Comments on: Spaced repetition isn’t rote learning

By: Why flashcards are terrible for learning Chinese | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 18:03:45 +0000

[…] that you’ve encountered in a graded reader or something that came up in a conversation you had. I’ve argued elsewhere that spaced repetition apps don’t need to rely on rote learning, but you certainly can use rote learning if you’re not careful. Many apps also encourage you to […]

By: 3 ways to remember vocabulary - More Vietnamese

3 ways to remember vocabulary - More Vietnamese — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 15:14:32 +0000

[…] not supposed to be a way to find new vocabulary to […]

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:22:54 +0000

Good advice. I know 2600-3000 Chinese characters, and it was the result of spaced repetition and mnemonics with Anki. I have spent like over 500 hours making and reviewing that deck

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:19:38 +0000

In reply to Helmut. As far as I know, Mnemosyne and Anki do the same thing (more or less). Why do you want to combine them? I would choose the one which suits your needs best. I use Anki because of it's versatility.

By: Helmut

Helmut — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 12:57:57 +0000

Great post. I love spaced repetition software and have used a few apps over the years to study Chinese. Currently I am using Mnemosyne which is a lovely program. It works on the PC and the Mac, but not yet on Android. I too have recently gotten an Android phone. Any idea if and how I could combine Mnemosyne with Anki?

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 11:50:52 +0000

@Sara K.: I understand your thinking and you're definitely saving both time and brain power right now. However, are you sure that you wouldn't save both in the long run if you looked things up? There are very few character parts or radicals that only turn up once. I'm personally convinced that it saves time in almost all cases, and since it's impossible or at least difficult to know which cases that are the ones where it won't save time, I just do it for everything. Still, I realise that this is a very long-term approach indeed. You might have to study for many years and learn thousands of additional characers before it pays off. :)

By: Sara K.

Sara K. — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 10:19:19 +0000

Well if I really went through the effort I could make mnemonics for those few characters … or I can just rote-learn on the spot. In my opinion, for me, rote-learning a handful of characters (it’s always characters – I can always make some kind of connection for compounds/idioms) is easier on my brain, even though it takes a bit more time (and I try to conserve both brain-power and time). That would not work for a large volume of characters, but considering that those characters are a small minority, I think resorting to rote-learning in those cases is the best way to conserve my brain power.

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:31:55 +0000

@Sara K.: Good advice about the font. It’s also important that it’s both nice and big. 🙂 I’ve had numerous questions about choosing a correct font (i.e. one that displays characters in the same way as is currently recommended for writing). This is problematic because both fonts and recommendations change. I’ve found that this problem goes away over time, though. Still, being able to effortlessly see the details of characters like 鬱 is essential, otherwise we will just remember it as the “difficult one with lots of strokes” which is okay if that’s the only character, but not so good if we have to distinguish between fifty difficult ones with many strokes. 🙂 I have not mentioned this elsewhere, so thanks. 🙂

Regarding parts of characters, excuse me if I point out something obvious, but why are you limiting yourself to radicals? It’s very easy to look up all parts of a word and associate any art with anything you’ve previously learnt. I do find it’s hard to connect things sometimes, but it’s not because I lack parts to connect. I mainly use two websites if I want to break down a character:

http://www.zhongwen.com
http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/chinese-dictionary.php

Zhongwen.com is better because it offers more etymology and more explanations, but Yellowbridge is easier to use and contains more characters (but has a very annoying ad-block blocker). Again, sorry if I misunderstand you and point out the obvious!

By: Sara K.

Sara K. — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 01:01:40 +0000

Sorry for the double comment, but there is something that I think is important to add (sorry if you have already included this tip elsewhere) –

Use a nice, big font.

Some time ago, I noticed that characters with high stroke counts were a lot more likely to become leeches than characters with lower stroke counts, and I figured out that it was because it was harder to see all of the parts clearly and quickly at the default font size. Changing the font size helped a lot with that particular problem, at least for me. When I read actual texts, of course, context helps a lot, so font size is not as critical as when using Anki, though there are still occasionally times when I have to stare a character for a while because it is printed in a small font size.

By: Sara K.

Sara K. — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:48:49 +0000

Actually, the thing which makes those few un-connectable words easier to remember is that they are so [expletive] frustrating to look up in the first place (I learn most new words from decks I make myself, so I have to look up everything to make the cards). When I look up an unknown character, I will either guess the pinyin and type it out (this is generally the fastest way when I think it would work), or if I don’t think I can guess the pinyin, and go for a radical/stroke count index. Of course, radicals are not always obvious, and if they are, it can take a while if there is a long list of characters with the same radical/stroke count. If a word is un-connectable, that almost certainly means that the pinyin was unguessable and the radical was difficult to pin down, which meant I spent an inordinate amount of time looking it up (I personally remember 廿 as being really frustrating to look up in the first place, so I have actually never had to repeat it in Anki – I always remember it as that [expletive] character that means ’20’ and is pronounced ‘nian4’).