Wired Article on Spaced Repetition Software

[imron]

Yep, trying to keep the thread focused on SRS related comments, rather than generic Skritter feedback. Everyone is more than welcome to discuss that here.

[nwinter]

Artem,

Yes, right now we don't activate individual characters that are added as part of a word. If you add 强调 and keep missing 强, you'll keep seeing 强调 and won't see 强 by itself, but it'll keep tracking progress for it. Soon we hope to be more clever and show the whole word 强调 but only prompt for 强 by default.

Most of the time, prompts occur as the whole word together. It'll only be after you know the whole word well but are missing individual characters more often that we'll try to be clever.

Question: do y'all who use Anki for words or sentence practice always produce the whole card each time, or do you sometimes recognize that you know some parts of it cold and skip those?

Edited September 14, 2009 at 02:07 PM by nwinter
Mixed up names, sorry!

[renzhe]

For me, writing characters is separate from knowing words.

I learn which characters a word consists of, then I learn how to write these characters separately.

I never use flashcards that prompt me to write whole words, only characters. Otherwise you run into all sorts of problems with scheduling that you've outlined in your previous post.

[Artem]

I didn't really mention about my writing approach.

When I started learning Chinese, learning how to write characters was hard. At that time, I reviewed characters individually, instead of words. Which was all fine and great, until I studied Chinese literature in China. We would have in-class essays (similar to advance hsk in length), at that time I noticed, I spent too long trying to figure out which character to write. I knew how to write each character, but I didn't necessarily remember which character should have gone in that spot (assuming the same pronunciation, including tone, of course).

Take for example these 3 characters 观、查、察. I learned these characters well, I could write them all very well. However, when it came time to write 观察, I would get confused on which chá it was. They both mean the same thing more or less, so that didn't help solve the confusion. So, I would write it incorrectly as 观查 since I would think 查 is more common character of the two chá.

So now, I take the same approach to Chinese as I did with other languages. I only learn writing words as a unit. I don't think of them as words composed of characters, but rather as just words. I find splitting them into characters only helps me if I am analyzing the the meaning of a new word from context.

To draw a parallel, when I studied English, I didn't learn words by practicing each syllable individually and then piecing it together for writing. However, breaking words up into syllables did help understanding words (think stems).

Thus, my point is, I personally don't like thinking of Chinese words as units of characters, but rather just as words. Because if I can only recall 1 character of the 2, then I still don't know the word. I'd rather learn it at once, then have to piece it later.

There's exception of course, some 成语 are easier split up. Also some compound words I learn separately (think 地域辽阔、政府机关等).

[renzhe]

Thus, my point is, I personally don't like thinking of Chinese words as units of characters, but rather just as words.

I agree with this in most aspects.

But when I learned to write my mother tongue, I learned the alphabet first. I didn't learn to write "cat" and "dog" as separate units, I learned "c" and "a" and "t", and then I was shown the words consisting of these.

You are right that it can be problematic if you can't remember which character should be used with some words. This is sometimes also a problem with rarer words and native speakers.

I guess this works better for me because so much of my input comes from reading. If you're getting more listening input for your vocabulary, then remembering which character should go where might be more difficult.

[Artem]

That's a very valid point. Majority of my vocabulary acquisition comes from speaking to people, rather than from reading (unless I'm taking a formal Chinese class). Mainly because I don't find reading enjoyable in any language.

[realmayo]

I never use flashcards that prompt me to write whole words, only characters. Otherwise you run into all sorts of problems with scheduling

On the basis that I'll run into characters and words all the time, I just shove everything in Anki regardless, and hope the scheduling can cope!

although my new term's resolution is never to spend more time each day on Anki than I'm spending on reading proper Chinese texts.

[Pengyou]

Thanks for all of the helpful dialog. There is one reason why i have always considered Supermemo and that is because SM has both a pc version and a pda version. Are there any other SRS's that have a pda version and pc version? and are free?

[renzhe]

http://ichi2.net/anki/download/index.html.

AFAIK, Mnemosyne doesn't have a working PDA version right now (threre should be one coming in 2.0), but it can run from a USB stick, so you can use it on any Windows computer without needing to install anything. For some people, this is enough.

Anki lets you sync your stuff and do your revisions from a browser too.

[haton]

Spaced Repetition is a great invention. It should be part of any serious attempt at learning a language. Remember those language classes (German, in my case) when you had to memorize lists of 100 words and tried to cram them in by reading the list over and over?

The bad part of it is that you will get more than enough repetitions of the easy words, but never enough of the tough ones... Spaced repetition directs the effort (and your studying time) where it will really bring a benefit.

I do not know if Pingrid has been on your radar screens. It is a memory game I wrote, initially for myself, based on spaced repetitions, and 100% geared towards learning Chinese vocabulary.

It uses speech synthesis, lets you vary character font and appearance. And for those who need it, you have the option to also train "both characters individually" when you add 2-character words.

Info and (free) download at:

http://ehaton.blogspot.com

H.