When Did You Stop Using Pleco/Anki/Flashcards

[Qiaoen]

Hello All,

 

SRS Flash card systems have been a staple in my Chinese learning since I started studying 4 years ago. I can probably count on one hand the number of days that I have not studied vocabulary over the last few years. Although I still love Chinese, I see the act of studying flashcards (even spaced out through SRS) as such a big chore. I currently have about 4500 words in my pleco deck. In my daily reviews, I probably average about a 70% - 75% accuracy. When reading (Harry Potter, Leadership Books, NY Times), I find that  I have to look up only 2 out of every 10 words. I usually have a pretty good guess of what that missing word probably means from context or from the form of the character itself. So, I feel like I can read and enjoy most of the story. However, there are clearly still words that I haven't encounter and even words that I have encountered but still haven't mastered. And in this sense, I know it would be advantageous for me to continue using the SRS. 

 

But, I can't decide if I would benefit more from stopping my daily pleco use and doing more reading, more writing etc. Or if I should continue using it until I see a higher accuracy in my reviews or until I find fewer words that I don't recognize. Clearly, there's an argument to be made about only doing what you enjoy. And I do know that every person's situation is different.

 

So, my question to the community is this: "At what point, if any, did you stop studying your SRS and just focus on using the language only daily basis. Was it once you passed a certain HSK level? Once you felt "fluent" enough (whatever that meant to you)? Of course, you never really stop learning vocabulary, do you? But did you stop using SRS flashcard apps when you reached a high, but non-native level?

 

Thanks,

 

[Lu]

There are several threads on this, so do read around a bit. Some people advocate just throwing all your cards away after an x amount of time and starting from scratch. Some people say you should just read and read more and stop SRS-ing altogether.

 

Personally I never stopped SRS-ing, even though I can read and enjoy books without looking up more than a few words per book. I find it useful in learning and retaining new words, and there are still massive amounts of words I don't know (just today, I learned 'marker' 麦克笔 and 'post stamp' 邮戳).

 

If you only understand 80% of what you read without a dictionary, perhaps you should consider reading easier books.

[Qiaoen]

Thanks Lu,

 

Your thoughts are really helps. Sounds like you've been learning for a while. Giving that you're still using it, can I ask how many words your review on a daily basis?

 

Also, you know I'm always hesitant to start posting in forums because I see so many responses (to other posters) that say something like "There are several threads on this". At least you were nice about it. Perhaps I'm searching incorrectly but I didn't see any threads related to this question. For example, I searched "vocabulary", "pleco", "anki" and a few other things and came up with 0 posts. So again, I'm probably searching incorrectly and will look around a bit like you suggested.

 

thanks again for your help.

[Guest realmayo]

59 minutes ago, Qiaoen said:

I probably average about a 70% - 75% accuracy

 

For me, or rather for the way I use flashcards, this would be too low a success rate. Simply from a flashcards point of view, it means you'll be spending too much time relearning words that you've forgotten. That takes up lots of time, obviously. And I find the most soul-destroying aspect of flashcards is always coming across cards which I know I always seem to get wrong.

 

If you get your rate up closer to 90% I wouldn't be surprised if you can cut the time spent on daily reviews by one-third to one-half.

 

How to achieve that? Lots of different ways. Your deck is 5000 cards, so personally I'd consider removing the 1000 'worst' cards. Over time go through those 1000 cards one by one: if you think a word is important, then keep it; if it's not that important then delete it. You'll end up with a list of several hundred words which are important but which you keep forgetting. Relearn them, using a different method, pen and paper or whatever, and as you go along, once you're confident you have successfully relearned a batch, reintroduce them to the flashcards deck. Later on, you can take out the next 'worst' 1000 if you feel the need.

 

48 minutes ago, Lu said:

If you only understand 80% of what you read without a dictionary, perhaps you should consider reading easier books.

 

This is good advice. Material with a simpler, more limited vocabulary will mean you're seeing the most important, most common words more often, which will help you remember them.

[Lu]

54 minutes ago, Qiaoen said:

Sounds like you've been learning for a while. Giving that you're still using it, can I ask how many words your review on a daily basis?

I've been learning for many years and now translate from Chinese for a living. I don't really prioritise Anki, I don't feed it regularly. I just add words if and when I come across them and they seem good additions. All this to explain my rather low daily review count: usually between 10 and 20 cards, a bit more when I just added a bunch of words.

 

57 minutes ago, Qiaoen said:

Also, you know I'm always hesitant to start posting in forums because I see so many responses (to other posters) that say something like "There are several threads on this".

I know what you mean, that happened to me today as well on another forum... It's just that this is a common discussion, on which a number of people have strong and thought-through opinions, so there is a lot of information already available. Perhaps you can try using Google to search (site:chinese-forums.com Pleco/SRS/etc), perhaps the search hasn't really recovered from the recent site update yet. (Or of course you can just wait for the discussion to be repeated in this thread :-) )

[imron]

3 hours ago, Qiaoen said:

but I didn't see any threads related to this question

Here you go

 

There are lots of linked discussions in that thread that are worth reading, but the short version is, SRS less, read more.   Regular reading will act as a natural revision system, and if you're doing that enough (i.e. daily) don't be afraid to delete words from the deck or even delete decks entirely.

 

You'll either know the words well, so deleting them doesn't matter, or not know the words well, in which case the words will fall in to one of two categories 1) words you will come across soon and 2) words you will not come across soon.

 

For 1) you can simply add them back to your deck when you next see them and for 2) if you aren't going to come across these words, there's no harm in forgetting them! (you can always add them back if they ever become relevant again)

 

And yes realmayo, I know you knew I would post in this thread

[Publius]

4 hours ago, Lu said:

Some people say you should just read and read more and stop SRS-ing altogether.

Haha, mark me in that column.

I'm currently going through the Japanese Core 6000 (listening sentence & vocab) Anki decks. But I'm planning to phase it out eventually this year. (Already suspended vocab cards from older decks. There are too many homophones and synonyms that testing individual words out of context seems senseless.)

 

3 hours ago, realmayo said:

...removing the 1000 'worst' cards. Over time go through those 1000 cards one by one.... Relearn them, using a different method, pen and paper or whatever, and as you go along, once you're confident you have successfully relearned a batch, reintroduce them to the flashcards deck.

I think what realmayo said is very important.

Just the other day someone pointed to an article from HackingChinese in answering a question about HSK preparation. I followed the link to that site and found another article more interesting. Basically the author says SRS is about reviewing, not about learning. Couldn't agree more.

SRS is spaced reviewing, not spaced learning. It is refreshing your memory the moment you are about to forget what you have learned. It cannot replace learning.

If you keep forgetting a word, then you haven't learned it properly. More repetition will not help you.

(I personally like to dig into etymology of words. Helps me better understand why a word means what it means. And some info are just fascinating, great memory hooks.)

 

P.S. Haha, I knew imron would appear.

[Guest realmayo]

Imron is a dyed in the wool delitist ...  无可救药.

 

27 minutes ago, Publius said:

Basically the author says SRS is about reviewing, not about learning

 

This is definitely true.

 

Well, it is in practice. But the more I think about it, the more I'm sure you are actually learning something with SRS.

 

If most of the time you see a card and know the answer, then sure, you're just embedding your knowledge -- that which you've already learned -- a bit deeper into you memory.

 

But for a card which you often get wrong, or usually find difficult, or always worry about confusing with another one, then each time you see it, and each time your brain starts turning round wondering is it this one or that one, I never get this one right, then what you're actually learning is: to panic when you see this word, to believe that you won't get it right, and to confuse it with another.

 

I'm now strict about yanking a card out of my deck if I feel like I'm getting into any kind of rut or 'bad habit'. Most recently was seeing 威风 and never being able to recall its meaning because my brain kept whispering 微风 at me。 Were I to keep repeating that process, I'd learn to see 威风 and immediately think 'gentle breezes'.

 

That's why I worry a bit for the OP's success rate: if you're frequently lots of cards wrong then you're learning to get them wrong in the future too.

[imron]

>  if you're frequently lots of cards wrong then you're learning to get them wrong in the future too.

 

Finally something about SRS we agree on!

[laurenth]

3 hours ago, realmayo said:

if you're frequently lots of cards wrong then you're learning to get them wrong in the future too.

 

I'm stunned. I recognize myself. That's one of the most insightful things I've read about my own way of studying. 

 

On the other hand, if your SRS has a built-in, aggressive leech killing feature (Anki has it, Pleco doesn't), you should have the best of both worlds. That's one of the features I miss the most in Pleco.

 

[goldy]

I never used this method to learn Chinese to begin with. I tried recently to memorize large amounts of native expressions for interpreting using anki, but I found it too time consuming. I built a few decks and after a week it would take me over an hour just to review each day. It was exhausting since none of the words or phrases I was going for were very intuitive. I was trying to get myself to give more native output in Chinese for a specific corresponding expression in English. For example I hope that when I hear someone say something like" Today I'm going to share some thoughts on the current challenges in the energy industry, which I hope you all find useful and insightful" I wan't my immediate reaction to be "今天我就当前能源领域存在的挑战谈几点看法，抛砖引玉，供各位参考“  instead of something less natural and too direct like ”今天我要跟大家分享一下我对源领域存在的挑战的看法，我希望你们都觉得很有帮助，发人深省“ 。 I found using flashcards for this to be helpful to a point, but overall it just didn't have the feeling of having something pop up on the spot during interpretation practice and even if I memorized something numerous times on the cards when I went to interpret something for real it still wouldn't come out. I would rather just take that time and practice interpreting directly applying my knowledge. I can see how it would be helpful for learning Chinese though

[Qiaoen]

Thanks everyone for the helpful advice. 

[Lu]

@goldy, it's the same for me. The words I learn because I encounter them in context, or that I need to learn for some specific reason, usually stick much better than words I throw in because they could come in useful someday.

[shuoshuo]

I still use flashcards. Although at this point I use them to memorize definitions for my course. Eventually the one word flashcards become too easy, you only have to look at the character or write it once to get it. So it might be more useful to make flashcards that consist of useful phrases, something you can look through when you're on the daily commute.

[Flickserve]

On 24/02/2017 at 0:12 AM, realmayo said:

 

But for a card which you often get wrong, or usually find difficult, or always worry about confusing with another one, then each time you see it, and each time your brain starts turning round wondering is it this one or that one, I never get this one right, then what you're actually learning is: to panic when you see this word, to believe that you won't get it right, and to confuse it with another.

 

I'm now strict about yanking a card out of my deck if I feel like I'm getting into any kind of rut or 'bad habit'. Most recently was seeing 威风 and never being able to recall its meaning because my brain kept whispering 微风 at me。 Were I to keep repeating that process, I'd learn to see 威风 and immediately think 'gentle breezes'.

 

 

So then, presumably, you need a different learning strategy for that word, such as writing it out as part of a sentence, etc. What do you do?

[Publius]

It's probably better to learn 威风 as part of a 成语. My first thought was 威风堂堂 but that's Japanese haha. 威风八面 isn't good enough to differentiate it from 微风. How about 威风凛凛? 凛 has this "ice radical" that feels cold. There's this 《威风凛凛进行曲》(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PEp8Mg54yk). Gives me goose bumps just listening to it.

[Guest realmayo]

On 25/02/2017 at 4:14 AM, Flickserve said:

So then, presumably, you need a different learning strategy for that word, such as writing it out as part of a sentence, etc. What do you do?

 

Wait for Publius to give me some memorable examples....

 

Failing that: actually all I usually do is just add a note in the answer field about why I was getting it wrong all the time; then move it to my 'leech' collection (basically, suspend it) and try to forget all about it. Some time in the future the world will come up again as being worth learning (well, re-learning) and that's what I'll do. (For learning words, I print out about 40 on a side of A4, with columns for pinyin, characters and English, and aim to read through the sheet every day for a week, trying to remember the word from just the pinyin, if possible. Then they go into SRS. Or back into the main deck from the leech collection in the case of, say, 威风.)

 

The problem is where I have a blind spot on important words. For some reason, for years, I just can't get 监督 right in SRS. I don't know what to do about troublesome-but-important words. Maybe give them immortal status where they'll never be leeched-out, and put them in a special deck with a maximum interval of a month.... I don't know yet.

[艾墨本]

I've shifted the way I use SRS since relying more on books rather than short essays (from textbooks and the like). 

 

Presently, all my words come from the book I'm reading. In this case, 活着. I have a digital version of the book and as I'm studying new words in Anki, I copy in the sentence that the word comes up in. This has done several helpful things:

1) It provides context for the word.

2) It creates a story that links new words together.

3) I often end up with memorized sentences to go along with words to help understand usage.

4) I can check on my progress by simply re-reading the book and as a final test I can try listening to the Audio book. 

 

When do I delete the words? I don't. But I stop studying them a few weeks after I finish the book. Ends up being about 10-20 reviews per day but I skip sometimes as I prioritize the words for the new text I'm reading.

 

To select the words, I use Chinese Text Analyser (see imron's signature) which makes creating a whole deck a five minute process which allows me to focus on learning instead of preparing to learn.

 

It's been working well and also quite enjoyable. I've been traveling for the last month and I'm very excited to get back into it.

 

On a side note, I also make a conscious decision before I read: is this a text to learn vocab for or am I simply reading? If it's the earlier I do what I described above. If it's the latter, I read it and skip over words unless they are crucial for understanding. Currently, I'm reading 许三观血日记 next to 活着 which is nice because they are both written by the same author and use a lot of the same vocabulary.

 

I did the same thing previously with graded readers. In the future, I imagine the second book will be a book i've read before to keep the learned content fresh in my head but I'm still getting into the groove of using native content in this way.

[Publius]

9 hours ago, realmayo said:

For some reason, for years, I just can't get 监督 right in SRS.

Hmm are you fishing for some more examples?

I don't know what English meaning you assigned to it, but I think 'supervise' is an apt one.

The traditional form of 监 is 監. In seal script it's written as

The 2nd-century dictionary 《說文解字》 classifies it as 形聲. The semantic component is 臥. The phonetic component according to 許慎 is 'congealed chicken blood' pronounced 'kan4'. But some modern scholars disagree. They say it's just a person looking down at a receptacle full of water (using it as a mirror). Anyway, the explanation given by 《康熙字典》 is 「安居以臨下，監之也。」

We know supervise comes from Latin super 'over' + videre 'see' ⇒ to oversee. Ergo 監 = supervise. (I'm sure some of our forum members have the experience as an exam supervisor/invigilator 監考.)

督 is similar in meaning. (The phonetic component 叔 rhymes with 督. The semantic component is 目.) It's very common in Chinese to juxtapose two words of similar meaning to create a new one. To use my teacher's favorite formula, 監 = 督, 督 = 監.

Japanese has the same word 監督, but it is most often used as a noun to mean director of a film or manager/coach of a sports team.

[Demonic_Duck]

_ flash card _ have been a _ in my Chinese learning since I started studying 4 years ago. I can probably _ _ _ _ the number of days that I have not studied _ over the last few years. Although I still love Chinese, I see the _ of studying flashcards (even spaced out through _) as such a big _.

 

^ That's your first couple of sentences with a roughly 20% non-comprehension rate (words/phrases selectively omitted based on how high-level they are). Are you sure you mean 2 in 10 not 2 in 100? Because this would be essentially unreadable.