Spaced Repetition Card Limit

[Raesu]

I am currently reading a book in chinese and like to add all the unknown words, or words that I want to remember and use, into my flashcard category. I am through several chapters and thus have over 500 entries. I like testing with the weighted profile because it is easier to setup and I can make a session with only 20 random cards of the 500. I would like to try out the spaced repetition profile since I hear it is more effective, but there is no option to make a session of only 20 cards or so. I dont have the time or patience to go through 500 cards in one session! Is weighted testing the only way i can just pop open a quick session of 20 cards several times a day? Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

The "limit unlearned" feature (on by default) should keep you from getting handed 500 cards at once - you'll be given however many new cards the system is configured to allow. (adjustable through the Card Selection configuration screen) Also, there's no reason you need to finish the entire session in repetition-spaced; if you exit the session and then start a new one later in the day, the cards you've already reviewed shouldn't come up again.

As far as allowing users to set a hard limit of the number of cards to study in a particular repetition-spaced session, though, we don't currently support that because it would inevitably lead to a huge backlog of cards due for study; we're looking at a couple of ways we might redesign the system to be more a bit more dynamic / flexible, but fundamentally, if you don't put in enough time to review the cards you want to learn / the cards you need to repeat to keep from forgetting them, you're unlikely to make much progress, so it's very tough to design a spaced repetition system that lets users study however many cards they feel like on a particular day but remains effective at helping them commit those cards to memory.

 

[Raesu]

Thanks a lot, I was always unclear on what that option really did. Although just to test it I set limit unlearned to 10 and I still have 356 cards ready to go when I start the session. Perhaps I just dont understand how the SR system works.

Another question on this SR profile- how can I set it to show me a definition and I need to think of the chinese word? This was easy to set in my weighted profile but can't find any options to show me the definition first. I searched the forums and didnt find any obvious solutions so sorry if this has been answered previously.

 

[mikelove]

There should be an option for that in the same place - choose "Definition" from the menu you get to by tapping "Show." Is "Show" not appearing on your main Flashcard Testing screen?

 

[Raesu]

WIth the SR profile selected I get these menus/options:

Start: Begin Test Session, Profile
Basic Settings: Card categories, Test type, Configure score subjects, Test settings, Card filters
More Settings: Commands, Display, Card selection, Scoring

Did you mean "Display"? In Display I can remap cards to dicts, choose character sets, headword/def size, but nothing I think that will show me the definition instead of the headword.

Thanks a lot for the help, Pleco is really an amazing app!

EDIT: I changed subject selection to simple, and the Show menu is now appearing. I had it on score based. Now I can set Show to Definition- awesome. My limit # unlearned is set to 10, but I'm getting 356 cards lined up when I start the test. Any way to change that for now? Thanks again for the help.

 

[mikelove]

My limit # unlearned is set to 10, but I'm getting 356 cards lined up when I start the test. Any way to change that for now? Thanks again for the help.

Those cards are already in your review pool (already been studied once), so that's why they're coming up even though they're "unlearned." You might want to create a separate scorefile for SR study and start anew with it - you can create / select a new scorefile through the Scoring configuration screen. (every card will start off "Unlearned" in the new file, so they'll then be introduced gradually) Or you could just exit the session after finishing a smaller number of cards - when you start another session, those cards shouldn't show up again since their next scheduled review dates won't have come up yet.