perspective.

[abcdefg]

Do you study when on the move? (i.e. walking, riding the train) What study tools or materials do you use on the go?

Sometimes I carry eight or ten small paper flashcards with new words and review them while sitting on the bus or waiting for my food at a restaurant. One side Hanzi and the other side Pinyin/English. Very low tech.

The rest of the time when on the move I interact with my environment and watch out for pickpockets. It's now prime time for them with Spring Festival right around the corner. In fact, I think I'll make a new post about that.

[valikor]

If you don't plan on studying on your PC, the high price of AnkiMobile might not be justifed (The author himself said that he priced it a bit high hoping that users who already heavily use the desktop client would consider buying it as a contribution to the otherwise free project)

It's not that AnkiMobile isn't good. In fact, I think it's great. I just think there are other good apps, too, which are much cheaper.

On the other hand, Anki is great for all the reasons mentioned already by Aristotle

To answer the original question, I use AnkiMobile most days to study on the go. I also think podcasts are good, because they provide even more flexibility (ie, you don't have to stop studying when you get off the train, or are buying tickets, etc.) I have gotten bored of ChinesePod though and wish I had some better listening material...

[wrbt]

I review the mp3 audio from any graded readers or textbooks, or the upper-int ChinesePods which I've got about 100 on my player. I've got enough stuff at this point that there is always something I've not heard in awhile.

[character]

I have a bus commute and have done the following:

- Entering/testing on flashcards in Pleco

- Homework for Chinese class

- Reading (300-character) books/stories

Can be a little difficult if there's a loud conversation/phone call.

Would like to do more watching of Chinese films/TV shows but not a big fan of taking the time to convert the material. Also, some movies throw in violence/nudity, the latter of which could get me in trouble.

[Meng Lelan]

I stuff a copy of 中国旅游 (a Hong Kong publication in trad characters that I've subscribed for over five years now) into my purse and read it while waiting for the cashier in the 超市 or something like that.