1,500 words in 30 days

[kongli]

Hello all,

I want to learn 1,500 words in 30 days. That calculates out to 50 new words a day (had to use the ole calcumalator on that one). I know this is a really ambitious goal, especially for those who have other things to do besides just learn chinese, but I want to see if I and others can do it.

For this task my definition of 'learn' will be to recognize the characters and know the meaning of the word.

The official start date will be on Friday March 25th.

We can post up the new words we have learned here on the forum to keep track of our count and make easier reviewing on the 30th day. Plus it might generate some helpful word lists for other learners.

So, who's in?

[BertR]

Learning 1500 words in 30 days won't be your biggest challenge. That will be not to forget 1300 words in 90 days...

[kongli]

This task will, to some extent, sacrifice long term retention for short cramming but I also think that with continued use of SRS software and copious amounts of reading,it won't be too difficult to continue to retain at least 70% of the words learned* and that's still 1050 words.

*I am basing this number on wishful thinking.

[kongli]

My friend just said this sounds like the linguistic Great Leap Forward, and to that I can only say 汉语万岁！

[gato]

Where are you going to get 1500 words? Why don't know you just try to read 4 books in 30 days? 50 pages a day, 7 days a week, 350 pages per week. It's very doable.

[kongli]

I will get the words from the reading materials I am reading (magazines, newspaper, articles, textbooks etc). In order to do your challenge I would have to be able to recognize a lot more characters (words) than I know, hence this challenge.

Edited cause last question came off as rhetorical and snippy, when it was meant to be neither.

[boxcar]

How many words do you know now? Could you just take 1500 words from the HSK list that you don't know or are you past that? I think this would be very difficult unless the words are high enough frequency that you will see them commonly in reading or hear them in conversation.

[來撒母耳]

1,500? that sounds very tempting to try, but I don't think I have the stamina (or the foundation) for that just yet.

[kdavid]

I'm in as long as there are others to contribute word lists. I don't have the time to track down 50 new words each (or even every other) day. I could probably do one list every three or four days.

I suggest the word lists be uploaded to the forum in ZDT format, or at least a friendly import/export format.

[kongli]

How many words do you know now?

Somewhere between I have no idea and not enough. Seriously though, I have checked out the HSK vocab lists and the problem is a lot of them are just characters, I am looking to learn words because more often than not I know the characters but do not know the word.

I will be pulling my words from Chinese modern history journal articles,magazines, and random newspaper articles.Though I presume some of my words will have a strong coherence (probably mostly centered around modern Chinese history), their will also be a lot of randoms as well. Others can do the same or just memorize my uploaded words, though you may know a lot of them and still have to supplement your own to finish the challenge.

How do you upload in ZDT format?

Okay, so who else wants in?

[aristotle1990]

I want to learn 1,500 words in 30 days. That calculates out to 50 new words a day (had to use the ole calcumalator on that one). I know this is a really ambitious goal, especially for those who have other things to do besides just learn chinese, but I want to see if I and others can do it.

Absolutely possible. I know because I've done it before. Just be aware that you'll have to do dozens of reviews a day for at least a year after you're done (if you want to retain the words you memorized, that is).

I would love to join -- I think memorizing massive amounts of information in a short period of time is useful and actually surprisingly fun -- but this is something that is hard to do if you're not studying Chinese full time.

[kongli]

Awesome! Good to hear someone has done it, now we have no excuses.

you'll have to do dozens of reviews a day for at least a year after you're done

How do you review after? Just with Anki? Sometimes Anki seems perpetually to bring up the same words....though I am still a faithful user. Also, do you export from ZDT directly into Anki? I do but it is kind of a bummer because it doesn't allow me to do both recognition and recall, just recognition. Is their any way to flip cards in an anki deck from recognition to recall (barring manual entry)?

Don't mean to derail my own thread but these answers might help in the task ahead.

[boxcar]

Seriously though, I have checked out the HSK vocab lists and the problem is a lot of them are just characters, I am looking to learn words because more often than not I know the characters but do not know the word.

Not to be contrarian, but this reminded me that I had counted the ngrams for each entry in the new HSK lists. Most of them are actually two character words. Based on the material you say you will be reading, I'm guessing you are at a level where you know most of these words anyway. However, scanning the words at the higher levels might be a quick way to add some words to your list.

In case anyone else is curious, here are the ngram counts per level. The first number is the number of single character words, followed by the bigrams, trigrams, and 4grams. The numbers don't add up perfectly, so there may have been mistakes in the list or how I counted, but it should be close.

Level 1: 80 61 7 0

Level 2: 68 72 5 1

Level 3: 95 196 7 1

Level 4: 112 450 23 1

Level 5: 193 1069 45 14

Level 6: 152 2181 60 120

[aristotle1990]

How do you review after? Just with Anki? Sometimes Anki seems perpetually to bring up the same words....though I am still a faithful user. Also, do you export from ZDT directly into Anki? I do but it is kind of a bummer because it doesn't allow me to do both recognition and recall, just recognition. Is their any way to flip cards in an anki deck from recognition to recall (barring manual entry)?

I've never used ZDT; I just use Anki. And yes, flipping cards in your Anki deck is quite easy -- see this.

[AcuDoc]

If you're learning simplified characters, remember.it is pretty good at stuffing characters into your memory. 50 is a lot, though. I've never been able to do more than 20 a day without losing too much the next day. Maybe that improves with time, I just started using it.

[Gleaves]

Good luck. I crammed 50-100 HSK words a day for a stint and, while I'm not sure it was the best course of action, it definitely opened me up to a bunch of native reading material.

I've found that reviewing a newly learned word in anki is very effective for a month or two. After that, I really need to let my little words out of their SRS cage and survive in the wild. The ones that need to survive will. If you are doing a healthy amount of reading/watching, then those words should get naturally repeated. They will get further lodged in through actual context, which feels different than flashcarding.

(By the way and maybe not applicable, but Pleco is great for something like this because it is so easy to creat cards on the fly).

[mfgillia]

On the one hand, anything that gets one excited to really kick butt for 30 days can't be bad.

On the other hand, I'm guessing that will be 6 to 8 hours full time every day for 30 days. If instead one used the same time and divided it between memorizing/recognizing characters, one on one conversation practice, passive listening to dialogs and working through a textbook with a tutor you might get a better bang for your buck. However, its just 30 days so why not go for it...

[jbradfor]

I'm a tad burned out on SRS-ing, so I'll decline. But if you want to, go for it. Increasing your vocabulary by 1500 words can make a major difference in how much you can read.

However, as aristotle1990 and others have said, the first 30 days will be the easy part (if you have the time), because the increase in reading ability will be a great motivator. It's the next 335 days (give or take ) that will be hard, as either you will give up and not remember a lot, or if you persevere it will be quite boring.

[gato]

I will get the words from the reading materials I am reading (magazines, newspaper, articles, textbooks etc). In order to do your challenge I would have to be able to recognize a lot more characters (words) than I know, hence this challenge.

So these words were collected in the process of reading? Do you have them stored in Pleco? If they are from reading, they are not entirely new and I suspect that it won't be that hard to remember them through some review.

Here's the procedure I like to use when I am doing intensive review.

- Do two flash card session a day, once in the morning, once in the evening.

- Focus on 100 flash cards at each session.

- Repeat review of each flash card until you can get it "right" (define your own standard) 3 times in a row.

- Once you get a flash card right 3 times in a row, you can replace it with a new card in your group of 100.

It's not exactly the SRS/Leitner system, but it seems to work and offer a bit more control over the cards than SRS.

I described the Pleco set up for this here:

http://plecoforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1513&p=10879&hilit=simplified#p10764

Flashcards Simplified

[kongli]

Not to be contrarian, but this reminded me that I had counted the ngrams for each entry in the new HSK lists

hmm, so it seems. I guess I have never been one to go the conventional route with learning, and although I am sure filling in the gaps on the HSK would help, it is not what I am concerning myself with at the moment.

, I'm guessing that will be 6 to 8 hours full time every day for 30 days

My god I hope you are not referring to strict flash card reviews. I was thinking just lots of repetition coupled with copious amounts of reading, listening and writing.

So these words were collected in the process of reading?

Yes. I am trying to read more history articles for a couple classes I am taking, so as you suggested I hope this will reinforce learned words. I do not have pleco but I do have ZDT, with which I would also be able to use your method, just less conveniently. Damn I want an iphone though.....

Okay so looks like it is just me and Kdavid so far. I hope others will join because I think it would get annoying with just one person (me) posting their own word lists, and more motivating if others joined in.

I guess I probably underestimated the fact that most other people have lives outside of studying, but c'mon everybody lets put our Chinese on crack!