Daily flashcards - brain changing?

[Jan Finster]

42 minutes ago, 骏马的丕沿? said:

Well, my job as a relatively experienced person is to give advice to others. Evidently, such advice is difficult to deliver to certain people.

 

You are not the first person, who discussed the use and misuse of flashcards on this forum. Also, please consider there are many different types of learners. So, extrapolating from your own experience and then generalizing and making universal principles it short-sighted. Even though you may be experienced, you are certainly not the most experienced Chinese learner on this forum. So, pontificating about what is right or wrong is less helpful than simply stating your personal experience.

 

31 minutes ago, 骏马的丕沿? said:

Yeah, my Chinese is good now, and that's why I (generally) don't use flashcards anymore. I've repeated it before, and I'll repeat it again: *long-term*. Nobody is a beginner, and nobody is "not good" at Chinese, in the long-term. Flashcards are great in the beginning stages (say first few months or first two years), but are relatively inefficient after the beginning stages (i.e. in the long-term). That's my point.

 

To be honest, I am not sure if this is even true. I have been learning English (as a second language) for decades and know over 20000 words. So, basically, all new words that I learn are uncommon. Since I may run into those uncommon words only once every 1-2 million words I read, flashcarding actually makes a lot of sense to increase the exposure to such uncommon words. You cannot rely on encountering them in context, if they are very uncommon. You might argue that those words are not important, but then if you want to improve your vocabulary at an advanced level, you will have to consider such words.

[骏马的丕沿?]

On 3/10/2021 at 5:43 PM, Sreeni said:

1. What is your current character & word recognition level?

2. How many words are you reviewing on average per day and how many new words you are adding now a days? How long are you using flash cards?

3. How are you mastering your context? I mean understanding Comprehension/ text?

 

1. This is kind of a difficult thing to measure. On one end, one could measure how many characters he/she can write by hand, purely from memory, upon being told the pronunciation and (for context) the meaning of the character in question, and with correct strokes, structure, but not necessarily correct stroke order, proportion, or calligraphy. On this end, my guess is that I know roughly between 2000 and 2500 characters. Then, one could measure how many characters there are, where he/she knows the meaning (roughly speaking), and knows how to construct words, and sentences, with the character in question. My guess is that I know roughly between 3500 and 4000. On the other end, one could measure how many characters there are, where he/she knows (and is not merely correctly guessing) the pronunciation(s) of the character in question. On this end, my guess is that I know roughly between 4500 and 5500 characters. Again, these are just guesses - I never bother to keep track of how many characters I know.

 

2. I don't really study words strictly by themselves. I just read a lot of books in Chinese, and I often like to surf the web in Chinese. If I can't figure out a word well enough by just using context, and if the word seems important, then I'll look it up in the dictionary, and try to use it myself, in my own life, preferably with others, later. I should also mention that I often do "summary" speaking practices after I watch videos, and try and write my own content after I do some reading, and, consequently, many of the (new) words that I use in my writing and speaking come from what I just read/watched (or at least I hope so!).

 

Regarding your second question, I often make it a point to practice characters' writing (by hand) and pronunciations via my own self-paced spaced-repetition (I don't really bother to use flashcards (physical or digital) because I find them kind of clumsy). I used to do the same thing for characters' and words' meanings, but then stopped, because I realized that just doing lots of reading (and listening) is a better way to absorb characters' and words' meanings and usages. If a certain character, however, appears often, and I still don't know the general meaning/usage, then I'll skim over some definitions listed in various dictionaries (the software I use is Pleco) to give me better direction.

 

3. I don't mean to sound cliche, but practice makes perfect. I just read a passage, article, section of a book, or whatever have I (it doesn't have to be textual - it could be audial), and if I just feel that I absolutely must review what I just read in order to better understand, then that's what I do. I may review by paying more attention to context, looking up definitions, and asking questions. Sometimes, especially if it's classical Chinese, if I still cannot figure out what a certain word/phrase means, then I just go on Baidu and figure it out from there. Other times, I just keep it as it is, without understanding it (just relish in the unknown!). Sometimes, though, I'll figure out its meaning a few days, a few weeks, or even a few months, later.

[骏马的丕沿?]

22 minutes ago, Jan Finster said:

You are not the first person, who discussed the use and misuse of flashcards on this forum. Also, please consider there are many different types of learners. So, extrapolating from your own experience and then generalizing and making universal principles it short-sighted. Even though you may be experienced, you are certainly not the most experienced Chinese learner on this forum. So, pontificating about what is right or wrong is less helpful than simply stating your personal experience.

 

 

That's why I was talking about "universality" earlier. Did what I say about flashcards apply to most other, if not all, people? Of course, I don't know the answer to this question, and neither do you. My belief which is that what I claimed about flashcards (including all the specific details mentioned thus far, like "in the long-term," "when compared to reading," etc.) applies to at least most people. That's all I can say, and you don't have to accept it.

[骏马的丕沿?]

14 minutes ago, Jan Finster said:

To be honest, I am not sure if this is even true. I have been learning English (as a second language) for decades and know over 20000 words. So, basically, all new words that I learn are uncommon. Since I may run into those uncommon words only once every 1-2 million words I read, flashcarding actually makes a lot of sense to increase the exposure to such uncommon words. You cannot rely on encountering them in context, if they are very uncommon. You might argue that those words are not important, but then if you want to improve your vocabulary at an advanced level, you will have to consider such words.

 

I'm pretty sure the most well-known authors from the United States don't use flashcards to improve their vocabulary.

[骏马的丕沿?]

One minor matter I should clarify:

 

Remember that we are not comparing "spaced repetition" and "non-spaced repetition," but rather "spaced repetition in the form of only flashcards" and "spaced repetition in the form of only reading/listening."

[Jan Finster]

1 minute ago, 骏马的丕沿? said:

I'm pretty sure the most well-known authors from the United States don't use flashcards to improve their vocabulary.

 

How can you be sure? Sigh! Anyway, I was not talking about natives, but very advanced learners of a foreign language. 

How do you then solve the matter of learning very uncommon words that you may only encounter once every 1-2 years while reading? In the video that was mentioned previously (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpsVp95Wu_E) Dr. Nation quite clearly explains that it is fairly easy to acquire the first few thousand words while reading, but the less common the words get, the less likely are you to encounter them often enough to remember them.

Besides, some advanced students on here actually recommended memorizing dictionaries (https://www.hackingchinese.com/memorising-dictionaries-to-boost-reading-ability/)...

 

[Moshen]

Quote

How do you then solve the matter of learning very uncommon words that you may only encounter once every 1-2 years while reading?

 

I wonder why it's important to you to have a method of remembering these words?  If they're important enough for you, you will just learn them one way or another, naturally.

 

At the very advanced level, you're pretty much in the same position as a native speaker faced with learning new words.  I can give you three examples of me as a native English speaker encountering new English words.

 

1) I recently joined a listserv where apparently most of the members are millennials and they use a LOT of slang that is unfamiliar to me.  Around three times a week I have no idea what someone is talking about and have to look something up online.  If it happens just once, I may not remember that particular bit of slang.  But if I encounter it 2 or 3 times, I will.  I don't need to put it on a flash card.

 

2)Last year I read a book by a British author who used dozens of words I'd never encountered before (and as a fanatical reader since childhood, I have a very large vocabulary).  I looked some of them up.  They were what I'd call show-offy words - not specialized terminology, just really obscure words that would stump almost anyone.  I did not enjoy reading this author and decided there was no point in learning his obscure words since I'd probably never encounter them again in my lifetime.  If the words had to to with a subject that I wanted to read a lot more in, I might have put more effort into it.

 

3)Last month, I encountered a new word I got very interested in:  mountweazels.  It was casually used in a book review as if anyone would know it.  I looked it up and read a lot about it because there's an interesting story there, as there wasn't in the words for #1 or #2.  Turns out a mountweazel is a fake word deliberately inserted in a dictionary to catch copyright violators.  I don't think I'll forget this.  I learned it naturally, in the course of life, because it interested me.

[Jan Finster]

5 hours ago, Moshen said:

I wonder why it's important to you to have a method of remembering these words?  If they're important enough for you, you will just learn them one way or another, naturally.

 

You could argue that such uncommon words are not important and/or specialist vocabulary and you may be right. Only recently I came across the word "peat" and I had no idea what it meant. I know the word turf. But, as far as I remember, I have not come across the word "peat" before even though I have lived in the UK for 4 years and have studied English for several decades. How likely is it that I will encounter this word in a book? Is knowing this word important or not? In German, every child knows what the German equivalent word (der Torf) means. I would imagine, the same applies to English natives.

Is it worth flashcarding this word? 

 

 

 

6 hours ago, Moshen said:

Last year I read a book by a British author who used dozens of words I'd never encountered before (and as a fanatical reader since childhood, I have a very large vocabulary).  I looked some of them up.  They were what I'd call show-offy words - not specialized terminology, just really obscure words that would stump almost anyone.  I did not enjoy reading this author and decided there was no point in learning his obscure words since I'd probably never encounter them again in my lifetime.  If the words had to to with a subject that I wanted to read a lot more in, I might have put more effort into it.

 

 I agree with this. The former "Speaker" in the British Parliament, John Bercow, is often asked by journalists, if he memorises the thesaurus before going to bed. He uses a lot of words that other people may either not know or only know passively. For the most part, people seem to admire him and his speaking style. However, imagine you teach international students and you are using uncommon words. This could actually make you less understandable. I have occasionally received the feedback from international students that my seminar was easier to understand than that of my English native colleague as he was speaking with an English intonation and would use words non-natives may not be familiar with. So, in some ways knowing uncommon words can be detrimental. Imagine if I said "do not squander this opportunity" to non-native listeners. I would imagine your average ESL student knows the expression "waste this opportunity", but may not know what "squander" means. So, using this when talking to international students could actually be harmful to understanding. However, does this imply, I should not even learn that word? I am actually quite happy to expand my passive vocabulary and for that matter I have a short list of less than 100 English words that I review every now and then until I remember them...

[Insectosaurus]

14 minutes ago, Jan Finster said:

Is it worth flashcarding this word? 

 

I would say no words are worth flashcards if you're at a very advanced level. Look it up, move on. I also think it's a bad idea to assume that just because most Germans know "Torf", most English natives know "peat". The Swedish word is torv (similar to the German one) and I can promise you a huge part of society have no idea about what "torv" is. If it's relevant to you, you will encounter it again.

[骏马的丕沿?]

On 3/14/2021 at 12:40 PM, Jan Finster said:

How can you be sure? Sigh! Anyway, I was not talking about natives, but very advanced learners of a foreign language. 

How do you then solve the matter of learning very uncommon words that you may only encounter once every 1-2 years while reading? In the video that was mentioned previously (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpsVp95Wu_E) Dr. Nation quite clearly explains that it is fairly easy to acquire the first few thousand words while reading, but the less common the words get, the less likely are you to encounter them often enough to remember them.

Besides, some advanced students on here actually recommended memorizing dictionaries (https://www.hackingchinese.com/memorising-dictionaries-to-boost-reading-ability/)...

 

 

I'm glad you brought this up!

 

In my earlier comment, I intentionally chose to use the general phrase, "improve vocabulary."

 

From your comment, it seems that you interpret "improve vocabulary" to mean "increase the number of words whose (various) pronunciations and (various) meanings are known by the learner" - I just want to verify: is this indeed your interpretation? If so, as to whether or not pure reading is indeed preferable over pure flashcarding for "improving vocabulary," then I am not sure (as a matter of fact, I think flashcarding is probably better).

 

On the other hand, one could interpret, "improve vocabulary," to mean "not only learn the (various) pronunciations and (various) meanings of new words, but also learn their various kinds of usages, as well as the grammatical structures in which they may be found, and the cultural/historical significances that they may hold." Using this interpretation, I believe that pure reading is preferable (for me, at the very least).

 

The former interpretation relates to a more specific way of learning, while the latter interpretation relates to a more holistic way of learning.

[Jan Finster]

2 hours ago, 骏马的丕沿? said:

From your comment, it seems that you interpret "improve vocabulary" to mean "increase the number of words whose (various) pronunciations and (various) meanings are known by the learner" - I just want to verify: is this indeed your interpretation? If so, as to whether or not pure reading is indeed preferable over pure flashcarding for "improving vocabulary," then I am not sure (as a matter of fact, I think flashcarding is probably better).

 

On the other hand, one could interpret, "improve vocabulary," to mean "not only learn the (various) pronunciations and (various) meanings of new words, but also learn their various kinds of usages, as well as the grammatical structures in which they may be found, and the cultural/historical significances that they may hold." Using this interpretation, I believe that pure reading is preferable (for me, at the very least)

I agree on that.

[Jan Finster]

On 3/15/2021 at 6:44 PM, timseb said:

I also think it's a bad idea to assume that just because most Germans know "Torf", most English natives know "peat". The Swedish word is torv (similar to the German one) and I can promise you a huge part of society have no idea about what "torv" is. If it's relevant to you, you will encounter it again.

Funnily, the only reason I learnt this word was because I looked up what 泥炭 means. I found 泥炭 in an HSK6 article of TheChairMansBao... 

[JayRofi]

I used Anki flashcards for over an hour daily in 2010 to learn Chinese vocabulary. It was super painful and tedious, but it did work. Having not used Chinese for 10 years, I am picking it up again, and I literally can read words I don't even remember (i.e. i look at the character and know what it is without having to think, its actually a little disconcerting)

 

If I had my time over I would have focussed on reading and listening more than flashcards.

[Sreeni]

On 3/15/2021 at 12:37 AM, 骏马的丕沿? said:

Yeah, my Chinese is good now, and that's why I (generally) don't use flashcards anymore.

what method are you using to remember new vocabulary? as an advanced learner you still might have some vocabulary to remember I think.. 

Forming a connection on the go in the mind without writing  the notes or entering in flash cards?