Flashcards - What's Useful, What's Not?

[lechuan]

For those that have made extensive use of flashcards, what have you found is useful, and what was a waste of time?

I'm currently learning characters (Heisig Method), and reviewing with Pleco SRS Flashcards. I have found that this has been very good for retention.

I'm also using Skritter (SRS) to test myself on writing the characters I've learned. The mechanics of writing out the character has improved my retention and also solidified my recognition of characters. Definitely seems like a good use of time.

I tried studying the combined HSK1-6 vocabulary sorted according to Heisig order, but this didn't seem to work well for me. Learning Vocab out of context has seemed like a waste of time so far since I don't seem to retain it well.

I have just started E-C SRS flashcards of all the sentences in Tuttle's Chinese-English Learner's dictionary (ie. I see the English sentence, and then recall how to say it in Chinese). I chose this dictionary because it limits itself to the (old) HSK level A/B characters (plus additional useful ones), and unlike a lot of dictionaries, the example sentences are not filled with examples related to politics, work-units, etc. I'm hoping that learning sentences instead of individual words will help me to assimilate functional vocab, grammar, and usage.

Look forward to hearing what you have tried and what does/doesn't work for you.

[rebor]

I've used Skritter to learn and review the new words from my classes, and also some of the HSK vocab. There's an option in Skritter to add the characters of the words you add as separate cards, which I use. I find this helps my reading speed, and it also make learning new words with previously studied characters easier. I am pretty lenient with the single character cards though. If I know the pinyin and how to write it, I usually settle for a pretty vague idea of the definition. I prefer learning their meaning by seeing them in different words/compounds. So basically I study words with a separate crutch for characters. My philosophy is that flashcards are good for supporting your other studies, but that it should mainly be a support and not something more. This has worked fine for me.

[KevinLewis]

Personally I found flashcards not that useful for me, I just used a text book to read sentences and then write out by hand a few times the words I don't know, as I build up I find longer texts to read, it takes time but I found reading the Chinese charactes in a context of a text made it easier to remember... that's just my two cents- I did try putting chinese characters all around my house however- that kinda seemed to help me out.

[laurenth]

For those that have made extensive use of flashcards, what have you found is useful, and what was a waste of time?

I suppose it depends a lot on your learning style, on how your brain is wired, etc. In my case, I think the worst mistakes I've done, the things I'm trying not to repeat are:

- trying to learn characters in isolation. I would repeat them over and over, then spot them in a text and not be able to guess their pronunciation or meaning. For now, the front field of my "character" deck has a list of words containing the character I want to learn. I'm not trying to remember the meaning and pronunciation of all words, just the meaning and pronunciation of the character they have in common. Also, I have a word deck, in which the front field is almost always a sentence rather than a word. I think your SRS should mimic, as far as possible, the real conditions in which you will meet the characters and the words, i.e. within a context.

- not being regular for adding entries to my decks. SRSs are very good to force you to review a certain amount of entries everyday. But I have found that it is equally important to add stuff regularly to your deck, i.e. not 50 on Monday, then nothing until next Friday, etc. Or 500 in December (I've done that) than nothing in the following months, because you're overwhelmed anyway. I believe it is much more useful to decide you want to add at LEAST x entries a day, and at MOST x entries a day. And stick to it. With Anki, I have a certain amount of "suspended cards" in my decks, and I configured it to "unsuspend" a given amount of cards every day, so they are added as new cards to my decks.

- not use some sort of "leech" feature. See explanations here (Supermemo) , here (Anki) or here (Hacking Chinese).

These are the mistakes I'm trying to avoid for the moment. I'm probably doing other mistakes right now, but I'll notice them when it's too late

[imron]

I believe it is much more useful to decide you want to add at LEAST x entries a day, and at MOST x entries a day. And stick to it.

This is good advice.

I also agree about single characters.

[renzhe]

Learning characters in isolation worked wonders for me. Many people disagree, so this obviously depends on the person.

I found that flashcards (for both characters and words) were really useful in getting a critical mass of vocabulary allowing me to make the jump from textbooks to real native materials (comics and proper books). I think it was about 3000 characters and somewhere above 5000 words.

Once I made that jump, flashcards lost most of their value for me.

[jbradfor]

I'm with renzhe on this one. I found, in general, learning characters / words via SRS quite easy. My brain is just wired that way, I guess, and I found it quite enjoyable for a while. [Yes, enjoyable. Scary, I know.] At maybe a bit less than renzhe's numbers I stopped -- not because I felt SRS wasn't working for me (it was), but I just had enough.

I did, however, do it a bit differently than most. I had characters on the front, and I had to TYPE IN (not just say) the pinyin to get it right, tone and all. At the same time, I would say the meaning. By the time I was able to remember the pinyin, I could (98+% of the time) remember the meaning, so that worked well for me. [but it did lead to the occasional situation in which I could read a word outloud, but could not remember what it meant. But only occasionally.]

[imron]

I guess the main problem I have with single characters, is that you can't really do production for them by having a front card that only has pinyin. There are just too many homonyms and before too long you get clashes.

[renzhe]

This is a very good point!

In my case, I drilled only recognition, so it wasn't an issue. Personally, I only find production flashcards meaningful for limited vocabulary. As soon as synonyms start playing a role, things become very complicated, which is why I've never been a huge fan.

[jbradfor]

It must be because it's late at night and I'm not thinking, but I'm missing something: what is the point of pinyin on one side, and needing to produce the character(s) (or English) it represents?

[As an aside, I've had limited luck with production flashcards as well, but for me they were always English on one side, Chinese characters on the other. And as renzhe says, it only works for a limited vocabulary.]

[imron]

It makes sure I can actively recall the characters from memory, rather than having the character on the front, which is passive recall only. I've generally found active recall to be more useful than just passive recall, although I do also do cards with the character on the front and the pinyin/definition on the back for practicing pronunciation. With both these types of cards, I typically have the Chinese definition rather than the English one though, unless it's for a word that doesn't exist in Pleco's C-C dictionary, but does exist in one of the C-E dictionaries.

I've found that there are actually relatively few clashes if you are using multi-character words rather than characters as your base unit, partly I guess because I regularly clear out my flashcard list anyway. If I come across a single character I don't know but want to learn, then when I add it as a flash card, I'll make sure I find a multi-character word that uses that character and that has basically the same meaning, and then add that instead.

[Guest realmayo]

Why not just have pinyin plus English plus, if necessary (and it's sometimes very necessary), examples. For example, second card on my list today looks like this (on the front):

[nà] b.f. receive; accept; enjoy; pay; sew

jiǎonà v. pay (taxes/fees/etc.)

nàmènr v.o. 〈coll.〉 ①be vexed ②be puzzled/perplexed

[Guest realmayo]

& to echo renzhe and jbradfor above, using SRS as a drill to get me from recognising maybe 100 characters to recognising 2,000 in a fairly short period of time worked great for me and meant that I could get comfortable reading simple things quite quickly. For me, that is using SRS to learn. Similarly, I'm learning/re-learning how to write the characters at the moment, and again find that SRS is great for that.

But for vocab -- actual words -- I uses SRS in another way: to not-forget stuff that I've already learned. I try to avoid adding vocab to my deck that I haven't already spent at least a moment or two 'processing' internally and actually learning it before it goes into the deck. Some people can learn vocab fine by dumping it in a deck and learning it as they review it, but for me I like to learn it first, then put it into SRS.

[imron]

For me reason would be that I try to avoid English as much as possible, and often it's not possible to include the Chinese definition without giving away the word.

Plus I've yet to find using words instead of single characters to be a hindrance.

[imron]

Some people can learn vocab fine by dumping it in a deck and learning it as they review it, but for me I like to learn it first, then put it into SRS.

I agree. That's why I have Pleco configured to have a separate profile in addition to my main revision ones, for all newly added cards which I use for learning any new words.

[li3wei1]

one format I've used is this. If I'm wanting to recall, say, 壳, I put 蛋__ / eggshell on the front, and 蛋壳 / dànké on the back. It would be an interesting challenge to come up with Chinese definitions that don't use the character in question.

I gave up using this format after awhile, but more laziness and frustration than a problem with the method.

[jbradfor]

[From post #11]

It makes sure I can actively recall the characters from memory, rather than having the character on the front, which is passive recall only.

Wouldn't English on one side and Chinese characters on the other server the same purpose, and be less ambiguous?

I guess what I'm asking is what is the advantage of pinyin on one side Chinese characters on the other, versus English on one side and Chinese characters on the other?

[imron]

As mentioned, I try to avoid English as much as possible when learning Chinese. I don't see the point at more advanced levels in using English to learn Chinese. Plus you're still more likely to get conflicts in English compared to pinyin.

[lechuan]

But for vocab -- actual words -- I uses SRS in another way: to not-forget stuff that I've already learned. I try to avoid adding vocab to my deck that I haven't already spent at least a moment or two 'processing' internally and actually learning it before it goes into the deck. Some people can learn vocab fine by dumping it in a deck and learning it as they review it, but for me I like to learn it first, then put it into SRS.

This would explain why SRS is working well for me with single characters, but not words. I have been studying the single characters before I SRS them, but with the words I thought I'd just learn them as I do the SRS. Seems like that's not good enough for me to remember.

As mentioned, I try to avoid English as much as possible when learning Chinese. I don't see the point at more advanced levels in using English to learn Chinese. Plus you're still more likely to get conflicts in English compared to pinyin.

With Skritter I currently only show the English Heisig Keyword (no pinyin), then I have to draw the character and recall the pinyin. This works at least for the 3000 characters Heisig has designed, but I can see it falling a bit off the rails after that since it get's very arbitrary and confusing to try and find more unique english explanations for new characters.

Also, I have a word deck, in which the front field is almost always a sentence rather than a word. I think your SRS should mimic, as far as possible, the real conditions in which you will meet the characters and the words, i.e. within a context.

Definitely seems like it. I've been using sentences for a few weeks now and new words tend to stick better when they're anchored by context. Also learning new grammar points as well.

[jmido8]

I do best in isolation. If I have anyone around, even if we're sitting together in complete silence doing our own thing, I can't retain anything. Hell, I can't even have any background noise like music going or it just goes in one ear and out the other. I usually try to do like 10-20 new words a day. I usually start by writing each new word like 10 times and then I dump it into a deck. I found writing english on one side and character/tones on the other the best for me. When I write pinyin on the cards, I never remember the tones for the word but once I stopped using pinyin, it's gotten a lot easier to remember the tones and pronunciation because there's not that written clue on the card to help me out if I don't remember.