icebear Posted February 14, 2012 at 07:50 PM Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 at 07:50 PM Hi all, I'm trying to figure out the best strategy for choosing what words to add to my deck that I study. I regularly add words that I'm studying formally (from a book or ChinesePod), but in casual reading (news, novels) I find that I can scrap 50 or more words from a given article. Obviously its not realistic to bomb my deck with all the new words I come across, as in the end it just discourages me from reading instead (to avoid ruining my SRS schedule with leeches). What I've done so far is try to implement some self-discipline, i.e. only choosing a couple words from a given article, or perhaps a word every few paragraphs in a book, but inevitably I end up adding words of little value because I can't necessarily judge their utility upon my first time seeing them. What I'd like to do is export a list of the words I looked up in Pleco each day and copy them into some program which then sorts them according to a frequency list. Then I'd just add the 5-10 per day that I came across which I'm most likely to come across again. Is anyone aware of a online or offline app that does this? Thanks! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cababunga Posted February 14, 2012 at 08:33 PM Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 at 08:33 PM You can paste your words in the form here: http://mandarinspot.com/annotate, check "For printing" checkbox, then select "Add vocabulary for all words" and "Sort by frequency", and click Annotate button. Not exactly the reason the tool was created, but should work for your case nonetheless. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icebear Posted February 14, 2012 at 09:29 PM Author Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 at 09:29 PM Thanks, that gets the job done! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ludens Posted February 14, 2012 at 10:52 PM Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 at 10:52 PM A related question: what word frequency (not character freq) list(s) do you use? Where does the mandarin spot link get it's frequency data from? I'm looking for a good word frequency lists myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Posted February 14, 2012 at 11:17 PM Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 at 11:17 PM What I'd like to do is export a list of the words I looked up in Pleco each day and copy them into some program which then sorts them according to a frequency list. What to add differs depending on your level and goals, but I think the approach you mention here is a good one. What also may work very well is to analyse a bunch of text before reading and just add the most frequent words. You still may end up with some not too common words if you use a book or a collection of related texts. But you're at least learning words that are relevant for the reading you planned to do. You may very well learn them from the natural repetition in the reading material and use SRS mainly for not forgetting. For the tool I use most to create the frequency lists have a look here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cababunga Posted February 14, 2012 at 11:51 PM Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 at 11:51 PM I'm looking for a good word frequency lists myself. You can get one from here: http://www.dataparksearch.org/ (Scroll down to "Additional Data"). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
navaburo Posted February 15, 2012 at 05:32 PM Report Share Posted February 15, 2012 at 05:32 PM icebear, My strategy with extensive reading is to use a highlighter to mark up my book or article and make margin notes for the meanings and/or readings. For repetition, rereading the article can be enough. This can be better than flashcards because you get the whole context for the words (which, afterall, is what the words actually _mean_). Goodluck! -Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ludens Posted February 15, 2012 at 11:08 PM Report Share Posted February 15, 2012 at 11:08 PM You can get one from here: http://www.dataparksearch.org/ (Scroll down to "Additional Data"). You mean this one: http://www.dataparksearch.org/add-on/mandarin.freq.gz ? It doesn't display the characters for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cababunga Posted February 16, 2012 at 12:55 AM Report Share Posted February 16, 2012 at 12:55 AM You can use this one. It's a simplified version. The other one, linked as "Traditional Chinese", might be better choice as it's based on a much larger corpus. The files are encoded: mandarin.freq as GBK and TraditionalChinese.freq as Big5. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wedge Posted February 16, 2012 at 09:53 AM Report Share Posted February 16, 2012 at 09:53 AM My very unscientific method is: I try to add every new word I come across to my Pleco flashcard deck. But I don't actually drill these flashcards --- I treat this deck as my "words I've come across" database. If I try to add a word, and "Duplicate Card" flashes on the screen, then that means it's at least the second time I've come across the word and it's probably worth trying to remember. Then I'll add it to my Anki deck, which I actually use to drill. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Posted February 16, 2012 at 06:38 PM Report Share Posted February 16, 2012 at 06:38 PM If I try to add a word, and "Duplicate Card" flashes on the screen, then that means it's at least the second time I've come across the word and it's probably worth trying to remember. I wouldn't recommend this kind of approach. You'll (most likely) be overwhelmed with words to study. Using this approach while reading a book I would end up with thousends of words. Working the other way around analyse the reading material and add the most used words seems a lot more usefull to me. In that approach it's also much easier to manage the study load. You decide the cut off level on the number of words you want to study. If you analyse before & study the words while reading the material you will study what's relevant for you at that time. Overall the words may still not be that relevant as they can be very subject or author specific, they're at least relevant for you at that time. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wedge Posted February 17, 2012 at 06:02 AM Report Share Posted February 17, 2012 at 06:02 AM I agree - I limit myself to 20 words a day (not that I do this every single day) and I run into this limit pretty quickly. Ideally, Pleco could keep track of the total number of times I've looked up a word or tried to add it to my flashcard deck. Certainly once I've had to look up the same word 10+ times it's probably worth learning. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icebear Posted February 22, 2012 at 08:12 PM Author Report Share Posted February 22, 2012 at 08:12 PM You can paste your words in the form here: http://mandarinspot.com/annotate, check "For printing" checkbox, then select "Add vocabulary for all words" and "Sort by frequency", and click Annotate button. Not exactly the reason the tool was created, but should work for your case nonetheless. This feature seems to have been removed - I'm not seeing the option of frequency sorting anymore. Any chance of this feature coming back? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cababunga Posted February 23, 2012 at 12:08 AM Report Share Posted February 23, 2012 at 12:08 AM Sorry, it's back now. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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