Comments on: Why flashcards are terrible for learning Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/why-flashcards-are-bad-for-learning-chinese/ A better way of learning Mandarin Tue, 25 Feb 2025 23:16:12 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Olle Linge https://www.hackingchinese.com/why-flashcards-are-bad-for-learning-chinese/#comment-129054 Tue, 25 Feb 2025 23:16:12 +0000 https://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=17509#comment-129054 In reply to Elkovsky.

Thank you for sharing your experience! It’s easy to get bogged down in flashcards, mostly because it’s easy to know what to do and the progress is treacherously measurable. Reading and listening is generally better (although there’s no reason you can’t do both), but input has a less direct impact on your learning and doesn’t feel as useful. Good luck!

]]> By: Elkovsky https://www.hackingchinese.com/why-flashcards-are-bad-for-learning-chinese/#comment-128877 Fri, 21 Feb 2025 19:01:21 +0000 https://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=17509#comment-128877 When I was studying Japanese, I fell into the trap of overusing flashcards to the point that it was crowding out time on other things, like reading and listening. I’ve just started into Mandarin recently (dabbled a couple of times in the past, but didn’t go super-far with it), and I’m trying to avoid running into this same issue. Knowing a lot of Japanese vocabulary is making it easier to pick up words in Chinese, though—in some cases, it’s just a matter of mapping a new pronunciation onto a word I already know (自然 looks identical in both languages), or getting used to seeing the simplified form of a character (Japanese 電話 vs. Chinese 电话). I’m hoping I’ll be able to start working my way to sufficiently comprehensible reading input a little faster so I don’t get so bogged down in atomized drills (which, as you’ve said, can be useful but certainly have their limitations).

I appreciate your site—keep up the good work!

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