Pleco SRS - keep card in review deck until guessed correctly

[Balthazar]

I recently decided to take up Imron's advice regarding learning new words from novels. Just started reading 活着, and I'm adding a maximum of 10 new words to my deck each day.

 

I've always been partial to Anki's flashcard system, since that's what I started with almost six years ago. However, since I'm using Pleco's reader to read the text, there's no way I'm going to bother with adding new words to an Anki deck manually every day when Pleco lets me add a word with a single tap.

 

So I've created a deck in Pleco. I add words to it. And I want to make sure that new words are actually learned (as in guessed right twice) the same day I first meet them in a review session.

 

In Anki, with the standard settings, new cards you get wrong will be kept in that day's study deck until you've guessed them right twice. "Learned" cards will be kept until you've guessed them right once. So if you get a card wrong, it will reappear again after x minutes. I would like Pleco to do this too. With the default settings that I'm currently using, the card will have been reviewed and finished for the day regardless of whether I've guessed it right or wrong. I don't think that's going to work for me. Today I got 8 our of the 10 new words incorrect and I can imagine the compounding effect a few weeks/months down the line.

 

I see that Pleco gives a whole bunch of customization options, which is great but frankly a bit overwhelming for a newbie such as myself. Any quick and dirty tips to get a Ankiesque review setup going?

[imron]

I don't know about an Ankiesque review setup, but seeing as you're following my other advice, what I do is this.

 

I have 3 profiles, each with their own separate scorefile:

1. New Cards
2. Pronunciation
3. Revision

These can be created under Menu->Flashcards->New Test->Profile->Manage

 

Creating them just creates the profile name.  You then change the settings under 'New Test' and those settings get saved to the current profile.

 

I then have the following options for each Profile

 

New Cards

Test Type -> Review only

Show -> Chars + Pron + Defn

Card filters -> Record Filter -> Enable, include card if '# reviewed' is = than 0

More Settings->Scoring->Scorefile->New Cards

 

I use this an initial learning/review profile.  It always shows the full card, and it will only ever show each card once, because I filter on '# reviewed = 0' and once the card has been seen then '#reviewed' will no longer be 0.  I also use a separate scorefile to stop it interfering with reviews on the other profiles.  Once I've added my 10 words for the day and I've finished my reading, then I'll go over this profile first, using it to familiarize myself with each newly added word and make sure I know the word, the meaning and the pronunciation before I start doing reviews with it.  It's not a test, it's purely a step to review and learn newly added cards.  I always do this before doing the other profiles, because the other profiles will start testing me on those words and I want to make sure I know them well enough first.

 

Pronunciation

Test type -> Self-graded

Show -> Characters

More Settings -> Card selection ->  System -> Repetition spaced

More Settings->Commands->Repeat incorrect cards, Time at end of test, Loop, Shuffle

More Settings->Scoring->Scorefile->Pronunciation

 

This profile I use to make sure I know the pronunciation and meaning of the word if I just see the characters.  The front card has characters only and the back shows everything.

 

Note I said characters (plural) because I try to make sure I always add multi-character words to my flashcards - even if in context I only encountered a new word that is a single character.  I do this by finding a multi-charater word that embodies the same meaning that the single character does, and adding that rather than the single character version.  The purpose of doing this is to reduce homonyms, and therefore ambiguity, in the deck, by reducing the chance of a clash where two cards have the same pinyin (important for the Revision profile below which only shows pinyin on the front).

 

For the meaning, I usually don't think of the dictionary definition but rather the thing that the word represents e.g. if the word was 气球 I would imagine a balloon rather than the full dictionary definition of what a 气球 is, or I'll remember the context where I first learnt the word (or another context where the word has appeared).  I do this because reciting the exact dictionary definition is not what I want to be able to do - rather I want that when I encounter the word I just have a feeling/visualization of the meaning.

 

This translates to reading, because when you are reading you don't want to be mentally reciting the dictionary definition every time you encounter that word, rather you just want to see the characters and have an instant idea of the concept embodied by that word (and also the pronunciation).

 

The 'repeat incorrect cards' option means that at the end of the test, Pleco will repeat any cards that I failed, and continue repeating them until I get them right.

 

Revision

Test Type -> Self-graded

Show -> Pron

More Settings -> Card selection ->  System -> Repetition spaced

More Settings->Commands->Repeat incorrect cards, Time at end of test, Loop, Shuffle

More Settings->Scoring->Scorefile->Revision

 

This profile I use for production of the characters and meaning from the pronunciation.  The front card has the pinyin and the back has everything else. As with 'Pronunciation' I try to make it so that I can instantly visualize the characters and think of the meaning when I see the pinyin. 

---

 

Anyway, this setup allows me first to review all new cards at least once on a given day before I'm tested on them, and then it also tests active recall (the Revision profile) and passive recall (the Pronunciation profile).

 

The great thing about Pleco is that when I add a new card, that card is automatically added to each profile (and each profile is scored separately from the others).

 

On any given day, I'll try to have short (or sometimes long) break after reviewing one profile and before reviewing the next one.  This is because there is going to be overlap and interference between the decks and while I'm not too bothered by that because I think it all helps reinforce things, having a short break usually ensures I'm remembering the word, and not just remembering it because I saw it in the other profile.

 

Happy to answer any other questions you might have on my setup.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Balthazar]

Thanks for the thorough explanation! Seems like a smart system, I'll give it a try.

 

One thing though, how do you make Pleco add a new card to each of the profiles simultaneously? I know how to change my default deck so that I can add cards quickly by tapping "+", but I can't seem to find the option to set several default profiles.

[imron]

I think it just adds them to each profile in the default deck automatically, and the separate scorefiles take care of handling scheduling for the same card in different profiles.

 

At least I don't think I configured anything extra to make this work.  It's just always worked like that.

[Balthazar]

Ah, I think I have mistakenly assumed "deck" and "profile" to be the same thing. So one deck, several profiles? I'll have a look when I get home. Thanks!

[imron]

Ok, it's been a while since I've actually looked at configuring this so the terminology I use in my head might not always be the terminology used by Pleco.

 

After a quick look, Pleco has 'Categories' which you can place cards in to when you press and hold '+'.  This is probably what you meant by 'deck' in your post above?

 

Then you can have different testing 'profiles' that run off specific or all 'categories'.  The test profiles are used to show different front/back cards, or to use different repetition methods or to use different scorefiles and so on.

 

Personally, I always just leave all cards as 'Uncategorized' and don't bother sorting them in to different categories - the less time spent on micromanaging decks and cards the better - and then each profile always tests from 'all categories'.

 

Then when time comes to 'delete my deck' I go to Flashcards -> Organize Cards, choose 'Uncategorized', select all and then press delete.  All my profiles still remain and I don't need to reconfigure them, they just no longer have any cards there.

 

 

[Balthazar]

4 hours ago, imron said:

This is probably what you meant by 'deck' in your post above?

 

Yes. I'm still stuck with Anki terminology.

 

Now that I've understood the difference between a category and a profile, and have had the opportunity to sit down with your guidelines and my phone for a while, things all set up and ready to go.

 

Having navigated through some of the options, it doesn't seem to difficult to tweak the settings to something closer to the Anki standard. But I like your setup a lot (at least in theory, will report back after some months of actually trying it out) so I'll go with that for now. Thanks again.

[imron]

2 hours ago, Balthazar said:

Thanks again.

No worries.  Good luck.

[Balthazar]

I've been using this system for a couple of days now, and while I like the split between the three profiles, I am a bit annoyed that the pronounciation and revision profiles will test me on _all_ cards every day.

 

That is, even the cards I guessed right on the first attempt yesterday and the day before will still appear today.

 

Do I need to change something in the settings or will the algorithm work out a more suitable break period once I have guessed the cards right even more times? Again, coming from Anki, I'm used to a break of 3 days the first time I get a card right (unless it's a new card, in that case only 1 day) and thereafter even longer breaks until I get it wrong.

[mikelove]

In New Test / Card Selection, is 'system' set to 'Random'? Set it to Spaced Repetition instead. You may also want to tweak the options in 'Scoring' to get the intervals you want. (100 points = 1 day, by default)

[imron]

15 minutes ago, Balthazar said:

I am a bit annoyed that the pronounciation and revision profiles will test me on _all_ cards every day.

Mine doesn't do this.

 

7 minutes ago, mikelove said:

Set it to Spaced Repetition instead.

That's probably going to be the reason if it's not set.  I didn't mention this in the config above because I assumed it was the default.

[Balthazar]

21 minutes ago, mikelove said:

In New Test / Card Selection, is 'system' set to 'Random'? Set it to Spaced Repetition instead. You may also want to tweak the options in 'Scoring' to get the intervals you want. (100 points = 1 day, by default) 

 

It was indeed. Set it to "Repetition-spaced" now, that did the trick. Thanks!

[imron]

Good to know.  I'll update my post to add this to the config section.

[kanumo]

Out of another thread, I now took the advice and setup my pleco like mentioned above... let’s give it a try! 加油！