Spoonfed Chinese

[ChTTay]

There doesn’t appear to be a thread on this and I’ve found patchy reviews online (most reddit comments).

 

Do you use spoonfed?

How long have you used it? What’s your level?

How do you use it? For example, I’ve seen some people set the cards to audio on the front and everything on the back.

Any advice on starting to use it? Things you’d wish you had or hadn’t done. 

Any other tips? 

 

I think I’d like to start using it to combine with watching some TV. I’d like to know more about it and others experiences. 

 

@admin could you help take the relevant posts from this topic on textbooks and put them in here? There are 2-3. 

[mackie1402]

I bought the improved version last night funnily enough. Spent the first half hour suspending the first bunch of cards. Gonna continue suspending today then hopefully crack on with 10-20 cards a day.

 

I'll keep you posted! 

[xinoxanu]

Just downloaded AnkiDroid and this deck too! Thanks for creating the post, I wasn't aware such a deck existed ✌️

 

I'm a little bit overwhelmed, however, by the sheer amount of sentences I seem to have to clear out (suspend it seems? Any way to bulk-do-this?) before I reach the ones at an HSK5 level (going to sit the test next month). Since I can comfortably-ish read native level materals, I'm looking to use Spoonfed as a tool to improve my listening skills. Is there some advice for Anki newbies on how to optimize the deck for this purpose?

 

I must say I tried the Glossika CD's last year when I was at HSK3-4 but didn't get far out of boredness, so wondering if Spoonfed, albeit similar, is a step in the right direction thanks to the SRS system behind... For comparison, I've used Skritter for 2 years and I can totally say I wouldn't be at my level without it (+1700 characters, around 3000 words), so fingers crossed!

[haveheart]

I've been using Spoonfed Chinese mostly consistently for a month or so now. Since I'm not a total beginner (1700 characters known ish) i ended up using Anki's browser to skim over cards in the deck until I reached words that were mostly unfamiliar. I suspended 2287 and have 334 mature,  187 young, and 5000 unseen so far. It's been a good supplement to studying cards I found in reading (in Pleco's srs) and watching Chinese tv. My listening is my weakest point so I've been looking away from Anki, listening to the card's audio, repeating it, then looking and if I understood it and know the characters then I pass the card. It's not perfect (found a couple typos so far and mismatched audio), but its way better than what I had when I started learning. Like WurstMann says (in the other thread), I'm hoping to use this as almost a crutch for a few thousand cards before leaning more on native material. 

 

I also bought the improved version (I think it was a dollar or two). @xinoxanu It sounds like we're around the same level, I did the same amount of skrittering roughly too. With this deck I did some broad sweeping suspending, I went about 100 cards at a time and just did a cursory look at a bunch of the cards to see if it was all stuff i already knew. If you're in the browser, you can mass select cards to suspend by holding shift and clicking on the end of the section of cards you want to select. then just hit suspend and all the highlighted cards will be suspended. 

I was actually kind of shocked at how (relatively) few cards I had to suspend before I ran into words I didn't know at all. so It was a little humbling but I'm hoping to chip away at the deck at around 10 cards a day. Also I still delete/suspend lots of cards I run into, from the looks of it I've deleted about 500 since actually starting reps. 

 

Ultimately committing  to using this deck only costs me about 10-15 minutes a day and is easier than making custom sentence cards. At this point I'm happy to take convenience and a slightly lower retention rate to get my vocab up. I'm using it along side just watching a couple hours of tv a day and reading some yuhua at a very leisurely pace.

 

[xinoxanu]

@haveheart Thanks! Did you find much difference between the old and new and improved version? Wondering if it's worth it to make the 2$ donation or not...

 

 

[haveheart]

@xinoxanu  No worries! I think there were more typos in the old deck and maybe removal of redundant cards. I paid the 2 dollars partly to get the version with traditional characters, which I'm not sure was an option for the free one. Also for what it's worth, the paid one comes with like 5(?) download links or something. 

[doome]

Hey there,

I would like to purchase the more organized version. However I dont know where. The Website linked on Anki to sellfy works but payment gets cancelled. Anyone willing to help me out? I would appreciate it. 

[ChTTay]

What do you mean cancelled?

[Seth]

17 hours ago, doome said:

Hey there,

I would like to purchase the more organized version. However I dont know where. The Website linked on Anki to sellfy works but payment gets cancelled. Anyone willing to help me out? I would appreciate it. 

I'm having the same problem. I am not able to purchase it ?

[doome]

Hey Seth, it seems paypal has some issues with wiring money to his account. However I contacted the guy he gave me a coupon and his paypal and contact mail

(promagma@gmail.com)

. Just send him a Mail or contact him via the sellfy contact website and things get solved.

[haveheart]

It's been just over a month since this thread started so I figured I'd give an update incase anyones interested.

My stats are now:  2287 suspended, 334  > 618 mature,  187 >284 young, 5000 > 4506 unseen. So thats 381 new cards studied in the last month and about 113 cards deleted (I've switched to deleting rather than suspending) for a total of 494 cards. 

So far I've more than gotten my money's worth. I've been doing a lot of tv watching along side this and feel like I can already notice quite a difference. I doubt i'll keep this pace up as harder words start coming up but i'll do my best! 
I also exported the cards as a .txt file and ran it through CTA. If people are interested I can post the relevant stats (unique character and word counts) when I have time to track them down. 

Anyone else still working through this?

[xinoxanu]

On 5/23/2019 at 2:35 AM, haveheart said:

Anyone else still working through this?

Glad to know it works!

 

Life got in the way but I'm on the process of moving from Skritter to Inkstone (if I manage to make it work) and nearly forgot about Spoonfed so thanks for the reminder! 

[ChTTay]

What’s the best way to start using this?

 

I am not a beginner so ... I’d suspend a bunch of the easier cards? 

 

Advice appreciated and will feedback with own experiences. 

[mackie1402]

12 minutes ago, ChTTay said:

What’s the best way to start using this?

 

I like to start it like I start all of my Chinese materials. Go hard for a week, then slowly fizzle out to nothing. Truly live up to the 虎头蛇尾 method of learning I've become to familiar with. Ha!

 

But in all seriousness, I still use it every other day or so. It's usually a time killer when I'm stuck in a queue or in a taxi. I suspended a bunch of cards at the beginning, then just started going through the sentences. I like reading graded readers, but it's frustrating to start a page when you only have 5 minutes to spare, so I usually read when I can sit down for a good half hour with a cup of tea. I just use this deck as a gap filler during the day. It definitely helps with retaining sentence patterns. 

[haveheart]

8 hours ago, ChTTay said:

What’s the best way to start using this?

Depending on your level I'd suspend all the cards, then randomly unsuspend sections of 5 or so cards and go through them to see how they feel. If they're too easy, keep move down another 500 in the list and try again. I eyeballed it and ended up suspending just over 2000 and starting from there and it's worked out pretty well for me.  

[haveheart]

Thought I'd give another update from my end in case anyones interested. 

Stats:
Mature - 1925
Young+learn - 143
unseen - 2831 (these are the remaining cards I will continue to study as i add more cards)
deleted - 3101 (already knew these words/phrases)

Total of 5169 cards known out of 8000

 

I've been taking a very laid back approach to learning new cards. Only adding cards when I'm feeling a burst of enthusiasm/motivation which. I've usually added about 10-20 cards a day during those periods and tried not to let the reviews pile up too much. I did have a few 2+ month long breaks from adding or reviewing and worked through the pile of reviews before continuing to add more cards again. In between using this deck I've also continued to make hand made cards for Japanese (about 1000/1500 this year) but effort that has gone into making those has been enormous. Super happy with the results of using this pre-made deck for the time being, although I imagine I'll start to make my own cards sometime this year and keep this deck for those days that I don't have the time to make new cards. 

Along with this I've been trying to read 30 minutes every night and watch 2 hours or so of raw Chinese dramas. It's been nice to spend most of my time engaging with the language rather than "studying" so I'm looking forward to seeing how this method goes for the rest of 2020

[matteo]

I have been using spoonfed for more than 6 months now, not really much as a memorizing tool but rather as an instrument to practice speaking. 

I un-suspended a few thousands sentences from the middle of the deck and every day I go through 10 new ones. I limited the number of reviews to 20 because a) I don't really mind if I can't keep up with all the cards and b) I don't want it to take over my day. 

 

For each sentence, if it's in English I try to translate and pronounce it without interruptions and with the correct tones, I listen to the audio and repeat until I get it right. If it's in Chinese, I listen to it without reading until I understand it and can repeat it. I think in both cases the key is being able to repeat each sentence fluidly without peeking at the transcript. Repeat as many times as you need until you get it right.

This for me amounts to roughly half an hour of speaking/listening practice per day.

 

Because I live outside China and the opportunities I have to practice speaking are not many, this is one of the few ways I can think of to effectively increase my speaking time and refine my tones and pronunciation.

I am very happy with the results; I have to think much less now before forming a sentence and my mouth is improved in its ability to physically produce the correct sounds.

it's probably excessive to give spoonfed 100% credit for it as I'm doing plenty of other things that together (hopefully) contribute to the improvement, but I am sure that at the very least it is helping to overcome the natural block that comes when you want to say something in another language. 

 

I recommend it as a method to all those students (and I think they are many - me included) who find themselves being much more advanced in their reading and writing than listening and speaking, and are struggling to find a solution. 

 

[Flickserve]

@matteo

 

Just to clarify, do you already know all of the vocabulary in these sentences that you are practicing?

[Jan Finster]

I bought Spoonfed about 6 months ago and used it for only 1-2 weeks.  I stopped using them because while there are many sentences, they are rather random and were not really meaningful to me. Also, there were quite a few mistakes.

 

I prefer to create collections of  sentences from TV shows or other sources I watched or read. 

[haveheart]

3 hours ago, Jan Finster said:

there were quite a few mistakes.

This is for sure one of the major downsides of the deck. I've been in the habit of looking new words/characters up on pleco when i first encounter them just to make sure everything is right. When the audio doesn't match the written Chinese I've just deleted the card. Although It's relatively infrequent at this point that I run into mistakes outside of using a simplified character instead of traditional. 

 

 

3 hours ago, Jan Finster said:

I prefer to create collections of  sentences from TV shows or other sources I watched or read. 

I totally agree that this is a better way to go about it. My only issue with it is it takes so much time to make new cards. I actually do this with Japanese and probably spend about 2 hours a week creating new cards to study. Do you tend to make note of new words while you're watching stuff, then make cards for them later?