I have what might seem a strange request. I often can go through many cards, and recognize all the characters, how to pronounce them, tones, and meaning, but when I am faced with "real world" text (often the same text the words were drawn from), I cannot recognize or remember the words without a lot of effort.
I feel this is because of the different visual environment. That's why I classify this as perhaps "strange", since it doesn't seem that the majority of posters have this type of problem...
I feel there's a fairly easy solution, however.
When testing cards, I'd like an option to include random characters both before and after the word being drilled (when in character mode). The characters should change each time the card is viewed. I feel that either an equal number before and after OR a way to perhaps distinguish the characters wanted. But, the less "different" than natural text, the better, IMO. So, either 2,3, or 4 characters fore and aft, preferably drawn from real words.
Anything approaching this would be a big help, I think, for me.
I also feel it would be a good, and importantly, fairly new, approach to study.