The Learning to Read Process

[Guest realmayo]

Well if he knows the words, all he needs to learn is the characters. Adding the words can't hurt and would obviously be important for words he doesn't already know. But if it was me I'd just SRS single characters every day without fail, and read fairly simple texts whenever I had the time.

[PBolchover]

The way that I do it, I have multiple flashcards:

1) For the word/phrase:

A) Pinyin => Definition (& display Hanzi)

B) Hanzi => Pinyin & Definition

C) Hanzi + Definition => Tone [i.e. display pinyin, but only mark as "correct" if the tone is correct]

D) Definition => Pinyin

2) For any characters that I don't know

A) Hanzi => Pinyin + Definition

B) Hanzi + Definition => Tone [i.e. display pinyin, but only mark as "correct" if the tone is correct]

3) For more complex words, where my textbook gives a number of sentences containing the word, I add sentence flashcards:

A) Pinyin => English (& display Hanzi)

B) Hanzi => Pinyin & English

C) English => Pinyin (optional)

In this way, I try to de-couple the different aspects of memory (for characters, for pinyin (i.e. listening), for production, for tone) and learn them each at their own pace.

In terms of being able to use the word, I think that the sentence flashcards are the most useful. I am thinking about changing to using Cloze deletion for the sentences in the future, but haven't made the switch yet.

[Saxondale]

skritter!

[abcdefg]

From post # 10 --

3. Final question (this time around). I have to use the stuff I'm learning in every day life, every day responsibilities, etc. Reading is becoming more and more a requirement and more and more of a hindrance the longer I'm not doing it well. Would you concentrate on the materials I need to learn for my responsibilities and ignore things like children's books/comics/etc. or would you do a combination of both - real life and then easier materials at the same time?

I'm in a somewhat similar situation in that my conversation is better and I'm trying to get my reading to "catch up" to it. When I only use more difficult reading material, namely the kind of things I need to be able to read and understand for daily life, I stay in a very slow mode, just "staggering along" and "decoding" the text word by word. I've found that using some simpler material part of the time lets me "breeze along" at a more normal pace and acquire better reading habits.