My 3000 word/6 weeks study plan

[howlingfantods]

Hi all, I've been lurking on these boards recently and I thought that I'd share my cramming strategy to see if anyone had any feedback on how to optimize it, and perhaps offer a framework for others.

Just some background: I grew up speaking Chinese but at a pretty basic level. I took Chinese in college for 2 years, but forgot much of it afterwards. Two years ago, I moved to and currently live in Shanghai to work and 3 weeks ago, I realized that my Chinese ability had not increased exponentially over 2 years of passive learning, as I thought it would (so naive), and I decided on a crash cram course in Chinese, with the goal of being able to read a Chinese novel by Christmas. This gave me 6 weeks to do some serious cramming while maintaining a full time job. Just for clarification, I don't use Chinese at my job.

My Chinese ability at the start of the cramming was probably around 700 characters and maybe 1200 word phrases. I was able to hold a pretty basic conversation as long as it involved vocabulary I was familiar with (ie. weather, hotpot ingredients, etc.). However, a desperate lack of vocabulary prevented me from understanding the news, read newspapers or websites, etc. So that was my level 3 weeks ago. My strategy for cramming word phrases (not single characters) while maintaining a full time job is as follows.

I have set up two profiles in the Pleco flashcard system:

Time Spaced Repetition:

This is basically the standard profile that Pleco offers for time spaced repetition testing. I chose to show the words and test whether I could remember the pronunciation and meaning. A wrong answer resets the score to 100 and a correct answer increases the score commensurately.

Learned Unlearned:

The purpose of this profile is to allow me to cycle through new words and recently forgotten words in order to (re)learn them. I chose to show the definition and test whether I could remember the characters and pronunciation.This is a random card selection profile (just picks cards at random and shows them in random order). Maximum of 200 cards each time. The important thing is that there is a card filter that filters out all cards over a score of 270. I have tweaked the scoring parameters so that if I answer a new card (score 100) correctly twice in a row, the card score will jump past 270, and the card exits the selection pile. The profile also tests my incorrect words again at the end of the test. I usually have to go through this profile several times a day to retain the words.

This profile captures two types of words: new words and words that I have recently answered incorrectly in the Time Spaced Repetition tests. Using this profile, I cycle through them until I have answered all of them correctly for enough times that their scores are past 270 and the numbers of cards I have to review goes down to zero.

Process

I study usually after work ends and save 9-1am on weekdays for Chinese, and random hours on weekends. On any given day, I input anywhere from 60-120 new words (depending on the overlap of words I already know), and cycle through them with Learned Unlearned until I know them. I then take the Time Spaced Repetition test for old words that are due. If I forget a word, I label it as incorrect and it resets the score to 100.

The Learned Unlearned profile usually takes a long time, as I have to go through the new words several times and I estimate that it takes about 3 hours or so. The primary reason it takes so long is because I handwrite the words to see if I know them. I enjoy handwriting the Chinese words as they're aesthetically pleasing to me and it perversely is the primary reason I'm able to sit down for 3 hours straight and review Chinese.

The Time Spaced Repetition is much fast, taking about 30 minutes each day. Since I'm only testing the pronunciation and meaning, I'm able to cycle through each word relatively quickly. My retention rate on average is about 85-90% and I've given usually about 100-150 words to review every day. This means that about 15-20 words go back to the unlearned pile each day on top of the 60-120 new words, which is generally just south unmanageable.

Books Used:

I spent the 1.5 weeks using "Close the Deal" which is a business Chinese book. It's organized by chapter, with a written business scenario followed by a list of vocab. After getting through 11 chapters, however I found the vocabulary to be a bit narrow. Total vocab learned: 781.

I then spent another 1.5 weeks on another set of books made by Sinalingua which is basically a set of 3 books, with 1000 words in each book. The skill level is probably HSK 5/6,with a dash of 4. The book is good because it has example sentences for each word and occasionally explains subtleties between two similar words (eg. 陆续 vs 连续). I recently finished the first book yesterday. Total vocab learned: 678 (the rest were overlaps with what I knew or with "Close the Deal").

Progress after three weeks

781 words from Close the Deal and 678 words from Sinalingua, which makes for 1459 words.

I can recognize and recall them when reading with about 90% accuracy and can write them (if prompted with English def) at around 60%. Since my goal is to read a novel, this low rate of writing is fine. I have about 3 more weeks to finish the other two books, which will probably be about 1500 words, with 500 overlap,I'm guessing.

Thoughts after three weeks

--Passive learning doesn't work unless you plan on having a 40 year curriculum.

--Since I'm working exclusively on isolated note-cards, I don't have a lot of context for how the words are used, which is the primary weakness of my strategy. My hope is that I can build a foundational vocabulary first and reading newspapers/books afterwards will help place those individual words within a logical lexical framework.

--As you learn more words, it gets easier as you start recognizing patterns and familiar characters. If I learned a new phrase with a familiar character, I immediately looked up the other phrases with that character. I find these connections really help in setting the words into memory.

--Writing down the word makes it easier to remember as you actively have to think of the construction of each character. Of course, I think you could speed up the studying much faster if you don't write each word down, but I like to practice my handwriting, which is pretty ugly. I've attached a picture of a standard scratch sheet. I literally have an entire notebook filled front to back, double sided, after three weeks.

--Knowing the radicals is invaluable to making up worthwhile mnemonics. I read a great book called China: Empire of Living Symbols, that went through many of the more common radicals and traced how they evolved from the original bone and bronze carvings.

--Memorizing words would have been a lot easier had I started with characters, which I saw that someone on the forum had recommended (Gato?). I just recently started reviewing the 2000 most common characters (starting from 1000) at a pace of 25/day on Memrise. I do this at work since it's so quick.

--One really needs to be patient and driven. Cramming words is one of the dullest things in the world. It's literally mind-numbing; I've found that after 3 weeks, I'm much more prone to lightheadedness.

--My social life has almost died. My friends think I'm out of the country and/or going through a serious emotional meltdown.

Anyways, I hope that helps anybody looking to do some ill-advised cramming and if anyone has any suggestions to streamline this process and make it more effective/efficient, I'm all ears. Otherwise, I'll report back in 3 weeks.

[gato]

You are hilarious, howlingfan. I admire your tenacity. How about adding the reading of 新民晚报 to your daily routine? It's written at about the 3rd/4th grade level, so shouldn't be too hard. You'll get a dose of local Shanghai news/gossip. They should have apps for iOS/Android, so you can read it on the go. You can then look up new vocabs on Pleco and add them immediately to your flash cards.

[skylee]

OP, re the picture, you might wish to note that it is 可靠, not 何靠 (if they are meant to be one word instead of just two unrelated characters).

[howlingfantods]

Oh yeah I know. It's more scribbling a than like a series of wholly formed words. There was a lot of "oh man, I wrote this radical ugly" and then I would start over again half way through. Also a lot of me getting lazy on complicated words and scribbling the other half.

Also, forgot to not, I sped up the Pleco spaced repetition 25% so the words come due faster. I found I needed more repetitions since I was giving each word such a cursory look.

[imron]

I think adding something like a newspaper as Gato suggested is a good idea. Knowing enough vocab is just one part of reading. Being able to parse sentences and apply the vocab you know to what you are reading is another part.

[roddy]

Is there going to be a 3000 words / 6 years retention plan?

[howlingfantods]

I agree that 人民日报 is a good idea. I tried to read newspapers at first but I started with CaiJing because it was arguably related to work and i could hide behind a veil of plausible denialibility if my boss asked me if I was not working. Anyway, I found that a lot of the vocabulary words were really esoteric （赤铁矿 hematite) and learning the words had a low payout. But if people's daily uses relatively common words, then I will look into it.

[gato]

新民晚报, the local Shanghai paper, not People's Daily, unless you want to read about Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang's travel schedule everyday.

[howlingfantods]

The retention plan right now is reading more novels/articles and using Chinese more in everyday life since I live in Shanghai. It's very similar to my English retention plan.

Ah sorry about 新民晚报. I'm typing on my iPad while eating rice in front of my TV and wasn't reading closely.

[renzhe]

I think that cramming can be very useful, if it is a part of a larger plan and not an end unto itself.

The crucial thing is to read a lot, as soon as you can. This will really help with context and retention. Learning words in context is important, but the very basic, super-common words you are learning will pop up so often in so many contexts that it's not a huge deal for you right now -- as long as you read a lot. With rare, advanced words, it is a different story!

You might have bitten off a bit too much -- SRS is easy in the beginning, but you eventually end up with 2000 flashcards per day if you add 60 cards every day over a period of time. But for bridging the gap between "I know a few characters" and "I know enough characters to read simple stuff with a dictionary", it can be really useful.

[WestTexas]

60 cards per day is not sustainable. I have 15-20 new cards per day and about 180-200 reviews per day. I have been going at this rate for about a year and the number of reviews has leveled off. If you are adding 60 per day, you could eventually be looking at 500+ reviews. Plus, you will start to have words that are similar that you will get confused (cognitive interference), leading to you seeing the same words over and over again. For example, you might get 辨 and 辩 confused or 天生 and 天赋 or 接连 and 连接. The cards you get confused, you will miss many times, leading to certain cards appearing in the review queue over and over. I did 40 new cards a day for a few months and this happened. I had 400 reviews per day with a huge number of leeches, and I spent more time doing SRS than actually using my Chinese skills. I decided that cutting down to 15 a day, making sure not to skip days, and focusing on other aspects (mostly reading) was a better choice.

I respect your dedication and ambitious plan, but perhaps going from 1000 or so characters to reading a novel (you will need 2500 characters and double that many words, at least) in just three weeks is unrealistic. Six months might be more doable.