PLECO Flashcard: Sentence Contextual Writing

[agewisdom]

On the PLECO forums, leguan and Shun created a great set of Flashcard based on Sentence Contextual Writing. I think it's pretty fantastic, so I'm reposting it here. Hopefully some of you will find it useful. The full link to PLECO post here.

 

Flashcard Set Name: Sentence Contextual Writing

Creator: @leguan

Credits: @Shun for providing most of the sentences that these flashcards are based on

Purpose: Test your ability to write the target character [普通话] based on the pinyin pronunciation [pǔtōnghuà] in the context of a complete sentence in Chinese.

Quantity: In excess of 20,000+ sentences!

 

Example: 他是中国人，但不会说 pǔtōnghuà.

 

Testing tiers:

1. Reading: Ability to understand the individual characters in Mandarin without pinyin.

2. Pronunciation: Ability to read out loud the entire sentence.

3. Gestalt: Ability to understand the overall meaning and context of the sentence. This ability ensures that the correct character is written as there are several Chinese characters with the same pinyin pronunciation.

 

This flashcard system is unique as it tests the following (in the above example):

1. The user is able to understand all 12 characters above and how they are used;

2. The user is able to write the target characters '普通话', meaning they are able to write and pronounce it as well.

3. This flashcard system takes a more top down approach to reviewing learnt characters. This is essential as it takes learning Chinese characters up a higher level where one focuses more on the context where the characters is used, rather on pure rote learning or brute force.

 

Required level: HSK 2 and above.

The list is organized via levels from HSK 2-6 thanks to Shun over at PLECO.

 

Installation method:

1. First, download the deck attached here.

2. In PLECO, go to the ‘Flashcards’ section, click on the sub-tab ‘Import/Export’.

3. Click ‘Import Cards’.

4. Under the ‘File’ section, choose file.

5. Go to the download directory and choose the ‘sentence_contextual_tatoeba_cn_eng_folded-ordered-by-hsk-ratings-2-6-txt.2946'

6. Click ‘Begin Import’.

7. Be patient and wait for the over 57~88K+ sentences to be imported.

 

8. After this, go to the ‘FLASHCARDS’ section in PLECO. Click on the ‘New Test’ tab.

9. Under the ‘Basic Settings’ click on the Max # of cards and click Endless.

10. Under the ‘Test Type’, click ‘Self-graded’.

11. Under the ‘Show’, click ‘Pron + Audio’

 

12. Under the ‘Test settings’,

* Click on ‘Reveal parts separately’

* Click on ‘Allow missing parts’

* Max audio replays to ‘Unlimited’

* Click on ‘Auto-play on show’

 

13. Under the ‘More settings’, click on ‘Commands’. Click on the ‘Show delete button’.

* Under the ‘Card selection’, click on:

* Card selection system to ‘Frequency-adjusted’

* Don’t repeat cards

* Amount 200

 

14. Under the ‘Scoring’, click on ‘Prompt for recall quality’ and ‘Only change once per day’.

Addendum: Detailed explanation of usage by Leguan

The purpose of the flashcards is primarily to practice recalling and writing Chinese words in a way that simulates the process of recognizing the meaning of words from speech sounds in the context of complete sentences.

 

Each flashcard is therefore a sentence with the Chinese characters of the word to be tested replaced with the corresponding pinyin.

 

After configuring and beginning a "new test" with the parameters as per the attached screenshots, you will first be presented with a "sentence". Your goal is to read the sentence and handwrite the Chinese characters for the tested word shown in pinyin. If you can't recognize the tested word you can use the reveal definition to see the English translation as a hint.

 

After revealing the card you then self-grade yourself and proceed to the next card.

 

A secondary goal is to practice your reading comprehension and recollection of the pronunciation of each word in the sentence presented. When I use these cards I only give myself a remembered perfectly grade if I can recall and write the tested word without any hints AND correctly comprehend the meaning of the sentence AND correctly recall the pronunciation of each word in the sentence.

[leguan]

Hi agewisdom,

Thank you very much for your kind words and detailed usage instructions!

I'm happy you think the flashcards are useful for studying with. Thanks to the vast numbers of sentences provided by Shun, I think these flashcards will continue to have a firm place in my own Chinese studies for a long time to come!

For those interested, here are some links to the original related posts by Shun and myself:

Shun's original thread:
79,000 Chinese-English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish sentences
https://www.plecoforums.com/threads...n-italian-japanese-and-spanish-sentences.5925

The original posting of these sentence contextual flashcards (in the above thread):
https://plecoforums.com/threads/79-...apanese-and-spanish-sentences.5925/post-45063

An earlier related thread by Shun that started the whole ball rolling (Once again a big thanks to Shun - without his great sentence lists these flashcards would never had come to fruition!):
18,896 HSK sentences
https://www.plecoforums.com/threads/18-896-hsk-sentences.5615/

I hope others will also find these flashcards useful in their Chinese studies!

Best regards
leguan

Edited December 4, 2018 at 03:20 PM by leguan
Typos

[Tomsima]

This deck is amazing. I will probably be using it for the next decade i think. Two things:

1) I would choose HSK5 as the starting criteria rather than HSK3. I just spent the last two hours working on this deck and came across quite a lot of new and specialised vocab. I'm not saying a person with HSK3 can't work on this deck, but I can imagine it being a very demotivating and difficult experience if one were to start this deck thinking it will be at their level.

2) how are people revising the new characters coming up? Are you setting for 'repeat incorrect at end of session'? I've not used 'frequency adjusted' before: I gather it isn't srs based, so how/when (if at all) do I see my studied cards?

 

Lastly, massive thank you to Shun and leguan, and to agewisdom for posting it over here!

[leguan]

Hi Tomsima,

 

Thank you very much for your kind words! ? 

 

I completely agree with you that these flashcards are far from optimal for HSK3 level students - my intention was, in fact, to optimize them for a HSK6 level student. (The smaller "HSK" flashcards set is based on the generally much less difficult "HSK" sentences list, but even that flashcard set limits the max number of flashcards per tested word less for higher HSK levels and non-HSK words, and therefore also cannot be considered optimal for an HSK3 level student) 

 

While it is certainly possible, I personally prefer not to use SRS with this flashcard set, as I view it more like a kind of extensive reading combined with spot writing tests of "hidden" Chinese words in each sentence.(When I first generated these cards my idea was that the sentence was just for the purpose of allowing the testee to disambiguate the tested word from the context provided by the sentence, so my thinking on this matter has evolved quite a lot since then!)

 

With SRS the idea is that the system makes sure you get a new repetition just before you forget whatever you don't want to forget. With these flashcards my own personal goal is not to remember thousands of sentences or even how to write Chinese characters in the context of SPECIFIC sentences; rather, it is to expose myself to masses of natural language input and hone my ability to recognise the "hidden" words in more or less the same way as one would recognise words in natural speech, that is one recognizes (recalls or perceives) both the meaning of the word AND the corresponding characters from the sounds of the word in the context of a sentence. Some times you will recognize the meaning first, other times the characters first,  but both manners of recognition can be equally valid.

 

If we consider that humans pick up language from natural speech and reading books without using SRS then we can feel more comfortable forgoing the use of SRS when studying with these cards.  

 

Having said that, I still do like to use the frequency adjusted setting  to prevent easily solved cards from popping up too much and, conversely, to ensure non-successfully solved cards pop up more often. 

 

While I  personally prefer not use "repeat incorrect at end of session",  you can of course use this function for revision.

 

I know Shun also will have some other good suggestions about how to use Pleco to create revision type tests based on the cards you have recently studied so I would like to revert to him for more information on this.

EDIT: See next post for a relevant post by Shun

 

Once again, I'm very honored to hear you are enjoying these flashcards and hope you will continue to find them useful in your studies!

 

Best regards

leguan

[leguan]

Hi Tomsima,

 

Here's the post I was thinking of where Shun talks about how he revises when studying with these cards:

 

Shun wrote:

One piece of feedback on the system: After about one day of successful intermittent studying with the contextual writing practice system, I can already say that when I feel the need to test myself on the same words in the Chinese-English direction using a filter, I will set the Flashcards module to Remap cards to dicts so I can see a full dictionary definition of the words, which of course conveys more information than the HSK/tatoeba sentences alone would. One already studies the words’ context very well when one studies in the English-Chinese direction, so that should be quite sufficient. It's also great to see more examples of usage from a good dictionary to complement the HSK/Tatoeba sentences’ context.

https://www.plecoforums.com/threads/79-000-chinese-english-french-german-italian-japanese-and-spanish-sentences.5925/page-2#post-45011

 

Best regards

leguan

[Tomsima]

Thanks again leguan, just looking through your thread from pleco forums you can really see just how much work has gone into this project, I'm not from a programming background, so this is a resource I'd otherwise never be able to get myself. Guess it's time to get my head down and study now!

[agewisdom]

3 hours ago, Tomsima said:

Thanks again leguan, just looking through your thread from pleco forums you can really see just how much work has gone into this project

 

My thoughts exactly! An obscure Tome of Wisdom in the Pleco Arcane Sanctuary under the safekeeping of two Archmages. Took some digging out, to put in on a pedestal it deserves ?

 

[leguan]

Hi Tomsima and  agewisdom,

Thank you very much for your generous comments. You are both too kind?!

leguan

 

[agewisdom]

Dear All,

 

Shun over at PLECO has segregated the flashcards into HSK level 2-6. For those users exclusively using flashcards to just learn characters, this free flashcard set is literally a gift from the heavens! It forces the user to learn the characters in tandem with the characters. Safe to say, you'll find it hard going at first, but I think it will help tremendously!

 

@imron I think this should alleviate your concern about using flashcards as it fills the gap you were talking about in SRS.

[imron]

14 hours ago, agewisdom said:

I think this should alleviate your concern about using flashcards as it fills the gap you were talking about in SRS.

I also have concerns about flashcard decks that you didn't create yourself

 

In any event, my advice is the same.

 

Train what you want to learn.

 

If you want to learn reading, make sure you are doing more reading than flashcards. 

[agewisdom]

Training what you want to learn is great advice for hardworking people like yourself.

[imron]

It's great advice for everyone

[Derrickm3]

After following the instructions, mine is only coming up with vocabulary, but no sentences.  Has anyone any advice as to what I’ve done wrong and how to fix it?