I'm looking for the following flashcard program

[Dan Bang]

I have been thinking in the directions of using a flashcard program to avoid the mountain of the monotuos work that's involved with creating your flashcards by the hand technique. Besides, it should be stressed that I'm doing a semester course, so it's the textbooks that constitute the centre of my learning. However, I have noticed the following "lacks" with the program I have tried this far (Chinese Practice 3.0.2): it allows me to create a list for each lesson, but as far as I can figure the program out, it's not possible to practice words/characters across the lesson system. What I'm interested in is a program where I can mantain the lesson structure - so I can review a lesson in it's whole. But I would like this aspect to be combined with a function that allows me to have lists across the lessons with, let's say, the easiest, the in between and the most difficult characters - this way I can carry out a more general review as well, where I can practice the most difficult characters in a whole. The problem with the program I have used this far is that it would require me to make new lists with serious amounts of copy and paste. I would prefer a smooth function where each word/character just is a unit you can move/copy from list to list - so that it is possible to update the lists of characters across the lessons quite smoothly.

I was also wondering whether some programs should have the words/characters already in their system. The program I use now have an explanation (meaning plus pinyin) for the words/characters given by an integrated dictiionary/database, however, this is not included in the review function (but the explanation seems much more comprehensive than a few other flashcard programs I have seen, why can't this be included in the review function?) - where you have to type the translation and the pinyin as well as the characters. Isn't it possible to get a program where you just can type the characters, and then the program itself would integrate the pronounciation and the translation into the review function.

I have already tried to use the search function on the board, but it seems somewhat difficult to find what I'm looking for without any advices from people who have tried various programs... Thanks in advance!

p.s. I'm not sure whether this is the right forum.

Dan

[trevelyan]

The website is new but Adso Vocab will do something similar to this:

http://www.adsotrans.com/vocab/

Register and you can create as many lists as you want. The input method is designed to make it easy to create vocabulary lists, as all you need to do is provide is the Chinese word and the pinyin and english will be automatically imported from the Adso dictionary. If you want to use the lists in conjunction with a desktop flashcard system, let me know what format they expect and I can write a script to output a file in that format. It would be nice to have the system integrated with some desktop tools.

There is nothing onsite that tests vocabulary ACROSS lists, but we do have javascript-powered flashcards and an email reminder system (optional, and currently under development). If you can be clear about exactly what you want, it may be possible adding extra features that provide that. One suggestion might be adding a field in the database to track "learned" words and not test/remind users on/about them.

Suggestions are welcome. It would be nice to have some structured course material publicly available on the site, so I'll do what I can to make it more useful to you if you can provide some concrete suggestions.

[bogleg]

You can try the zdt if you're looking for a desktop option:

http://zdt.sourceforge.net

It will allow you to create character lists that you can put into different categories. It's up to you to decide what to put in a category so you can categorize them by lesson, difficulty, or whatever. It's also easy to move characters between categories by drag & drop or copy/paste. Using the flashcard function, you can then select 1 or more categories to review.

Create character lists in categories is pretty easy too. You can do it manually by typing in a character. You can drag & drop from the built in dictionary. Or copy/paste chinese characters in directly from any source (website, textfile, etc).

No sound though like Chinese Practice.

Chris