I need an advice about a study method for flashcards.

[mast3rsensei]

Hi guys, I would like to know your opinion about a studying strategy that came up in my mind for studying new words.

 

Basically, I'm creating my own personal flashcard deck, but I was wondering what's the best way to study new words. At present, my deck's cards are structured like this: on the front, there's the word in my native language, and on the back there are character, pinyin, and additional example when needed. For now my study method is the following: read the word, remember the pinyin (speaking out loud), visualize the chinese characters (one component at a time).

 

However, I was wondering if, with this method, I focus too much on the native-Chinese translation (that could be useful for speaking purposes) but ignoring the Chinese-native one (that could be surely more useful for listening and comprehension purposes). Basically, what if my method helps me to translate easily in my mind from my native language to Chinese (making me more proficient in speaking) but gives me hard times when trying to translate from Chinese to my native language (making the listening part harder because I cannot easily pass from the Chinese sound to the meaning)?

 

So, I came up with different strategies for solving my dilemma:

 

1. I don't change anything. People from chinese-forums.com tell me that my present method is ok, and that I'm worrying for nothing;

2. I don't change anything, but when studying the flashcards, once I find myself at ease remembering the translation from my native language to Chinese (pinyin and character), before passing to the next card I work this time on assigning an image to the sound by repeating the pinyin out loud and at the same time thinking about its meaning (for example, I say dàxiàng and imagine an elephant);

3. I make a copy of every card in my deck and invert them, but:

    3a: the front of the card shows the word in chinese character;

    3b: the front of the card shows the word in pinyin.

4. None of the above, the guys from chinese-forums.com have a even better method.

 

So, method number two would help me to avoid doubling the cards in my deck, even if probably I would spend more time on a single card, while number 3 would give me more cards to study. However, for number 3 I can't decide if it would be better to put the word in pinyin on the front (this would allow me to work better on assigning the meaning to the SOUND more than the character) or the Chinese characters (better for reading purposes I guess, but If I already visualize the characters when passing from native to Chinese, isn't it a little redundant? I mean, if I can visualize them in my head, it means that I can write them, thus I should even be able to easily read them right?).

 

So, what you guys think?

[DavyJonesLocker]

what system are you using ANKI, PLECO etc

 

if you haven't started yet I suggest PLECO to get you going or ANKI for the full blown functionality of an SRS system 

[mast3rsensei]

2 minutes ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

what system are you using ANKI, PLECO etc

Sorry I didn't specify this. I use Anki!

[Shelley]

If you use Pleco it is very easy to have all the possibilities. Pleco flashcards can have more than two sides. Adding cards and choosing test methods is quick easy, less time preparing to study.

 

[Flickserve]

3 hours ago, mast3rsensei said:

However, I was wondering if, with this method, I focus too much on the native-Chinese translation (that could be useful for speaking purposes) but ignoring the Chinese-native one (that could be surely more useful for listening and comprehension purposes). Basically, what if my method helps me to translate easily in my mind from my native language to Chinese (making me more proficient in speaking) but gives me hard times when trying to translate from Chinese to my native language (making the listening part harder because I cannot easily pass from the Chinese sound to the meaning)?

 

So, I came up with different strategies for solving my dilemma

 

I tried setting up Anki to listening chinese-characters+translation card. It was a lot of work for not much gain at that stage of my learning.

 

 

I had much better results in improving listening skills by trying to match subtitles to speech to a dialogue. It meant that I had to first identify the sentence, loop and listen carefully many, many times over to match the subtitles accurately to the timing of the speech. I did this for about two months.

 

I didn't practice native-chinese anki cards. I didn't practice speaking to native speakers. Sometimes, I would copy how the sentence was said if the sentence wasn't too hard and if my mood was 9k.

 

Then when I went back to speaking to native chinese speakers, a lot kept saying how improved I was or some that I talked to first time said I was quite good!

 

All that listening improved A) my listening skills and B) my speaking skills (without much conversation time)

 

I am still trying to figure out how best to learn the vocabulary. Create new sentences with new vocabulary - that's what the experts say.

[mast3rsensei]

5 minutes ago, Flickserve said:

I had much better results in improving listening skills by trying to match subtitles to speech to a dialogue. It meant that I had to first identify the sentence, loop and listen carefully many, many times over to match the subtitles accurately to the timing of the speech. I did this for about two months.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "matching subtitles". Are you saying that you practiced to read subtitles as fast as people were speaking? Or that you were trying to match the word with its meaning as soon as you hear it?

[Flickserve]

This came from making lots of Anki notes from TV programs. In order to make the notes more efficiently, you have the subtitles file and need to mark the exact time that the sentence starts and finishes. This is done manually. It's a bit long to describe all the details here but it was described in a previous post in Chinese forums by TysonD.

 

In the process of making these notes, I would be listening to the sentence many times to get the exact timings.

 

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/44952-workaudiobook-–-a-tool-for-listening-practice-and-subtitle-creation/

 

 

My primary aim that time was to make the Anki notes for listening practice. It was a coincidence that I found my general listening skills and speaking with the rhythm of a sentence improved before even testing myself on Anki.

 

As a result of that, I became even more convinced listening skills should be a high priority. I probably put 70-80 percent of my learning time into repetitive listening and looking up words I don't know, then forgetting them, and then repeat listening...

[Flickserve]

16 hours ago, mast3rsensei said:

    3a: the front of the card shows the word in chinese character;

    3b: the front of the card shows the word in pinyin.

 

16 hours ago, mast3rsensei said:

However, for number 3 I can't decide if it would be better to put the word in pinyin on the front (this would allow me to work better on assigning the meaning to the SOUND more than the character) or the Chinese characters (better for reading purposes I guess,

 

Anki will allow you to do both so you can try and see which way works best for you. At the beginning, you might need pinyin but later as you get more advanced, you want to do it without pinyin on the front.

 

I haven't played with Anki for a while but you should also be able to design the note (and hence the card ) to access Google tts so that it will say the word when the card and Chinese character appears. Thus, you can associate the character with the sound better. Google is not too bad but also not a 100% perfect especially when a character has two pronunciations eg 了. Of course, native speaker in Standard Mandarin would be the best.

 

Anki would also allow you to just have the sound and you guess the character. This is very hard for single words because of lack of context so it's better to have a whole sentence in sound and then test your listening skill.

[DavyJonesLocker]

PLECO has come on a long way  since they first introduced flashcards, so as Shelley says its much easier to get up and running. 

 

ANKI requires a lot of familiarization especially designing cards and the advanced features but the effort will pay off in years to come . I am personally a fan of ANKI as I keep all data in spreadsheets and import it into ANKI. This becomes useful as when you build up substantial size decks (6000+). 

 

For the sounds I just use the ANKI Add on AwesomeTTS. There you can try various TTS Audio services such as Microsoft, Google etc. I found Naver to be the best as it is not computer generated.

 

As for how to design the cards, really the best way in my view is to try various combinations and see which fits you best. You will invariably find that you have a weak part to your learning. For me, my "fails" are almost always attaching a meaning to the Hanzi. so my reviews predominately consist of C->E rather than E -> C

 

I agree with @Flickserve in that the Pinyin gets dropped early in your studies as by default you will just know it. I don't think its good to have a card with the front showing pinyin (as your 3b) as it can have many different meanings for example '"de" can be 的，得，地，德 and both 的, 地 can be pronounced as de, dí . 着 is commonly prounounced as zhe, zhuó, zháo (and I am sure there are other tones associated with 着)

 

For 3b I would have an english word (that is: the dictionary definition of a Chinese word) or phrase/idiom presented and you have to guess the pronunciation including tones. I'd encourage you to only mark the card as "known" only if you know the pinyin and tones correctly . Many of us give ourselves a pass if knowing the pinyin but failed to get the tone correct . It will come back to haunt you as the wrong tone cements itselfs set early on in your brain and becomes stubbornly difficult to change later on.  

 

If I was starting again, I would dive into characters on day one. I didn't look at characters for the first 6 months of my learning and it was a mess by the end

 

Edit as for what words: I have a pretty poor memory for rote learning but context and words that have personal meaning to oneself are far far easier to learn. Some text book words I need to review a hundred of times as they just seem to not stick but words I use in my daily life are quite easy to remember. Two week I was buying a 松紧带 (those elastic cords with the hooks at the end) from the hardware store (五金店). I easily remember these words given it has meaning to me. I remember (trying to remember) a stubborn word like 喜糖 I simply could not get that word to stick but when I was given one at a wedding last year, it seem to stick forever ;) 

 

I only add words into ANKI that I think I will use and I want to know. For a HSK route this is not appropriate of course