How to balance the memorization between Chinese and English? + an Anki question

[Patrick_ChineseForum]

Hi,

Someone here recommended me to use Anki to help memorizing Chinese vocab and phrases. So far it's worked pretty well. Usually when I add cards to my deck, I put Chinese chracters + pinyin sound in the front and meaning in the back. For example

Front: 没(méi) 关(guān) 系(xi) 。

Back: It doesn't matter

This's good when I see this phrase in Chinese (or hear it). I'm able to translate it to "it doesn't matter". By putting Chinese characters at the front of the cards, I train myself to recognize how to read characters and recall the meaning. It's kind of like translating Chinese to English. However I'm not sure if I can produce 没关系 phrase when I need to say "that's all right" in Chinese. It's like the reverse; translating English to Chinese. Is that weird? Do you guys have this issue?

So, I wonder if Anki has a feature that allows users to specify the program to show the back first, then the front. If it doesn't have such feature, I may have to create two cards for every phrase. That would be very cumbersome. Any ideas?

Thanks,

[imron]

Firstly, if you're going to include the pinyin alongside the characters I would write it as:

没关系 (méi guānxi)

Intermixing the characters and the pronunciation like in your example above makes it difficult to read words as you can really only read just one character at a time. I think it's also important to split the pronunciation on word boundaries rather than character boundaries (e.g. guanxi vs guan xi).

Secondly, I don't use Anki, but I believe it has the option somewhere to automatically reverse cards for you.

[renzhe]

I think that Anki automatically adds a reverse card for you, or at least it's an option you can choose.

[feihong]

I do use Anki and it does allow you to show reversed versions of a card. However, I personally don't recommend using it. That's because there is more than one way of saying "It doesn't matter" -- "没关系" is one equivalent phrase, but "没事" would be another. So my complementary cards always look like this:

FRONT

It doesn't matter

[méi guānxi]

BACK

没关系

So basically, pinyin is always on the front of the card for me, regardless of whether it's a Chinese -> English or English -> Chinese card. Making two cards for every word or phrase does take more time. In practice, I seldom make English -> Chinese cards, and they are usually only for testing my ability to write characters.

[anonymoose]

Personally, I do (or I should say "did" as I haven't done so for several months) all my Anki going from English to Chinese. I figure that if I know how to go from English to Chinese, I will automatically be able to recognise the Chinese, and this seems to be born out in practice. A byproduct of this is method is that one ends up being able to produce obscure words and characters as well as the commonly used vocabulary. Some may say that this is an inefficient use of time (and I wouldn't entirely disagree), but on the other hand, if you are aiming for a truely advanced level in the long run, I don't think that there's any vocabulary that isn't worth learning (as long as it can reasonably be considered to be standard modern Chinese).

[WestTexas]

This is what I do. I created an extra model in my deck, called word, with three fields: characters, English, pronunciation. Then I have this set up to generate cards in a few different formats: English ->Pinyin/characters, characters->Pinyin/English, characters->Pinyin; characters->English. Then I can choose whichever cards I want for each different Chinese word. Obviously some of them are redundant, so I don't use all of them for any card.

So for example I learn the word 颈椎 from the HSK vocabulary list, cervical vertebrae. I already know both of these characters, and I don't really feel this word is something I will use in conversation, so I just put in one card, characters->pinyin/English. On the other hand, take 洗发水, shampoo. This is a word I wanted to use in the real world but couldn't remember, so it gets two cards, characters->pinyin/English and English->pinyin/characters. Now, as a third example, take 调整, to adjust or regulate. The first character here 调 has two different pronunciations, both of which are very common, so I will put in one card for characters->pronunciation and one card for characters->English. I could also put an English->pinyin/Chinese card in if I wanted to. So, I can easily customize it to fit what I feel like I need to know for each word.

I suppose someone who is just starting won't know which characters have different common pronunciations so they won't be able to know which words containing those characters require separating into different cards for pronunciation and meaning. Some characters will have different pronunciations in the dictionary but these will be uncommon, for example I think someone who is just starting probably should learn that 教、模、or 调 have different pronunciations, but they can probably get away with not knowing that 解 can be read xie4 as a surname or that 色 becomes shai3 when used to mean dice, as in 色子.

I also have another model for characters, which has four fields, character, pronunciation, meaning, and example word. This generates three cards: give the pronunciation given the character, give the meaning given the character, and use the character in an example word (where applicable). So when I encounter a new character, I will usually add the three cards for character and another for the word I saw it in, or if it is really only used in one word (ex the characters in 蝙蝠, bat) I will just add a word card for it, in the case of 蝙蝠 I have characters->pronunciation, characters->English, and English->pronunciation/characters.

I realize this method is a bit complicated but I think it is the best, most efficient way to do it. If your'e going to be spending even ten minutes a day over the next few years doing Anki, that still adds up to over a hundred hours over the course of two years, so you might as well be as efficient as possible about it.

[imron]

so you might as well be as efficient as possible about it.

That's why I love Pleco.

[Guest realmayo]

If you like Pleco's flashcard set-up then you're fortunate. If you'd like your own flashcard set-up then you have to look elsewhere.

[feihong]

I think Pleco's default setup is pretty good, and totally appropriate for most language learners out there. The only reason I didn't recommend it outright is that I think manually making your own cards in Anki is a better way to get started. I feel that the decision-making you go through when making your own cards results not only in slightly better cards, but you also remember them better.

[Patrick_ChineseForum]

Thank you everyone for sharing your tips especially WestTexas (for the detailed post). I might end up creating 3 cards for each word like WestTaxas. It's more complicate but it seems like the most effective way. IMO having chinese character/pinyin at the front and english at the back is good for reading/listening chinese skills, while having english at the front and chinese character/pinyin at the back is good for writing/speaking chinese skills.

I guess I have to check out Pleco to see if it fits my learning style. One major drawback about creating my own deck is that it has no native sound and I know that I learn best by memorizing the sound (not characters). Do we have a Pleco review thread or something like that here?

Thank you,

[imron]

Yep. Search for Pleco and you'll find plenty of them. Pleco also has a sound addon, which gives you native pronunciation in both male and female voices for every character, and also a large number of common words.