The more vocab I know the more I seem to forget...

[Kongming21]

Hey everyone,

basically I am at a vocal level of around 4000 to 5000 words now(roughly acc to Pleco at least), but what I find really frustrating at the moment is that I tend to learn 100 words for example, but at the same time forget many again. Therefore it seems to become increasingly difficult to actually really increase the number of vocab I know. The biggest problems seem to be words that are synonyms or almost synonyms, or different words that share one similar character like 促，促使，催促 etc. Obviously I will know that they all have the general meaning of "urging" someone, but I often forget the detailed meaning of similar words like these.

I am just looking for a way to stop forgetting so many of those words I have learned. I learn vocab mostly with flashcards and probably have to admit that I am not really reading that many original texts like newspaper articles as I could.

Thanks a lot for your help.

[imron]

Where do you get the vocab for your cards from? If not from reading original texts then from where?

My advice would be to read more original texts, only add flashcards from the original texts, add less cards per day but spend more time on each one, and use a Chinese-Chinese dictionary more.

Reading more original texts will help you start to get a feel for the differences between similar words, and likewise using a Chinese-Chinese dictionary will often provide clarity between similar words that would get translated to basically the same thing in English.

Also, set yourself a limit of say 10 new words a day, which you should only get from reading original texts, and spend time to make sure you know those 10 words really well. If you come across more new words while reading, simply don't add them to your flashcards. If you are doing regular reading, the important ones will repeat themselves in the following few days and you can add them then. The unimportant ones won't repeat and you don't need to worry about them so much.

(See also my comments here)

Finally, do it every day <---- this is the most important part

I've found that real increases to vocabulary only come by small increases over a sustained period of time, rather than trying to do large increases over a short period of time. 10 words a day for a year is 3,650 words, which is no small amount.

[renzhe]

Forgetting is normal. Forgetting is a part of learning.

You are using spaced repetition, right? (not sure if pleco supports this).

Nuances will come with exposure to real native material. I'm a big fan of cramming words in the beginning stages, to get a basic vocabulary, but when you start learning 5 synonyms with very slight difference in meaning, you will need to read them in context.

If you can remember about 5,000 words, it's time to read a lot.

[gato]

Committing to reading an hour everyday will help.

[T-revor]

I just built a new free site at trevorschinesereader.com. One thing it does is that you can click on any character and it'll give you characters that have the same components or that look similar. Try it out and let me know what you think. It's still kind of in beta, so I'd appreciate any feedback to help make it better (not as responses to this thread of course, but offline perhaps). I also agree with Gato's comment that reading every day really helps. An hour is too much for me, but the more the merrier.

Also (and here is where I will respectfully disagree with previous posters), spend a little less time with flash cards. I used to do them, but it takes so much time to make them, not lose them, etc. I always spent more time creating them than learning them. Also, it's hard for me to get context from flash cards, and context is where you really *learn* a character and it's various meanings.

Please don't flame me for hating on flash cards. They do have their use and can be helpful. I think I've just burnt out.

[imron]

This is where Pleco is so useful. Everytime you look up a word in the dictionary, simply click a button and you have instant flashcards with whatever combination you want for front/back. No hassle to make and no chance of losing them unless I lose my phone - but even then it's no great loss, as I'm a big believer in "temporary" flash cards and regularly clean out old lists with the view that anything I don't know yet will either repeat itself through regular reading so if I still don't know it will just get added again later, or it won't repeat itself and so it's probably not worth my learning at that point in time.

[skylee]

Forgetting is normal. Forgetting is a part of learning.

renzhe, you sound like 風清揚.

[thekhanon]

While I agree with Trevor's statement that flashcards without context aren't much help, there is a way to put some context into flashcards. It's not as complete as having to read it in the context of a story or article, but I put full sentences into Anki. Each sentence might have a few new vocab words, but I never try to force them in there. To add vocab in the context of a story, I will use tags to group phrases together... that way I can do spaced repetition drills with just that group of cards that came from the same story or article.

[Gleaves]

For me, it was disappointing to give up the awesome retention that I experienced with flashcards. But after about 5000 words, I switched from heavy doses of flashcards to daily reading (an hour) of native material. My retention is not as sharp, but my understanding and scope of vocab has steadily increased. I still use flashcards, but in a much more focused way.