Pinyin <-> English flahscards

[mjk]

Hi There. I am about to purchase Pleco (and the right phone for it). Before I do so, I need to know if the flashcards allow me to learn English <-> Pinyin (or vice versa). I am learning Mandarin without the characters, so I need to be asked in English, and answer in Pinyin (or vice versa). I do not mind if the characters are shown as well, together with the pinyin.
I read through this forum and the website, and have the feeling it should work, but I need a confirmation on this before making the purchase. Thanks for your help.

 

[stisev]

Yes, as long as the flashcards you made yourself are in this format

 

[mikelove]

You can do this with any flashcard if you configure the "show" and "ask" fields correctly, actually - http://www.pleco.com/manual/flash.html#testsetup. Set "Show" to "Definition" to have the Pinyin hidden so you have to guess it, or set "Show" to "Pronunciation" to have the definition (English) hidden so you have to guess that. You can even do a free-answer (fill-in-the-Pinyin) or multiple-choice test this way.

There are a few features you won't be able to use in Pinyin, mainly full-text searches (looking for words in the body of dictionary entries - this is only supported with English and with Chinese characters) and the document reader (which currently only works for looking up words by their characters), but other than that most of Pleco's functions should be as accessible in Pinyin as they are in characters; the editor-in-chief of our main Chinese-to-English dictionary, John DeFrancis, was an advocate of abolishing Chinese characters altogether (and one of the first people to use Pinyin in Chinese teaching), so that dictionary is designed with Pinyin-friendliness at its core.

 

[mjk]

I have now purchased Pleco, but I must say that I am a bit lost with the flashcard set-up.
As mentioned earlier, I want to learn English <-> Pinyin

If, as recommended in this thread, I set "Show" to "Pronunciation" I can indeed learn Pinyin -> English.

But if I set "Show" to "Definition", I get inconsistent results:

If I am in the dictionary and search for a word in English, then press "add to flashcard", it will be shown in the "Manage Flashcards" list under "NWP dictionary". But if I then start a flashcard session, only the added words from other dictionaries will be tested, words from the NWP never.

Alternatively, if I search in the dictionary for words in pinyin, then press "add to flashcard", they will be shown in the "Manage Flahscards" list under "ABC dictionary".
Generally, only flashcards from the ABC dictionary will be tested.
But: sometimes (not always though!) the Pinyin is already shown as part of the English definition (together with the English). That defeats the purpose, and makes the respective flashcard useless.

If I add a word from the Oxford dictionary (some few are available even though I did not purchase it this time), it will generally work.

Is there anywhere a simple step by step guide for just using Pleco flashcards for English <-> Pinyin? Anything I overlooked? I want to avoid creating my own cards and get by with the "add to flashcard" from the dictionary instead.

 

[mikelove]

Pleco treats English-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-English flashcards as completely separate entities, mainly because E-C entries can (and usually do) include more than one Chinese translation for each English word - to test yourself on the NWP cards you'd want to go into the "Cards" tab of "Advanced Settings" and set "Card Language" to "English-to-Chinese." But then you'd miss out on the Chinese-to-English cards, so it's probably best to stick with Chinese-to-English only.

As far as the problem of Pinyin coming up in the ABC definitions, you can fix that by going into the "Display" tab of "Advanced Settings" and changing "Definition parts" to "Defn Only" - that'll hide those example sentences / references to other entries / etc that give away the Pinyin.