Point of view about reviewing flashcards' method

Dodoxo

举人
Hi all! I would like to ask how you review your flashcards, in terms of "what you show in the question and what you show in the wanswer". I don't know if what I'm doing is good for memorization so I would like to talk about methods. The way I'm using to review now is to put the word in my native language in the question and show the translated word and some examples in the answer in chinese. I think this could help more to recall the word I'm studying. But, I'm afraid this is tied too much to the translation and I'm getting used to think in my native language rather than in chinese. How do you review? Got a tip?
 

Shun

状元
Hi Dodoxo,

I used to compose my own flashcards with example sentences as well, but now, with the great dictionaries that are available, I mostly just study using the dictionary definitions. (with Defn + Exes + Links all enabled in the Display setting, Filter head in defns enabled)

I like to study batches of < 100 cards, where I switch between

Test type: Fill-in-the-blanks, Show: Definition, Prompt for: Characters

and

Self-graded, Show: Characters,

with Reveal parts separately enabled in Test Settings, back and forth a couple of times. When I have a piece of checkered paper next to Pleco, I prefer to do Self-graded, Show: Definition instead of the Fill-in-the-blanks test. Comparing what I've written on paper to Pleco's answer is faster and more fault-tolerant.

I think it's also a great idea to construct a "semantic tree" or "tree of meanings" in a mind mapping application. There, you can collect all the Chinese words you've learned and order them hierarchically by meaning, along with a short translation in your language. Since it's often hard to find an exact translation in English or another language, it's better to contrast it with other words in the semantic tree by their usages/fine differences. Such a tree comes closer to the structure of a foreign language than translations for each word.

Hope this helps for a start,

Shun
 

Dodoxo

举人
Hi Dodoxo,

I used to compose my own flashcards with example sentences as well, but now, with the great dictionaries that are available, I mostly just study using the dictionary definitions. (with Defn + Exes + Links all enabled in the Display setting, Filter head in defns enabled)

I like to study batches of < 100 cards, where I switch between

Test type: Fill-in-the-blanks, Show: Definition, Prompt for: Characters

and

Self-graded, Show: Characters,

with Reveal parts separately enabled in Test Settings, back and forth a couple of times. When I have a piece of checkered paper next to Pleco, I prefer to do Self-graded, Show: Definition instead of the Fill-in-the-blanks test. Comparing what I've written on paper to Pleco's answer is faster and more fault-tolerant.

I think it's also a great idea to construct a "semantic tree" or "tree of meanings" in a mind mapping application. There, you can collect all the Chinese words you've learned and order them hierarchically by meaning, along with a short translation in your language. Since it's often hard to find an exact translation in English or another language, it's better to contrast it with other words in the semantic tree by their usages/fine differences. Such a tree comes closer to the structure of a foreign language than translations for each word.

Hope this helps for a start,

Shun
Thank you for the quick and detailed reply Shun.
I would like to ask you what "Links" in that Display settings refers to and what are these great dictionaries. I'm still a little inexperienced and I'm trying to understand more and more about this wonderful application. Your review method is similar to mine but instead of Fill-in-the-blanks I use Self-graded and grade the answer after that I've written the character on the sketch box. I prefer to write on the paper(I think is more useful), but the sketch box is a good practical choice too. The idea of the semantic tree is very useful, I thought about a suchlike idea in the past(when I used to review with Anki), but unfortunately I've never developed it.
 

Shun

状元
Sure!

"Links" is pretty rare--a few dictionaries have links to other words inside the definition of a word so you can jump to them. (So that setting doesn't matter much.)

For English, I especially like the Oxford Chinese Dictionary, for German, the "Das Neue Chinesisch-Deutsche Wörterbuch".

Yes, I use a bidirectional method. Thanks about the semantic tree, I think it really works. If I get very far, I can post it here, all ordered with usage notes.

Cheers, Shun
 

daal

探花
Hi, sorry if this response is a bit late, but I thought I'd chip in anyway.

I am currently using flashcards just to study words and short phrases - I haven't started practicing with sentences yet, though I have created a "sentences" category and have started adding sentences to it for future use... I'll probably refer to Shun's description above when I do.

What I do currently is to use profiles to focus on individual aspects of the language. So I have four profiles: Listening recognition, reading recognition, recall and writing. Each profile has its own score file, because it might be easier for example to recognize a character than to remember how to write it. The writing profile is a bit different from the others in that the test type is fill-in-the-blanks, both the pronunciation and the definition are shown, and the words are drawn from downloaded HSK lists. The other profiles draw on the same vocabulary pool, which is a collection of words that I come across in my textbooks and elsewhere, and limit what they show to either only audio, only the character or only the definition. To make sure that each profile shows doesn't show the same cards from the one vocabulary pool, I have set "Prioritize by" (at the bottom of card selection) differently in each profile.

So that's what I do. I would love to hear how other people use the flashcard system as well
 
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